Where Are You? - Bereshit 5787

“Where are you?”  What a strange question for the omniscient G-d!  Adam and Chava (Eve) had sinned and eaten the fruit of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.  Having ingested this fruit, they now had an awareness of the potential for evil and the feeling of shame.  As the verse states (Bereshit 3:7): “And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves girdles. And they heard the voice of the L-rd G-d going in the garden to the direction of the sun, and the man and his wife hid from before the L-rd G-d in the midst of the trees of the garden.”

Then Hashem’s voice calls out: “Ayeka - where are you?”  Then the story continues with the dialogue between Hashem and Adam, and eventually Adam and Chava being expelled from Gan Eden.  The obvious question is, did Hashem not know where they were?  

There are various answers to this question.  Rashi, who consolidates the Talmudic and Midrashic explanations of the Torah into a concise and brilliant commentary founded on the basic interpretation, says that this was not really a question at all.  “He knew where he was, but [He asked him this] in order to enter into conversation with him, lest he be frightened....”  (Tongue in cheek, it’s kind of like the American greeting “How are you?”  It’s not really a question.)

But there is a deeper answer, one that resonates with each of us today.  The Hebrew word “Torah” comes from the same root as the word “Hora’a” which means teaching a lesson in life.  Every word of the Torah, including those that seem to be merely stories of the past, is a message to me and you.  The Torah is the “user manual” for the world, and it contains within its every word a teaching of how we can fulfill our purpose here.   The following story is reprinted from Chabad.org.

In 1798, [the saintly founder of the Chabad movement] Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi was imprisoned on charges, put forth by the opponents of Chassidism, that his teachings undermined the imperial authority of the czar. For fifty-two days he was held in the Peter-Paul Fortress in Petersburg.

Among the Rebbe’s interrogators was a government minister who possessed broad knowledge of the Bible and Jewish studies. On one occasion, he asked the Rebbe to explain the verse (Genesis 3:9), “And G‑d called out to the man and said to him: ‘Where are you?’” Did G‑d not know where Adam was?

Rabbi Schneur Zalman presented the explanation offered by several of the commentaries: the question “Where are you?” was merely a “conversation opener” on the part of G‑d, who did not wish to unnerve Adam by immediately confronting him with his wrongdoing.

“What Rashi says, I know,” said the minister. “I wish to hear how the Rebbe understands the verse.”  “Do you believe that the Torah is eternal?” asked the Rebbe. “Do you believe that its every word applies to every individual, under all conditions, at all times?” “Yes,” replied the minister.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman was extremely gratified to hear this. The czar’s minister had affirmed a principle which lies at the basis of the teachings of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the very teachings and ideology for which he was standing trial!  [This, he felt, bode well for the outcome of his trial.]

“‘Where are you?’” explained the Rebbe, “is G‑d’s perpetual call to every man. Where are you in the world? What have you accomplished? You have been allotted a certain number of days, hours, and minutes in which to fulfill your mission in life. You have lived so many years and so many days,”—here Rabbi Schneur Zalman spelled out the exact age of the minister—“Where are you? What have you achieved?”  

(The story ends with the minister being so impressed that he shouted “Bravo”, and reported to his colleagues that this prisoner was a holy man, not a criminal.)

The story speaks to each of us!