GEN286 The sin of justifying human suffering … betrays a fundamental ignorance of Jewish theology.  Judaism sees death, illness, and suffering as aberrations in creation that were brought about through the sin of Adam in Eden. When God created the first man and woman, he placed them in His garden and told them that they were permitted to eat from all the trees of the Garden, with the exception of one: the tree of knowledge of good and evil. [Genesis 2:16 and this verse … “for on the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.”] The verse is puzzling. Adam and Eve did indeed eat from the tree of knowledge, yet they did not die on that day. In fact, Adam lived on for more than nine hundred years! How to account for this discrepancy? Judaism and Christianity deal with this difficulty in startlingly different ways.  According to traditional Christianity, the meaning of God’s warning that sin would bring immediate death was the Adam and Eve would die a spiritual death.  Thus, as soon as man committed the “original” sin, his soul died and he was damned. Christianity traditionally recognizes a body-soul dualism whereby people are viewed, not as integrated beings, but as possessors of an eternal soul and an ephemeral body, which is the vessel designed to accommodate the needs of the immortal soul. Only the soul can be restored in heaven through an affirmation of belief in Christ. According to the Jewish interpretation, the meaning of the verse was that on the day Adam defied God’s command and ate of the tree of knowledge, he would be condemned to death; he would lose his immortality.  As God’s direct handiwork, whom He had created in His direct image, man was never meant to experience death. Like his Father in heaven, mean was meant to live eternally. As long as Adam remained attached to the infinite source of life, he was eternal like his Creator. By sinning against God, Adam and Eve severed themselves from the infinite source of life and immediately they began to decay and die. Through his transgression, Adam brought death and destruction into the world. He might live many more years, but one day he would succumb to death, just as every apple when detached from a tree succumbs to decay. The implications of this rabbinical exegesis on this crucial passage of Genesis are profound. There was never meant to be a place for life to include suffering or pain. The Garden of Eden, previously this earth, was perfect. By detaching himself from God and worshipping his own sensual lusts, man became vulnerable and has been suffering for it ever since. This rabbinic teaching also declares that suffering has no meaning. It was never part of the original plan, it has no purpose. … To hasten the arrival of the promised world of the future, man must today drown the world’s imperfections in endless deeds of lovingkindness … man’s mission was never to make peace with suffering and death, but to abolish them from the face of the earth for all eternity by joining God as a junior partner in creation. … The atheist doctor who struggles to cure AIDS is infinitely more in tune with the Jewish response to suffering than the minister of religion who tells his flock that suffering is part of the divine plan.  The sinning businessman who may have never stepped into synagogue but makes a loan to a colleague to save him from bankruptcy is more in tune with the Jewish response to suffering than the Rabbi who seeks to give a rationalization for why children die of leukemia.  … Our energy must be dedicated, not to explaining hurt and pain, but to combating them and to healing wounds. BOTEACH 200-203