You Must Not Belong

So that understanding/May begin, and in doing so be undone.

John Ashbery, “And Ut Picture Poesis is Her Name”

And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, and the cattle according to their kind, and every thing that creeps upon the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good (Genesis 1:25).

“And God said: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26)

One of the striking literary details of the first chapter of Bereishit (Genesis) is that plants and animals are created “according to their kind” (l’mineyhu), while human beings are not. 

The phrase “according to its kind” (l’mina, l’mino) and “according to their kind” (l’mineyhu) is so recurrent in the description of plant and animal life that when humans are finally created, the absence of the phrase comes as a surprise. Instead, we find a new phrase—used only to describe the human being, and used only in the first chapters of Genesis—namely, tzelem Elohim (image of God). Humans are created not “according to their kind,” but rather, “in the divine image.”

We don’t yet know what either min (kind) or tzelem Elohim (divine image) signify, but we do know that the Torah wants us to see them as juxtaposed, perhaps mutually exclusive. When you see yourself or someone else primarily through the lens of a generic category, class, or type, you have effaced the tzelem Elohim. Or in Greek terms, expounded by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, you have reduced a quality life (bios) to a bare life (zöe).

Allow me to offer a hypothesis: plants and animals are created in the plural with no heed paid to the individuality of any specific plant or animal. Lacking an image of God, what matters is the survival of the group. This daffodil and that one become interchangeable. Once the Platonic form of daffodil is fixed in heaven, as it were, there is nothing more to be done. It is impossible for a daffodil to be alienated from its group, expelled from its habitat, or ashamed by self-consciousness. Nor will the daffodil self-direct. Instead, it will be, unquestioningly, what it is made to be. To be created “according to a kind” is to be granted belonging at the expense of liberty, conformity at the expense of innovation, protection at the expense of discovery.

Humans, by contrast, are intended to be individuals, which means that group identity, while socially and politically significant is not ontologically fundamental or spiritually salient. To be created in the divine image is to be a singularity. The Torah will of course recognize the reality of groups and nations, but the first humans are not imagined as members of a tribe. Instead, they are exceptions to the rule of Creation. The human is born without a kind. There is no humankind. For what makes us human is our unique resistance to being pre-determined or over-determined.

Before Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge, they are already outcasts from the rest of Creation. The image of God they bear suggests they can’t stay put, can’t accept the harmony (and boredom) of the thoughtless garden. In the instance that the first humans rebel against God they demonstrate their Godliness. They also demonstrate the genius of the Creator: God has created a being capable of following its own singular path. Had they been created according to their kind, they would never have eaten from the tree of knowledge. No snake would have thrown them off their game.

Plants and animals are like weak AI that does what it’s programmed to do. Humans are like strong AI that determines its own path.

It’s anachronistic to say the Torah is a liberal document, yet the grounding principle of liberalism (the irreducible status of the individual) runs through it. We might even say that the paradoxical calling of the Jewish people, established from Exodus on, is to be a people that stands for and embodies the irreducibility of the individual relative to the group. 

Rav Soltoveitchik says, each person is commanded not just to have chiddushim (insights), but to be a chiddush (a new thing). That we are created b’zelem Elohim, in the divine image, means that, without trying, we already are chiddushim (new sources of insight), just by being alive. Yet when we fall into contrived conversation and scripted small talk, when we see ourselves and others as algorithms, we forget this. We become zoological to the detriment of our singularity.

One of the curious details in the Genesis story is that neither God nor Adam ever tells Eve directly about the prohibition not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Eve mistakenly tells the snake that she can’t touch it, which the snake exploits to her disadvantage. When we read the tale we know there’s been an error somewhere in the transmission, but we can’t identify its source. Did Adam mis-speak or did Eve hear incorrectly? Or did the snake fluster her and cause her memory to lapse? 

My hypothesis comes from the fact that both man and woman are created b’tzelem Elohim. I believe Eve mishears Adam, because as long as people are individuals there will always be a gap between what is said and what is heard, between the words themselves (written Torah) and how they are interpreted and received (oral Torah). 

The writing of “the Fall” from the Garden of Eden is on the wall long before any fruit is consumed. It is not the snake who tempts Eve who is to blame. No, it is language itself, which makes communication an imperfect art. Individuality means strife between individuals, contention about what is shared. “It is not good for the human being to be alone,” observes God. But the only being suited to the human is an ezer k’negdo, one who supports through opposition, one who enlightens through dissidence. Those who are created according to their kind cannot have and do not need loving adversaries. They can simply pair off with their doubles.

The first Fall arrives before the eating of the forbidden fruit, in the breakdown of the transmission (mesorah) of the law to Eve. Yet this breakdown is the inevitable consequence of being singular, of being creative, not any particular individual’s fault. An unbroken chain of tradition exists for those who are created l’minayhu, according to their kind. For those who accept that they are created in the divine image, tradition is a broken chain whose missing links constantly require re-assembly. To borrow a Kabbalistic metaphor, erasure and misunderstanding are the white fire on which the black fire of conventional understanding and shared meaning appear.

Perhaps there is a part of us that longs to return, permanently, to the Garden of Eden. But could we arrive and remain there without renouncing our tzelem Elohim? Is it any wonder that mystics want to flee their humanness—which makes them stand out and apart—and merge with everything? Or become closer to something vegetative, like a lotus? Is the reason utopias are always, in the end, dystopias, not because they require us to exchange our individuality for lives “according to their kind”?

So, fill out your censuses, check your boxes, write your personal statements, deliver your pitches—but don’t believe them too much. You are a singularity formed by a singular God in a singular image. To be a creator is to be odd one out.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins @Etz Hasadeh