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Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) of “All in the Family” fame was always at his funniest when trying to defend his objectionable views. Once his son-in-law Michael (Rob Reiner) asked him why he thought women were not equal to men. Naturally, Archie reached back for the story of the world’s creation, recounted in this week’s Torah portion, Bereshit.
There we read, in Genesis 2:21, that G-d created Eve (Chava) from the rib of Adam. That proves, Archie claimed, that women are inferior to men. After all, they’re taken from the second, cheaper cut! Cue the laugh track.
But there is a real question here – was Eve really created from Adam’s rib? After all, there are two accounts of the creation related in this week’s portion, and they differ significantly from one another, including with respect to the creation of human beings. Reconciling these two accounts was a challenge for the sages, who after all needed to present the Torah as a unified whole free of contradictions. But how could they do that when Genesis 1:27 declared, “G-d created man in his image, in the image of G-d He created him; male and female he created them.” There’s no deep sleep here, no taking of a rib, so how can we claim the two accounts are identical?
The answer is that there is an ambiguity in the text which can be exploited to reconcile the two accounts. The word tzela can mean a rib, but it can also, more generally, mean a side. In the fifth century CE midrash Bereshit Rabbah (8:1), the sages tell us that the original human being was both male and female, a human version of Dr. Doolittle’s Pushmi Pullyu (get it – push me, pull you). G-d then split the human being in half, taking Eve from one side of Adam, as we read below:
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Rabbi Yirmeya ben Elazar said: When the Holy One blessed be He created Adam the first man, He created him androgynous. That is what is written: “He created them male and female” (Genesis 5:2). Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman said: When the Holy One blessed be He created Adam the first man, He created him with two faces, and [subsequently] He sawed him in two and made [for] him two backs, a back here and a back there. They raised an objection to him: But is it not written: “He took one of his ribs [tzalotav] … [and the Lord God built the rib that He took from the man into a woman]”? (Genesis 2:21–22). He said to them: [It means that He took] one of his two sides, as it says: “And for the tzela (side) of the Tabernacle” (Exodus 26:20), which we translate: “And for the side of the Tabernacle...”.
In other words, Adam and Eve are actually each one side of the original human being.
But even if he knew this midrash, I am not sure it would have cured Archie’s misogyny.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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