Genesis 2:18 «a help AGAINST him»

I like what Sforno and others have to say about this passage.

עזר כנגדו (ezer k'negdo)

ezer = a help,
k'negdo = as [one that is] across from him, in opposition to him, equal to him, suited to him

«...The reason why the Torah added the word כנגדו is that whenever one confronts someone of equal power, moral and ethical weight, such a confrontation is termed נגד (neged). It is a head-on collision of will. When the two parties disagreeing are not of equal power, or moral/ethical weight, the confrontation is termed as one being עולה ["ascending (above)"] or יורד ["descending (below)"], one of the adversaries either prevailing or losing in such an encounter....»

Centuries earlier, Rashi had laid the foundation for this perspective. «עזר כנגדו A HELP MEET FOR HIM — (כנגדו literally, opposite, opposed to him) If he is worthy she shall be a help to him; if he is unworthy she shall be opposed to him, to fight him (Yevamot 63a).» And so we continue to this day to explore not only the equality of the sexes, but to explore the cooperative nature of humanity that cannot be fulfilled without an equal partner and opponent.

However, Sforno surprises me at the end. He appears to presuppose that God intends that women will be subservient to men and uses that presupposition to interpret Torah.

«However, the Torah did not mean for woman to be 100% equal to man, else how could the man expect her to perform household chores for him, etc.?»

So, according to Sforno, it is apparently impossible that Torah would say that men and women are completely equal in any literal sense because that would lead to the the conclusion that women were not subservient to men.

It could not have occurred to Sforno that men and women were intended to be equal, that in a relationship, they should work out the logistics and decide together who would do what in a way that was mutually beneficial. Ironically, after arguing quite convincingly for the equality of the sexes based on Gen 2:18, he realizes that such a conclusion would rock the world as he understood it and therefore had to ADD A CAVEAT to accommodate his presuppositions that he was not ready or able to question or abandon. Some part of him must have known that he was questioning this presupposition, but he could not admit it even to himself.

This is typical of how humanity deals with questioning their own privilege: they can't bring themselves to do it because there is too much perceived existential risk. Incidentally, it is exactly this tendency that the passage seems to address: we need help in confronting ourselves if we hope to learn and become all that we have the potential to know and be.

Additionally, עזר כנגדו does not explicitly say "woman" in any direct sense. It says "a help that is equal to and across from him." And the word "adam" is not, per se, a proper name, but rather generally refers to humanity.

Thus, we might render the passage in question as follows: «It is not good for humans to be alone. I (God) will configure humanity such that individuals might find help in another that suits them, that meets them where they are, that stands in opposition to them on equal footing to reign each other in, to teach each other, to question each other, to care for each other, that they might not lose themselves in their own delusions and imaginations, nor face themselves alone without the caring assistance of a friend and devoted partner.»

By extension, we might also argue that God intended us to have peers in general to stand with and against us in love. The real meat of this principle is not that we would have a help that simply stands with us (עזר איתו = a help WITH him), but rather the contradiction or paradox of a help AGAINST us. Thus, by implication, Torah does not suggest that true loyalty is to never question or confront, but rather that the loyalty that God intended from the beginning was to assist and support each other through opposition, questioning and providing limits. We are to be a «help AGAINST each other».

At work and in school, the most productive relationships are between those who question us in kindness, who point out our errors, weaknesses or flaws, and then help us overcome them. Our most helpful relationships are with people that we can bounce ideas off of, tell them what we are thinking and get critical feedback in return, reflecting back to us what we didn't know we were saying or filling in gaps we might have overlooked.

Spouses and siblings, friends and fellows in our community and places of worship best serve and help us when they NOT ONLY rally around us and cheer us on, but when, as needed, they question us or call us out and stand against us in love to support us, to provide checks and balances; when they stand in solidarity with our overarching goals and aspirations and ideals so much that they help channel us back into line when we are off base. They comfort us when we are discouraged, and they make us uncomfortable when we become complacent or self-absorbed. They both help us realize our dreams and bring us back to reality when we start to go adrift in our delusions. And they listen when we argue for why we are right and accommodate the things THEY hadn't seen or thought of.

Incidentally, the same principle is the active mechanism that shapes civil society through democracy, checks and balances, legislative and community debate, and political parties who (should) rally together for the good of one another, even as they function as a backstop for the excesses of their counterparts.

Some last thoughts and backstops to what I have argued so far. (And definitely some thanks to my wife who helped me see some of the limits and possibilities in my initial draft.)

1. When is AGAINST not HELPFUL?

Clearly, the principle of "helping against" someone is a balancing act. Too much help and not enough against becomes permissive and enabling. Too much against and not enough help can become toxic, hurtful, humiliating, rancorous, bitter. Not all conflict is helpful. Not all solidarity is helpful. The truth of the paradox is found in the balance between support and opposition. There is probably no formula that dictates when the relationship needs more support and less opposition or vice versa. The wisdom is found in knowing that we can and should dynamically apply both to our relationships to bring them into balance when they start to run amok.

2. I'm my own best friend when I can both comfort and confront myself.

I have found that many people do not fully realize their relationship to self. We might often feel like we are a monad or single unit without parts. We might perceive that we simply feel what we feel or think what we think. But upon greater reflection, we are capable of contemplating what we think or feel as a thought independent from the thought or feeling in consideration. We are not monads. We are at least dyads (an entity of two parts) or polyads. We are not a single thought process, but rather we internally harbor multiple voices, a conversation or, what is often referred to as, a dialectic.

We have perceptions and perspectives that we identify with, and ones that we do not identify with. We have parts that we concede control to and parts that we try to dominate. We have parts that we are afraid to confront. We harbor questions that we dare not ask or suspect answers we fear as existentially threatening. We might simply assume that we are supposed to be internally consistent to our chosen or presupposed ideals or values and therefore never fully recognize the merits or even the existence of our own internal conflicts and inconsistencies.

Genesis 2:18 suggests, by extension of the principle of "help-against," that we should also explore how we relate to ourselves, to our own thoughts, to our presuppositions, to our perspectives, to our reactions, to our fears, and to our dreams and ideals. I am truer to my most transcendent self when I can both self-confront and self-validate. There is place for both self-discipline or self-mastery, as well as self-compassion and making space for our own struggles, pain, and grief. A lack of self-validation and self-acknowledgement leads to too much self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-ridicule. On the other hand, unquestioned self-confidence or inflated self-esteem, unbridled belief in one's own righteousness or qualifications or value or privilege flow from the opposite ailment of insufficient self-confrontation.

Again, like the paradoxical truth and wisdom of a relationship of "help-against" between two people, the relationship to the dyadic or dialectic self must also find harmony between these two opposing principles. When we learn to assume that we could legitimately be wrong and ask ourselves hard questions, and when we find healthy ways of self-validating (such as through taking our own and others' experiences seriously, acknowledging what we are implying and validating if those implications are true, etc.), we enter a path of internal balance that will enable us to interact with and relate to others in more balanced ways.

3. The question of the sex or gender of one's spouse

As I mentioned above, עזר כנגדו does not directly imply gender. In it's broad, literal meaning, the passage says that it is not good for humans to be alone and that God intended to make a "help-against" for them. Much has been made in conservative religious rhetoric that Torah/the Bible implies without directly saying it that this help is female and that the human (אדם /adam) is male. But this is not implication, per se, but rather PRESUPPOSITION. If we assume that's what this means, then any argumentation that flows from that presupposition is also impregnated with that same presupposition. As per the nature of logic itself, it is impossible to argue against a premise or presupposition upon which an argument is made. In other words, once we PRESUPPOSE an exclusion of same-sex relationships, there's no way to LOGICALLY argue for their inclusion.

So the question is not ultimately a logical one (i.e., not how the argument is constructed after the premises are in place), but rather the question is a pre-logical one. Presuppositions are notoriously tricky to deal with because, as the word itself suggests, they are the thoughts and meanings that we adopt BEFORE we begin to reason. Hence, PRE-supposition.

We are only able to access our pre-suppositions at a meta level, a level outside of our normal logical strategies. This is admittedly a scary place to go because it is the layer at which we question our overarching perceptions and thought processes. It is a place of self-confrontation that brings much more risk because it does not submit itself to the rules by which we normally play. Our presuppositions live in the meta-realm of rules about the kinds of rules we can make for games, not any particular game itself. In theological and doctrinal issues, our presuppositions define what a possible theology or doctrine looks like by definition rather than be reason. They tell us which questions we can ask and constrain possible answers; they dictate which questions we cannot even ask. In the meta-realm, one questions the prohibition of not questioning certain things. Potentially all the normal rules can be broken as one questions the principles upon which the normal rules are based. The overarching constraints that give shape to our normal understandings are what are at stake, and therefore one has no guarantee about the ultimate nature of a possible theology, orthodoxy or ideology.

When one begins with the meta-constraint that marriage can only be between a man and a woman (opposite sex / opposite gender), then it isn't so much that it logically follows that same-sex relations are impossible to accommodate, but rather it is by definition, by fiat that such accommodation cannot be made. The game has been defined such that this is not one of the possible moves or outcomes. In trying to squeeze same-sex marriage into this game, the game simply breaks. It is no longer the same game.

When one is unable to see that this is a meta-constraint per se, then it is impossible to reason any further. This is the nature of meta-cognition, as opposed to our normal daily thinking which is not aware of itself and is unable to easily posit alternatives to what seems on its face to be self-evident.

However, when we focus on the more general assumption that humans are not designed to be alone and that humans, as a general need, require loving opposition (both companionship and confrontation), then nothing in the rest of the logic independently seems to imply that this must be someone of the opposite sex. In other words, we define "the game" such that humans are enabled and empowered to find marriage partners for the sake not only of their happiness, but in virtue of their divine design, which is to not be alone and to be in dynamic interaction with a loving partner-opponent. Both same-sex and opposite-sex relations flow naturally from this presupposition without further ado.

What about the command to multiply and fill the earth? Yes, humanity still bears that mandate. And as a collective, this is not contradicted by same sex relationships. In fact, through adoption, the number of stable adult partnerships that can raise children in loving, healthy homes and families actually goes up when we take into account same-sex marriage.

What is the alternative to accommodating this loosened meta-constraint (inclusion of same-sex coupes)? Ironically, we predict that more individuals would be disqualified from finding a "help-against," an intimate partner with whom to grow, an individual matching and paralleling them for who they are.

Thus, all things being equal, society is less able to live up to the ideals expressed in Torah if we exclude same-sex couples. In addition, in order to uphold the same-sex exclusion, we must do so at the expense of taking into account the experiences of many among us, causing emotional and mental pain and trauma to them (also not a Torah friendly proposition) and denying them the opportunity to benefit from the divinely designed model of having "help-against".

On the other hand, when we relinquish the highly dichotomized gender binary as implied by definition, we are also forced to admit that the misogynistic presuppositions of our predecessors are also inappropriate and untenable. Humans, regardless of sex or gender, need companionship, intimacy, validation and support, as well as confrontation, questioning, and limits. And in so assuming or acknowledging, our thought process and rationale become more consistent and mutually harmonized.

The choice between inclusion and exclusion of same-sex relationships, much like the choice between gender equality vs. patriarchal superiority, is therefore not per se a logical one, but rather one of values. When we weigh the overall outcomes of one form of logic vs. the other, we decide based on qualitative values. Which seems more consistent with other things we know or believe about God and about humanity? And if we aren't sure, then this is where debate, listening, discussion, studying, and arguing come into play. The easy answer for heteronormative patriarchal conservative ideologues, the answer that protects them from self-confrontation and change, is to ignore or minimize the issues and stories of LGBT people or the voices of women.

Ironically, this is the approach that contradicts the principle in the Torah passage in question. Such status-quo preservationists will undoubtedly feel that they are seeing support for their presuppositions wherever the look without realizing or acknowledging that their answer is circularly hard-wired into their interpretations by fiat of their presuppositions. And therefore what they miss realizing when they do this is that they are just looking into a mirror to see their own beliefs reflected back at them (all "help" and no "against") rather than finally learning what they themselves had not considered a possible thing to learn. (And the confused shall acquire insight And grumblers accept instruction. Isaiah 29:24)

And so it is that the dynamic of "help-against" or support-through-confrontation expressed by עזר כנגדו, when once acknowledged, sparks a domino-effect of questions and considerations that threaten to alter one's belief system, just as the divine principle was designed to do. I cannot help but believe that this is crucially why God intended for humanity to engage in such relationships and dynamics with others. God wanted us to confront ourselves with the caring support of others and allow ourselves to be thoughtfully and gradually molded into a greater capacity for wisdom and harmony.

In the end, it may be that one of the most fundamental and transcendent principles of both individual identity and relationship is captured here in Genesis 2:18 in the dynamic of "help-against" that God overtly desires that humanity should engage in.