ALL IS SEEN

The Mishnah informs us that "all is seen, permission is given, and the world is judged for good, and all is according to the majority of one’s acts." The first two clauses, that all is seen and permission is given, had been interpreted by Rambam (and since) as meaning that although God foresees all, there is still human freewill. That complex philosophical issue, how people can have freewill if God knows all their actions in advance, bothered Rambam intensely (he mentions it as well in Hilkhot Teshuvah), and he understood this Mishnah to reflect the problem.

Maharal, however, believes this Mishnah should connect to the previous one, which had mentioned that people are especially dear to God because they were created in the tselem, the Divine Image. Maharal therefore understands the fact that hakol tsafui as a function of our tselem Eloqim. Because humans have some similarity to God, all human actions are attended to by God (come under His direct Providence). Since such closeness to God that might have stifled human freewill (not by virtue of God’s foreknowledge, as bothered Rambam, but as a result of the human similarity to the Divine), the Mishnah makes sure to mention that nevertheless "hareshut netunah, people are still in charge of themselves to the extent that they can make free choices.

To explain more fully what he means by this, Maharal goes refers to the Creation story. In Bereshit, the Torah tells us of the two trees, the Etz haDaat and the Etz haHayyim. According to the serpent—and he was apparently truthful in his description—if people ate from the Etz haDaat, they would become "like God, knowing good and evil." Maharal explains that before eating from the Etz haDaat, people’s connection to God was so strong that they were only yod`ei tov, knowers of good, not evil.

Yet part of God’s purpose in creating humanity was to have them be similar to Him in that they would control themselves to some extent. While their connection to God was very strong at that point, there was still an element of personal self-control (Maharal does not stress this, but his view explains how Adam and Havah could eat the fruit of the tree even before they were yod`ei tov va-ra, knowers of good and evil—the element of self-control or self-determination was there even before there was an issue of sinful inclination over which to exert that control). Havah (and later, Adam) could therefore choose to eat the fruit of the Etz haDaat.

A CONTRADICTORY RESULT

As Maharal sees it, eating the fruit of the tree in some senses took people farther away from God—saddled with an awareness of ra, humans now had to struggle to overcome the lure of earthiness, of attachment to the physical sides of their beings. On the other hand, their view of the world was expanded, and thus their wisdom was as well. While God is not bothered by the evil inclination (because there is no element of the lower world to Him), His wisdom is certainly greater for its encompassing both good and evil. People, before eating of the tree, only really knew good; having eaten of the tree and become aware of a whole new aspect to life, their wisdom (and in that sense, their similarity to God) had been greatly increased.

THE ETZ HAHAYYIM

Maharal uses his insight into the story to explain what it was that made God feel it necessary to expel us from Gan Eden. He notes that the Torah portrays God as worrying that humans would eat of the Tree of Life and live forever. He assumes that the Etz haHayyim is the Torah (since the verse says that Torah is a Tree of Life for those who adhere to it), which leaves the question of why people’s eating of it in the Garden is any different than their eating of it outside the Garden (as we all do, hopefully every day).

Before we get to Maharal’s answer, I would like to pause to appreciate the view of the Biblical story he has given us. Clearly, the Etz haHayyim is a metaphorical, rather than a physical tree. Presumably, that would mean that the Etz haDaat is similarly metaphorical, although Maharal does not tell us what that might be. ( I can easily imagine that Torah provides eternal life; I am less able to conceive of something that makes a hitherto unaware person better understand evil). The story should read, then, as the story of a husband and wife, aware of their connection to God in a most direct and intimate fashion. The wife, lured by some force, delves into an area of knowledge that opens her eyes to a much broader world than before, which she then foists on her husband as well. Newly sophisticated, the couple realizes that they will each use that sophistication in both positive and negative ways—as does God.

One of the negative ways people could use their knowledge of good and evil while still in the Garden would be to study Torah, the Tree of Life. Studied properly, Torah gives eternal life to those involved with it, a result that God did not want while people were still in the Garden. Once expelled, however, the distance created by that Expulsion would make it safe for humans at their current level to study the Torah and reap its benefits.

Rather than explaining what he means by closeness and distance, Maharal says "stn vz icvu, and understand this carefully (or greatly)." I don’t think I have fully understood it, but it seems that Maharal is not conceptualizing the Garden as a physical location (since the metaphorization of the trees argues against that). That would mean that distance is not a physical issue, either. When it comes to Torah, being close or far generally refers to our ability to plumb its depths, the readiness of our intellects to fathom its secrets. It seems to me, then, that Maharal means that in the Garden people were particularly ready to understand Torah, to absorb its truths. However, given their newfound awareness of good and evil, an awareness that would, has, and does lead to sin, it would be inappropriate for people to achieve that level of understanding of Torah.

To bring one’s comprehension into closer alignment with one’s spiritual readiness, God expelled humans from the Garden (which here, I suppose, would mean that He placed intellectual or spiritual barriers in the face of full understanding of Torah). With that expulsion, the road to the Etz haHayyim became much more difficult, so that only those who had left behind much of their physicality could achieve the same knowledge of Torah (or, perhaps, even those people could not achieve the knowledge we could have gotten when we were in the Garden).

I’ve gone into the interpretation at length because Maharal does, but also because I think the Garden story is an extremely interesting one and I enjoy watching commentators mold the story into a meaningful picture of humanity’s origins. In Maharal’s view, the early humans (or whenever Adam appeared on the scene) were closer to Torah in some way than we are. That closeness, given their concurrent development of their lower side, became dangerous. By expelling us from the Garden, meaning putting barriers in the way of our full understanding of Torah, Hashem was able to bring our spiritual sophistication back into alignment with our intellectual comprehension of Torah. To me, that’s a fascinating picture.

AND THE WORLD IS JUDGED FOR THE GOOD

In the same way that God’s awareness of human actions, whether good or bad, (that’s hakol tsafui) indicates His concern and closeness to humans, His judging the world should also be seen as a sign of His goodness. Just as a father punishes children to train them in the proper way of behaving, were God not to judge wrongdoers, we would never learn to follow the path of good.

In Maharal’s view, then, the fact of seeing people getting punished for their wrongdoing should make us aware of the existence of justice. Interestingly, though, that justice might not appear fair to humans, since Maharal sees the next clause of the Mishnah—"all is according to the majority of one’s actions"—as referring to the place where one will get punished. While every action, good or bad, will be properly remunerated (contrary to what the simple reading of the Mishnah might have indicated), the question of the majority will determine which we get rid of in this world (where reward is less good and punishment is less bad) and which awaits us in the World to Come.

Our identities in God’s eyes are thus shaped in several ways—our possessing a tselem eloqim creates closeness to God that leads to His awareness of all our actions. Part of that similarity to God is the freedom of self-choice that He gave us, a freedom of choice that led to our eating the fruit of the forbidden Tree, leading to our Expulsion from the Garden to avoid an inappropriate level of understanding of Torah. In the world in which we live, we need to remember that God’s justice is applied to help us avoid wrong choices, and that the decision as to which part of a person’s final justice to delay to the next world is a function of the majority of our actions.