Can You Hear Me Now? : Walking in the Garden
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Parashat Behar-Bechukotai
1.
When we used to live in Marin
We had a staircase that went from the main floor to a lower level where the the girls shared their bedrooms.
And Minna used to say that she knew which parent was coming down the stairs based on our footsteps
The click click of my heels
Versus the hurried pattern of Michael’s shoes, ever eager to see who was downstairs
Of course we could always tell who was coming up
Depending on the age, we knew who could climb those steps two at
a time, who was still holding a bit to the banister
And who, having gotten her shoes on all by her whole self was climbing / crawling, one careful step at a time
There’s a soundtrack of the people we love, quite literally the sound of our tracks
A soundtrack that in covid, in tighter quarters, may have taken on a higher volume and a high rotation, a seemingly endless rotation of sounds
A soundtrack we might even want to escape from time to time
But one that has the potential to open our hearts all the same
There is a really mysterious passage in the story of the Garden of
Eden
I mean, let’s be serious, the whole story is completely wild
What with trees of life and snakes that speak but we only have one shabbosSo I want to point out
How it is that after Eve and Adam eat from the forbidden tree
Torah says
וַֽיִּשְׁמְע֞וּ אֶת־ק֨וֹל יְהוָ֧ה אֱלֹהִ֛ים מִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ בַּגָּ֖ן
And it is not at all clear what this means but it is something like
And they heard the sound or the voice of God, walking in the garden They heard the sound (1)
And, as we remember, being afraid of what they did, they hide
Now I’m not at all clear they were not supposed to eat from that tree
I know that is what it looks like on the surface
But I have, following my father’s teaching, always been suspicious of the forbidden tree in the middle of the garden and the one rule they were not supposed to break that they, of course, break
Not to mention the aforementioned talking snake seducing them
into it
But I digress
My point here is that, whether they were on script or off,
They ate that fruit without letting God into their plan, without asking God any questions
They did it in a hidden, furtive way, a distancing way
Allowing for no deeper trust with God to build or even be tried
And so now, we find them, their bellies full of supposedly contraband fruit
Afraid when they hear the sound of God walking in the garden
We know they’re afraid because they hide
And we know they’re afraid because they say so
וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אֶת־קֹלְךָ֥ שָׁמַ֖עְתִּי בַּגָּ֑ן
Adam actually says
I heard קֹלְךָ֥ your voice, your sound in the garden God
And I was afraid [because I was naked], and your sound scared me, so I hid (2)
2.
But this sound of God moving through the garden itself,
this sound needs our attention
Because
Whether we think it is the sound of God, god’s very self (!)
Or the sound, somehow, as Rashi suggests, of God’s walking (!) (3)
But if we pay close attention to what it is Torah says Eve and Adam heard
אֱלֹהִ֛ים מִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ בַּגָּ֖ן
God was
not walking exactly but
The reflexive, causative of version of that verb to walk
מִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ
In other words, they heard God moving about in the garden
The sound was God moving back and forth, they say
Maybe pacing
Making tracks, holy soundtracks
Maybe Eve and Adam were hearing the sound of the pitter patter of little divine feet, or God’s high heels as they crunched down
delicately and purposefully on the fine gravel paths of Eden
Or maybe (as it says in Shir HaShirim Rabba) they heard the sound of God jumping from heaven to earth and back up again. (4)
Or maybe this sound of God was more like a voice
As Chizkuni suggests, “they heard the sound of God’s voice taking a walk in the garden” (5)
God’s voice walking about
God’s voice calling out and then subsiding, “Eve…. Adam….”
God’s voice just somehow moving through the garden as if it were taking steps,
Maybe like God singing a scale
The verse is not at all clear
But no matter how we imagine this קֹלְ, this sound
I feel very confident in saying it would have been a familiar sound to Eve and Adam
Because, see, back in the garden, we know
Eve and Adam and God were physically close
Maybe not room mates but garden-mates
We know they talked all the time, that part is right in Torah
And we also know the garden was not infinite
They, just like us in covid, they shared a smaller space, it was intimate
And I have to imagine they knew each other’s movements and
sounds
I have to imagine their different voices were clear and audible to
one another
As were the sounds of their patterns of movement that made up all their days and nights
So whether it was the sound of God’s voice or the sound of God moving through the garden or something else entirely
They had heard it many times
And while the sound itself is worth our attention
After all, this was the soundtrack of God, whom they loved,
In this moment the sound matters less to us than
Their response to it
That is, it is Eve and Adam’s response of fear and hiding to this familiar sound that draws our attention this shabbat
Because this response teaches us
How, when we create distance amongst ourselves
and between ourselves and God
The most natural, common sounds can become fraught, sources of fear
3.
Now that we have learned the phrase
אֱלֹהִ֛ים מִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ בַּגָּ֖ן
God moving about in the garden, a moving that is ongoing, around
We can see that same unusual verb מִתְהַלֵּ֥ךְ (movement) is in our Torah this week
In the description of what it feels like to be blessed
God says,
If you get close to me
וְהִתְהַלַּכְתִּי֙ בְּת֣וֹכְכֶ֔ם
I will walk back and forth among you
I will walk about, circle, pace, pitter patter
And as we know from the Garden of Eden
we might feel this divine walking among us and we might also hear
it:
As if God is alluding to the Garden in this week’s blessing
You will hear my steps among you, in your hearts, you will hear me in your houses, you will hear me entering your gates
וְהִתְהַלַּכְתִּי֙ בְּת֣וֹכְכֶ֔ם
I will walk back and forth among you
I will be in your midst and you will hear me
We understand this is what it means to feel blessed:
To sense the presence of God among us just like it was in the Garden of Eden
When we spoke freely and knew where God was all the time
When
As it says in a great midrash I got to study with Sabra Bliss this week God braided Eve’s hair to prepare her for her wedding to Adam
God chose the tree under which they would wed and led Eve there
by the hand (6)
That’s how close they all were
And that is one definition of what it means to feel blessed now
To feel God so close as to be doing our hair and leading us by the hand
Hearing God’s steps as they approach and recede through the
Garden
4.
But this week’s Torah does not only have blessings it has curses
No one ever wants to read the curses
It is even encoded in the tradition
the way we read the curses in this week’s parasha
Is quickly, in a whisper, without stopping
Life is hard enough, these days we feel surely cursed enough
Who needs to read the curses?
But I think after learning about all the sounds of God being so close
I think we can also begin to understand something more
Because, although, I, too, did not want to look closely at the curses
When I did I noticed
That there were some curses in the list
That were not coming from the outside, like a attack from an enemy, or a failed crop
But instead were coming, somehow, from our inside
For example,
וְנַסְתֶּ֖ם וְאֵין־רֹדֵ֥ף אֶתְכֶֽם
Which means, “And you will flee though no one chases you” (7)
And while, on the one hand, this seems to be the most perfect description of the effects of social media I have ever ever ever read
This curse is undoubtedly also describing a broader internal state
This curse is about us being afraid of something within ourselves
And even if you believe God somehow has a hand in everything, as I do
You probably also believe, as I do, that we too have a hand in many things
Certainly we have a hand in how we imagine ourselves in the world
And as much as God seems to want to grandstand and blow holy smoke with a lot of fancy curses in this parasha
I do not believe it’s possible for God to make us want to flee when
no one chases us —
at least not without a good deal of our participation
Just like God alone cannot keep Eve and Adam from hiding
So perhaps we learn this is the kind of curse we can only bring on ourselves
As if God wants to say,
Some of this is in your hands
It is true that if you run you will be far from me, says God
But you don’t have to run
No one is actually chasing you
And this curse may be lifted by none other than you
5.
And finally we notice that just a few verses later
God says that those who distance themselves
Will flee even
from the ק֚וֹל / sound of a leaf blown about.
ק֚וֹל עָלֶ֣ה נִדָּ֔ף
From the sound of a driven leaf (!) (8)
From the sound of a leaf being swept in the wind and touching, or beating against another leaf the sound of leaves tapping against a
door frame (9)
What sound makes those who are already distanced want to run and hide?
Even the sound of leaves
And what I finally understood this shabbat
Is that when God describes this self inflicted curse idea
This idea of our fleeing from no one
God could have done this without mentioning any sounds at all
The verse could have easily just been us running from the sound of nothing (!) —
That would be the most reasonable way to describe this baseless fear
But instead
Not only does God say if you stay with me I will walk with you in blessing
וְהִתְהַלַּכְתִּי֙ בְּת֣וֹכְכֶ֔ם
Amongst you, around with you
Not only does God say
You will hear my divine soundtrack as I move through the garden of your life
When God wants to describe the opposite idea —
What it feels like to have distance from each other, from God
God does not say there will be resounding silence
But rather, instead, God says the most peaceful, familiar sounds
The sound of falling leaves rustling in the wind
Those same peaceful sounds will no longer give us comfort but will frighten us
Just like we were once afraid of the sounds of God moving in the Garden of Eden
As if God wants to say in the clearest of terms
The world is the world is the world
I always move through the garden, there are always sounds of my walking and the cascading of my voice up and down
As if God wants to say in the clearest of terms
The world is the world is the world
There are always sounds of leaves blowing and people we love going up and down steps
Through our doors and in and out of our gates,
As if God wants to say in the clearest of terms
The sounds from the Garden of Eden and the sounds you hear right now are the same sounds
The same sounds as always
The only question is if you will run and hide
or try to draw near to hear them
Gen. 3:8
Gen. 3:10
Rashi to Gen. 3:8:1
Shir HaShirim Rabba 5:1:1
Chizkuni to Genesis 3:8:1
Midrash Tanhuma Buber Chayei Sara 2:1
Lev. 26:17
Lev. 26:36
Rashi to Lev. 26:36
