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October 19, 2022 by Rabbi Raymond Apple

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Ask the rabbi.

WAS IT REALLY AN APPLE?

Q. Was the fruit of the Tree of Life from which Adam and Eve ate really an apple?

A. The text (Gen. 2:7) doesnt say a word about apples. All it speaks about is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Whatever fruit it was, Adam was warned not to eat it. He disobeyed, as did Eve, and their punishment was expulsion.

Now was it literally a piece of fruit that they ate, or was the fruit allegorical?

How, after all, could eating a physical piece of fruit be wrong? And why should anyone think the text is talking about an apple when apples are regarded so highly later on in the Bible?

Surely the verse is teaching a moral lesson, and the word fruit is not to be taken literally.

As an analogy, remember that we have common idioms such as the fruit of ones deeds, which no one takes literally as a reference to apples, oranges or any other specific fruit category.

The lesson the Torah is teaching is that there are some kinds of indulgence (hence the word eat) that are out of bounds.

In this case, there is a clear sexual implication; when Adam and Eve replaced purity and holiness with sensuality and lust, their Garden of Eden was over.

However, the belief that there was an actual apple must have come from somewhere.

In the Midrash, there are suggestions that the fruit that symbolised the forbidden indulgence could have been a fig, grapes, wheat, quince, pomegranate, nuts or the apple of paradise, i.e. the etrog (citron).

This last view is promoted in the Septuagint and elsewhere, and Nachmanides, in fact, sees the name etrog as deriving from an Aramaic root denoting passion or desire.

In time, the word apple may have come to be the general term for any fruit, and when Biblical and post-Biblical writers said (e.g. Song of Songs 2:5) that apples were good for ones health, they may have been thinking of fruit in general.

It was early Christian writers (e.g. Jerome) who identified Adams sin with an actual apple, perhaps because they misconstrued the Greek references to the apple of paradise or possibly because the shape of the apple suggested a sexual connotation.

RABBIS IN THE WORKFORCE

Q. How is it that some rabbinically qualified people take on jobs outside the rabbinate?

A. This was always the case.

Because of the principle, Do not make the Torah a spade to dig with (Avot 4:5), Talmudic rabbis practised a variety of professions; one was even a gladiator.

The concept of the rabbi was quite different from the modern idea of a congregational minister. The rabbi was no more (or less) than a learned layman. Certain professions became particularly common among rabbis, especially medicine.

The modern spread of yeshivah learning has created thousands of rabbis who work in industry, commerce and the professions. Indeed, when the Lubliner Rav, a great rosh yeshivah, was asked where he was going to find congregational posts for his 300 students, he said he expected only one would be a community rabbi but hoped the other 299 would be learned enough to appreciate their congregational colleague.

Rabbis who work in other areas ought to be able to exert a subliminal spiritual and ethical influence and to raise the quality of society from within.

Whatever the profession he chooses, a rabbi must always ensure he is a role model of morality and decency.

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