Ilustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
Midrash מִדְרָשׁ
What can we learn from an imperfect world?
On Day Three, God creates fruit trees (Bereishit 1:11-12).
God commands the creation of: עֵץ פְּרִי עֹשֶׂה פְּרִי (eitz peri oseh peri, fruit trees that bear fruit).
But the earth doesn’t do that exactly. Instead, it produces: עֵץ עֹשֶׂה פְּרִי (eitz oseh peri, trees that bear fruit).
What’s the meaning of this difference?
A midrash explains what God really wanted when commanding “eitz peri oseh peri”:
מַה הַפְּרִי נֶאֱכָל אַף הָעֵץ נֶאֱכָל.
וְהִיא לֹא עָשְׂתָה כֵן, אֶלָּא “וַתּוֹצֵא הָאָרֶץ דֶּשֶׁא…” הַפְּרִי נֶאֱכָל וְהָעֵץ אֵינוֹ נֶאֱכָל.
Just like the fruit is edible, (God wanted) the entire tree to be edible.
But the earth didn’t do that. Instead, “the earth produced vegetation…” (Bereishit 1:12) with fruit that can be eaten, but trees that can’t.
- According to this midrash, God wanted trees to be entirely edible: fruit, bark, leaves…everything! But sometimes things don’t live up to the ideal. What could it mean that creation never really lived up to the ideal? What does this say about the world?
- What could it symbolize to have a world where trees both make fruit and also are fruit themselves? What could it symbolize about our world that our trees aren’t like that?
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