Episode 313_The Jewish View of Original Sin with Rabbi Cary Kozberg

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Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames. RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head.

Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm very glad you could be with us for what is going to be another great conversation today. I'm here in Springfield, Ohio at Temple Shalom once again, I think for the third time, uh, with our friend Rabbi Cary Kosberg, and he has been kind enough to Rick Lee James to sit down with us again and help us with maybe some of our misunderstandings and misconceptions of things that sometimes we take for granted in Christianity. But often when you get to the Jewish roots of the matter and when you study the original writings, you are going to find that at times we have really gotten some things quite different. So today as we begin, I am just going to read this little introduction to what our conversation is before we get started. This is basically the doctrine of original sin, and as I read it, this is sort of just a generic— not generic, but sort of the standard view of original sin as in Christianity. And we're gonna get into a conversation about that and where it falls within Judaism. So here I begin. Original sin is a Christian belief that humans have existed in a state of sin since the fall of man when Adam and Eve rebelled against the commands of God in the Garden of Eden. Their sin, according to Christianity, is the sin of disobedience. When Adam and Eve consumed the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the fall of man came upon us all. Again, according to Christian belief, because of this incident in the garden, all mankind now has a sinful nature.

And a collective guilt.

The concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, in his battle with dualist Gnostics. St. Augustine saw the doctrine in the New Testament teachings of Paul the Apostle, specifically in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 5:21-22, and in the single Old Testament verse of Psalm 51:5, Augustine also shaped and developed the doctrine more than anyone else ever had. Christian fathers like Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam's sin, transmitting it human generation by human generation. Augustine's doctrine of original sin became popular among Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. Calvin and Luther believed and taught that original sin, even after baptism, See, I made a typo here. I'm going to read that again. Calvin and Luther believed and taught that original sin, even after baptism, was not completely destroyed and that we were still not free to do good. Before 412 CE, Augustine had said that free will was weakened but not destroyed by original sin. But after 412 CE, with the teachings of Luther and Calvin, this this change to a loss of free will except to sin. Modern Augustinian Calvinism holds this later view. Finally, the Catholic Church declares that baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God. But the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to a spiritual battle. Weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is not yet destroyed in the race of Adam. Most of Christianity believes this view of original sin in some form or another, but few of us Christians have ever stopped to ask the question, what does Judaism teach about the doctrine of original sin? So today on Voices in My Head, we are here at Temple Shalom in Springfield, Ohio to discuss this topic with our old friend Rabbi Kerry Kosberg. Kerry, welcome once again to Voices in My Head.

Always glad to be here, Rick.

Sorry for that extremely long introduction.

No, I'm glad you did.

But it felt like a good kind of place for us to start today. And I guess the question that I'll start with is, how does Judaism differ in the way that it interprets the story of Adam and Eve?

Well, I was struck by the fact that you referred to, and I think most people do, to refer to the story of Adam and Eve and what happened in the garden as the fall of man. We don't understand it that way. We actually understand what happened as the uplifting of man. Uh-huh. And I'm going to say— tell you why. Because if you think about the fact that the story tells that God said to Adam originally, You can eat of all— any tree you want, just don't eat from that tree, because on the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. The Hebrew is mot tamut. That's sort of a— later on in the other books of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, that is— that has judicial connotations. In other words, when the Torah says If someone violates this law, it's a capital offense. Mōt yamut. That person will surely die. Now, if you think about it, Adam, who had not eaten of the tree of knowledge of self-awareness, when God says to Adam, "You will surely die," Adam doesn't know what that means.

Hmm.

Nothing had ever died. Okay. He had no reference point. Okay, and the text tells us, or doesn't tell us, that Adam had any reaction. Okay, he probably just said, "Okay, okay, whatever." And then we read that Eve is created because there was no fitting helper, fitting companion for him, so that Eve is created from Adam's rib. Everything seems fine, and then the snake appears. And the snake says to Eve— interestingly enough, he doesn't go to Adam, he goes to Eve, okay? And Eve was told secondhand of God's command not to eat of the fruit, and she even adds to it. She says, "We were told not to eat of it or touch it." And God never originally says, "Don't touch it." He said, "Don't eat of it." So already she's starting to interpret. And what is the snake's response? The snake says, "Were you told that? You won't die. Your eyes will be opened and you will be as gods." And Eve, why does Eve go for the fruit? It looks nice. It looks like it's gonna taste good. But the other thing is, it was a source of wisdom. She saw it as a source of wisdom. So she eats of it, and then she gives to Adam. Adam was told originally, "Don't eat it." He eats it. And then all of a sudden things change forever.

Hmm, yeah.

Now what would have happened if Adam and Eve would not have eaten the fruit? No, I don't know if anyone ever thinks about that.

Yeah, okay, they would have—

they would have been God's pets.

Yeah, stayed in a childlike—

they would have been a childlike state. Okay, nothing would have ever happened. Okay, Adam and Eve, their descendants to this day maybe would just be tending the garden.

Hmm.

Okay, there'd be no history. There also would never be any self-awareness. Nothing, nothing good would have happened because people wouldn't know the difference between good and evil. Our understanding frankly is that this had to happen. Okay, it had to happen from our point of view is because it points to another question that we ask, and that is, why did God create the world to begin with? Did he need to? No. One of our interpretations is God created the world, God created humanity, because he needed a fitting partner. He created angels, but angels only do what they're told. Hmm. Okay. Angels are basically gophers. Okay. So when the boss says X, Y, and Z, they say, "Yes, sir." Okay. They never challenge. Okay. God needed someone to be like him, but not be him. Okay. With capacity to choose and to know right from wrong.

Okay.

But for some reason, and this is part of the mystery of the story, he set up the scenario so that they would do exactly what they did. And it's almost like when a parent tells a kid, you can have anything you want for a snack, but don't eat the cookies from the cookie jar. Okay. Specifically, don't eat those cookies. And he leaves. The parent leaves. What's the kid going to do?

You're gonna have some good peace.

That's called temptation. Okay.

Yeah.

The other thing is, is that what God said was gonna happen didn't happen.

Hmm.

Okay. The snake said, "You will be like gods knowing good from evil." That's exactly what happened. Okay. Now I know that people say, "Well, they died a spiritual death." I'm gonna suggest that they didn't.

Okay.

Again, it was an uplifting because At first they were innocent, okay? And when you're innocent, you don't know the difference between good and bad. If you don't know the difference between good and bad, you don't know how to appreciate what's good.

Yeah.

Because you've never known bad. This gave them the capacity, and by extension, that's what they pass on to us. They pass on to us the ability to choose right from wrong. They don't pass on to us the sin, they pass on to us the capacity to sin, but also the capacity to do what's right. Now, what's interesting to me when I teach the story is that, um, the consequences of what happened are really fascinating. After they realize that what they've done, okay, and now they know what they've done. They have— they're conscious, they're aware, and all of a sudden they see that they're naked, they're exposed, okay, and God comes looking for them. And what does Adam say? I was afraid because I was naked. And God says, who told you you were naked?

Right.

And then what does Adam do? He He puts the responsibility on his wife. That's the first—

it's her fault.

That's the first sin. Adam didn't take responsibility. When you take responsibility for your actions, that gives you the opportunity to repent. Okay, and he didn't do that. He was, he was a weasel. Yeah, yeah, he put it on Eve. Okay, so God goes to Eve. And she basically says, this is what I did and this is how it happened. But then what is— what does God say to her? Because you've done what you've done, you will bear children in pain. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule. What's the next phrase?

He will rule Is it creation? I can't remember.

No, it says, "He will—" The usual translation is, "He will rule over you." Over you.

Okay.

Okay. Now, that preposition "over," "over you," is a mistranslation. Hmm. Okay. The Hebrew word is "bach." And "bach" usually means "He will rule in you" or "He will rule through you." But the text is not that 'He will be subservient.' The text can be interpreted, and I think it's interpreted as, 'He will be your main concern.' Now, that's why Eve was created. He was created to help Adam be a better person. He would— he— that's what a fitting, fitting help. Men can't do it on their own. Yeah, it's true. Men need women to put them on the right path, however that's done. Okay, that's what ezar kenegdo, the Hebrew, means. It's actually the preposition neged. Ezar kenegdo. Neged can mean either someone who's a complement or someone who's an adversary. So the sages say if a man is worthy, his wife will will be his complement. If the man is unworthy, she will be his adversary. Hmm. Okay. Wow, isn't that true? So yeah, it is true. So what I'm saying is, is that the consequence of, particularly for Eve, was not that she was punished, but that she was now able to fulfill the reason she was created. Yeah, it's fascinating. Okay, now when the question comes up Well, they were kicked out of the garden. Yes, they were. They had to be kicked out of the garden because now that God had allowed them— and this is the other thing we don't talk about— if God was so upset that they ate of the tree, why didn't he not really kill them and create a new couple? Okay, he doesn't do that. When he realizes what he's done, or what's happened, he expels them. The text says specifically he didn't expel them to punish them. He expelled them to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life, which would have given them mortality. Okay, so it was okay with God, and maybe this is what he wanted, that people have the ability to be godlike and know good from evil and make choices and promote good in the world or promote bad in world, okay, but they can also be immortal, okay, then they really will be like God. Wow. Martin Buber, great Jewish philosopher, understood Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden in this way. He said that being expelled from the garden and thereby introducing death into human existence existence was really a gift. It was a gift because if people were allowed to or able to live forever, then the bad things they've done will always plague them. They would have no respite. Wow. They would have to live with guilt for whatever they've done literally forever. As it is, whatever time we have on this earth, whatever guilt we feel is going to be limited in time. Wow. Which means that we are encouraged to try to right the wrongs and to try to repent and to try to change. Okay, so that goes back to the original question about original sin. Our understanding of sin is not a condition that we're born with. We have— we're born with two capacities, what's called the yetzer tov, the good inclination, and the yetzer hara, the bad inclination. The text says later on in Genesis that God sees that the heart of man is evil from its youth. Our capacity to do bad is what born with and what really rules us. We have to be taught to develop the good inclination, and we do that by listening and following God's Word. Sure. We don't do that naturally. Yeah.

Well, it's interesting too. I have so many thoughts that come to mind, you know, as I hear you talk about this, but it almost seems like too the idea that Eve being the helpmate, we almost see the idea that left to our own devices we're gonna end up in sinful places. True. But the idea that God provides a helpmate, I think we almost see like a communal understanding that holiness happens in community together too. Just as much as the fall happened in that way, God also intends for the community together to help us overcome the the things that are worst inclinations, I guess, if sort of my understanding is right.

You know, when you're saying this and you talk about people learning to be human in community, I always wondered when I used to watch Tarzan movies. Tarzan was supposedly raised by apes, but they always depict him as having this moral sense. How could he develop a moral sense living among gorillas? Right. That's a fantasy. Okay, there's no way Tarzan, anyone like that, living away from human beings, okay, would have the ability not to act like an animal. Yeah. Okay, um, so your point about having to be raised in community with, with standards and with mores, and, and mores that are not just agreed upon by members of the community but really have a sense of they're transcendent. Yeah. You know, they come from an ultimate authority. Yeah. That's really what makes a community solid and holy.

Well, and John Wesley, one of our heroes of the faith, he used to say, "There is no holiness apart from social holiness." He used to remind people. And it's interesting as I hear you say this and talking about mankind's capacity to do both. And we can see so often in the crowd the capacity to also be very destructive and very evil in community together, but we also have this godly form of it that is sort of the antidote to that, that God designs for us, that we would actually live as a community to seek after holiness and to seek to be who God intends for us to be, and it's just fascinating hearing all that. I'm just gonna kind of ask a couple things off the top of my head, just hearing that story, because I grew up in the church and I've, you know, been there my whole life, so I hear all the things told slant, you know. So one thing that I always hear, and it kind of drives me crazy, is somewhere along the way Christians started making the equivalent of the serpent in the garden— that's the devil, right? The story, but it never says that, does it? It just says, I believe it just translates as serpent, doesn't it? Yes. I think. Yes. So what's your take on sort of that, the serpent, and why do you think it was a serpent in the story as opposed to, you know, why wasn't it a bear or some other thing? Is there some sort of significance to that?

Well, you know, that's an excellent question. I think part of my answer is what happens to the snake and how God says humans will relate to snakes. Mm-hmm. Okay. So there's almost— I'm going to say, use the big $10 word, teleological explanation. In other words, The story does give an explanation as to why people, particularly women, hate snakes. Okay. Okay. Now, was that God's intention? I don't know. People who don't believe that this is a divinely written or divinely inspired story will say, well, this is the author telling us why people, particularly women, don't like snakes. They hate snakes. Doesn't matter if they're poisonous or not. There is a natural antipathy between women and snakes. Mm-hmm. Okay. Snakes are in many cultures seen as a source of magic, a source of evil. Okay. And maybe something that came into the culture when the story was originally told. I will tell you that in Jewish tradition, The serpent is obviously a creature of God, but also serves God's purpose. Now, God says to the serpent, "From now on you will crawl on your belly and eat dust." What we understand from that is originally the serpent walked on legs, maybe on only two legs. Yeah, okay, and this was the serpent's consequence. Okay, I don't want to say— I don't like to use the word punishment when I'm talking about the consequence of a story, because I'm going to tell you another reason. If this was a punishment, if Adam's punishment— if this was a punishment that men are supposed to work Okay, we have to work. Okay, work is what gives us meaning. Okay, so that's a consequence. Okay, God says to Eve, "You will bear children in pain." Okay, now again, Martin Buber understands that to mean that once human beings ate of the fruit— and by the way, it's not an apple, right? It never said it's an apple. That's right. Question, I don't know, footnote to this, The question is, well, how did it get to be an apple? The Latin word for apple, malum, is equivalent or related to the word for evil. Okay. Okay. So, it may have been Jerome when he translated the Vulgate, or Catholic tradition that understood the apple to be the fruit they ate, because there's a connection to the word. In Jewish tradition, it's not an apple, it's probably a fig because they sewed fig leaves afterwards.

The snake, so they ate it and then they wore it. Exactly, yeah, exactly.

Eve is told that she will bear children in pain, childbirth will be painful. Okay, two things about that. Once they eat of the fruit and their eyes are open and they have awareness, not only their eyes open, but the human brain will now become bigger. Hmm. Okay, and the way a woman's body is formed um, in comparison to the size of the fetus's head, which is now bigger, it's going to be painful. Okay, point being that the child now— again, every child now will have the capacity. Okay, so biologically, anatomically, there will be more brain cells, uh, the brain will be bigger so that that child will also have the capacity to know good and evil. Now, if this really were a punishment, at least in Jewish law, for a woman to take pain medication during childbirth would be forbidden. Hmm. It's not. Wow. Okay, that's why we don't understand this as a punishment. It's a consequence.

That's interesting. I never thought of that before. It's a consequence. So it sounds like when I, when I hear the story this way, and it was probably 4 years ago now when it first dawned on me that this was not original to Judaism, when I was reading a commentary by Walter Brueggemann, who is one of our greatest theologians that we have in Christianity, and he pointed this out. And so I had kind of been fascinated by it and what it means. Again, the consequences of understanding it this way, even to Christianity, start changing. You know, my old view of what all this means starts to change a little bit. So let me kind of lay out what it sounds like to me after I've thought about it and after I've heard you again today. The story is is less a story, um, at least according to Judaism, it's less a story about the fall of man and more a story about the maturity of mankind. And almost like we go from a childlike place— let's call the garden the nursery, so to speak, on some level— as we start to grow and mature, there is a sense in which when we're young, our parents are hovering over us, they're kind of helping us, they're They're providing for us. They're giving us everything. We don't have to think a lot about it. You said a few minutes ago Adam didn't know what death was. I can clearly remember, and my son is 6 now, still doesn't quite understand, but he gets it more. When he was 3, my grandma died and we ended up at her funeral. And I don't think he understood what was going on. You know, to him this was just, you know, it was kind of strange. Why was great-grandma lying there in the coffin, you know, when she gonna wake up and we're gonna go home. So for him, we had to start talking in different ways, you know, "Grandma's gone to be with God," you know, with just different things that we start talking about, and his understanding starts to change. So it would maybe be better understood according to Judaism to think of it less as a fall and more of as the story of the maturity that we all have to go through.

Absolutely.

We have to grow out of a childlike state and enter into adulthood, right, where there are the struggles of work but also the joys of it, the challenges of— we can do good, we could do evil. We're so much better when we're in God's community together, helping us to overcome and bringing us— that's sort of how we work out our salvation, is together. Even Paul says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," you know, to get this whole idea. So, anyway, that was sort of just kind of to recap sort of the understanding.

No, that's right on target. And as you're talking, I'm remembering that the narrative, the story that comes right after Adam and Eve being expelled is Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel, that's right. Okay, and we look at that story with, from 3,000 or 4,000 years of history and of looking back, when Cain killed Abel, again, God says, "Are you upset? Be careful because sin crouches at the door." He didn't know what that meant.

Like a lion waiting to pounce, I think.

Yeah, and he didn't know what that meant. So he gets angry. He misplaces his anger. He's angry at God, but he takes it out on his brother. You know, he kills his brother, but again, nothing had ever died. So, when he sees his brother fall and this red stuff's coming out of his ears, okay, or his mouth or whatever it was, and he's not getting up, like your son, and God says, "What did you do? Where's your brother?" I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? We hear that as a rhetorical question. For Cain, it may have been a real question. Wow. Am I really responsible? Yeah. And there are even interpreters that say it's at that point that God himself realizes that he has to be a part of helping humanity develop their morality. Why? Because he said, He says, "Your brother's blood cries out to me." And the voice of Abel's blood crying out to God is what God responds to. So God is not just this creator who creates the world and says, "You're on your own." He said, "I gotta be involved here." Yeah, yeah.

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So what happens to Cain? Well, he's exiled. Um, and it may be one of the things I didn't say up to now but probably needs to be said. We assume that the God of Genesis is a perfect God. The text never says That's number 1. Number 2, it seems that God— things aren't working out the way God wanted them to. Adam and Eve don't do what he thought they were going to do. He seems to be surprised at Cain killing Abel. He may have thought that this was an aberration, it will never happen again, but if you skip 10 generations, to Noah, the world's a mess. And when he realizes how messy it is, what does it say? He regretted what he did. He was sorry. He was sorry. Yeah, I made a mistake. Yeah. Now that's a heretical idea for a lot of people. God doesn't make mistakes. Yeah, well, he himself expresses regret. Yeah, he's got to start over. Okay. And what happens after he starts over, after the flood? That's the first time God is telling humanity, "These are some rules you need to follow." He never talks about rules before that. He may assume people are just going to do— you know, people are good, they'll be fine, they're my creation. That's not what happens. Again, once you have free will, without direction, you're gonna do what comes naturally, and that is to act like a savage.

Yeah, free will can be disastrous. That's right, for sure. Well, another question I want to ask as we, as we go into this, because again, we're not far from Cincinnati and that area where like the Creation Museum is, and there's people, there's people like Ken Ham who are supposedly scientists, you know, but I consider him more of a theme park operator than I do a scientist in a lot of ways. But there's a lot in Christianity, the idea that everything in Genesis has to be exactly, literally 100% true, or it's completely 100% false. And I always come up against, well, then why is the creation account different in chapter 1 than it is in chapter 2. If everything has to be literal, how do we handle these things? I'm curious from your perspective, in Judaism, is the, the narrative— or I even think it's poetry in Genesis— is it to be considered more like that in a literal sense, right? Or is it— can it be considered more of like, here's a story to help us make sense of our world? Excellent question.

Well, uh, you You know, when I say in Judaism, I really can't give a one answer. Sure. Okay, because even the most learned scholar— I'm not even talking about people who are not believers. I'm talking about people who through the ages have been very religious committed Jews. Okay. Even they have different ideas. Okay. Okay, and I'm talking about people that lived in the Middle Ages.

Which is important, by the way, And that's okay that there's a lot of different views.

Well, that's what our religion is all about. Sure. Okay, and the reason is because we believe you can't pin God down. Hmm. Okay, we believe that if we think we know everything about God, or we think we know God definitively, and that's the operative word, we've created an idol. Hmm. So, you have some rabbinic sages who believe literally to the point where when it says, refers to God's anatomy, God's arm, God's hand, you know, God blowing smoke out of his nostrils, they do take that literally. And they believe God has a body. Hmm. Okay, there were rabbis who believe God has a body. There are other other rabbis who say, again, this is all metaphor. So, when it comes to the literalness of the creation story, yes, there are Jews who take it literally. But there are other Jews who say this is a translation of God's language. This is God telling us something. This is how we've translated it. Translated it to understand it. Okay. And getting bogged down in the fact that, you know, there was light but the sun wasn't created until the fourth day. Right, right. Wrong question to ask. Okay. This— the Bible is definitely not a science book. Right. Okay. Science— and this is where I think people really miss the boat. You know, they're mixing apples and oranges. Science tells us how the world works. The Bible wants to tell us why there is a world and why it should work in a certain way. So therefore, when someone says, "Do you believe the Bible is true?" I will say I believe the Bible is true, but not necessarily factual. Therefore, I don't take it literally necessarily, but I do take it seriously.

I was— that's exactly what I was gonna say.

I'll tell people sometimes, and I think people miss that. I take it seriously. There's never— I'm with Dennis Prager. There's never been a book written like this, okay? I don't think there ever will be. But again, when you're talking God, you know, you You mentioned at the beginning of our discussion different translations. There are people who believe that God gave the King James Version, you know, and that's it. 1611. That's it. Okay. Well, that's a translation of a translation. Okay. Even the original— I mean, I like to say, I'm not comfortable talking about Hebrew Scripture in a serious way if the person I'm talking with doesn't know the Hebrew. Because if we're talking English, that's a translation. And the best example is the one I said. When people say that God said to Eve, "Your husband will rule over you," and that's not what the Hebrew says, we got a problem.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah, there's so much to take into account. And then to to think that for so long it was an oral tradition before it was ever even written down. And that takes your mind even more places. Like, how many times can you tell a story without a detail changing? It's a huge game of telephone.

And even when it was written down, there were scribal, shall we say, scribal oddities. I'm going to say mistakes, because for the Jew who believes that the written scroll that we read from literally is from God, there are things that other people would say, "Well, that's a mistake." Okay, in terms of what's written, what's literally written there. For the person who believes this is from God, it's just an oddity that needs to be either understood differently, or when the text is read, it's read differently, a different word word is pronounced, but you don't monkey with the text. Yeah. You just don't.

Yeah. And that's fascinating to me as well, because a lot of Christians wouldn't have that point of view. You know, they have— and many of the same ones that say it has to be literal have never read or studied anything other than English too. And it's an interesting conversation to have with people when they haven't ever had this sort of insight. Into it for the first time.

Once upon a time, I had a discussion with a doctor who was telling me that, you know, he's a scientist and he's had all this education. He thinks this biblical stuff is just nonsense. I mean, how do you relate to the world being created in 7 days? And I said, "Do you love your wife?" And he said, "Of course." I said, "Well, how does anyone know that?" He said, "She's in my heart." I said, "Which ventricle is she in?" You just said something, if I take it literally, I'm going to ask what part of your heart is she in? The aorta? Is she in the ventricle, the auricle? Well, I didn't mean that. Well, yeah, we're talking different language.

Yeah, which reminds me of the Shema, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might." Well, what's it mean to love with your heart, you know? And I think very much it's like we're describing here. We always talk about heart as the seat of our emotions, and it may very well have been bowels at different times, you know, whenever we would talk about things like that. So it's a fascinating conversation to have. Another thing that I, that I guess just comes to my mind as I think through this, if Adam and Eve had not experienced death before, and eventually they did, you know, and then eventually mankind all started dying— this is just a question that I've never had the chance to ask, and it may not be necessarily is not necessarily a part of this fall story, but part of the Christian narrative, which very much is a part of it, because of Adam's sin, many Christians will translate that and say, "Well, because of that, you need to ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins, and then you can go to heaven when you die." Because otherwise, because of Adam's sin, everybody basically before Jesus is now burning in hell because they didn't have that chance, which I think is kind of a twist of theology, to be honest. But I'm curious, when someone asks you as a rabbi about the afterlife, I mean, it must come up, you know.

No, it doesn't come up, but I'm— but the class that I was teaching before we met just now is a class I've been teaching for 2 and a half years on the afterlife. Oh wow, fascinating.

Wow. So not that you can give one answer, but if— but But if someone were to come up to you, from your perspective, when you talk about afterlife, I guess you can't give us several weeks of course in this answer, but what would be sort of your general Cliff Notes answer to that?

Cliff Notes, yeah, it's actually pretty simple. That there is an afterlife. Let me preface it by saying, I'm going to say what Judaism teaches. Okay. Jews believe a lot of different things. Sure. Okay, so I'm not prepared to say Jews believe. Some Jews believe.

As do Christians. It's such a hard thing to say, right? Yes, sure.

But I will tell you, authoritative traditional Judaism believes there's an afterlife. Okay. Our tradition teaches that we are judged on our behavior here on earth. Okay. We don't teach that there is necessarily a place where people burn forever or punished forever. We are— whatever suffering, and I put that in quotes, we experience, our souls experience, is pretty much measure for measure for what we've done in this, the bad stuff we've done, but it's time limited. Hmm, okay. Okay. Now there are certain sins that our sages say will merit eternal punishment, but punishment for them was more of the soul being obliterated. And I always— the first time I ever heard this from one of my teachers was I got the image in my mind of a Star Trek episode where where a guy, someone's phasered, and they're gone. Yeah, right. And that's really what it was. It's not that your soul is burning and being tormented. It's just, you're gone. And for traditional Judaism, that's a fate worse than even being tormented.

Wow, because you're just nothing.

You're just nothing. As I say, it's usually not— we understand that most people are sort of in the middle. In other words, at our time of the year, which is a penitential time when we believe God is judging us, we think of our lives as a balance. The good deeds are in one balance of a scale. Good deeds are in one balance, bad deeds are in another, and we're sort of in the middle. We're always in the middle, and the idea obviously is to try to do more good than more bad. Now again, this is based on theology that actions and works count. Not your faith. Actions speak louder than words. That's really what we believe. Because God wants us to make the world better. And we won't necessarily make the world better just by having the right attitudes or the right belief. Right. We are— to get back to the original question of the whole Garden of Eden story— when God allowed Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit and didn't punish them with death, they basically became his partners, okay, to redeem the world. The Bible says everything God saw was good, but it wasn't perfect. And by having the ability to choose right or wrong, we have the ability to make the world better and perfect it, which is what we Jews, what Judaism teaches, is why human beings are in the world.

Well, and I think that's important too. Because there will be many, again, so many different strands of Christianity that believe so many different things. One thing that like Calvinism believes is that mankind is completely depraved as a result of this original fall and really can't do any good. Like our only inclination is to sin until Jesus rescues us from that, which is not something I subscribe to. I'm actually much more closer to the— gladly to find out I'm much more Jewish in my thought about this. But it's interesting hearing like that perspective. I know a lot of people listening, this might be the first time they've ever heard anything like this. And so I don't want to just like blow them out of the water necessarily with a different view, but, but it is a very different, and it makes a lot of sense sense, and there's a lot of hope, actually, in looking at the text in this way.

Yeah, you know, I think people forget— I know a lot of Jewish people forget that God created us because he cares about us. And, you know, whether or not we see our relationship with God as Father, child, or even spousal. Okay, and I like to think of it sometimes as spousal. Okay, this past week in our scripture reading, we read in the book of Leviticus about the dietary laws— what animals were allowed to eat, what animals were not allowed to eat. Okay, now a lot of people believe, well, that was given for health reasons because in those days, you know, we didn't have the health precautions and, you know, if if you ate a pig, you get trichinosis. If you eat a rabbit, you can get tularemia, etc. The text never said anything about that. It says specifically at the end of those laws, "Do this so that you will be holy to the Lord your God." Now, the word— when God says that, that's marriage language. Consecration. You will be consecrated to me. I want you to do this because I have selected you. Now, question: well, why— what's wrong with eating pig? What's wrong with eating— I mean, why can't I do this? If you love me, you'll do it. Now, I don't know if your wife has ever said that to you. My wife has said that to me. Okay, I don't have to give you a reason. If you love me, you'll do it. Yeah. Okay, that's what we're talking about here. It's not even just about the king says to. This is, I care about you. I love you. I've told you I love you. You've done a lot of bad stuff, and I've never rejected you. I've gotten angry at you, but I've never rejected you. If you love me, you will do this. That's good.

That's really good.

So when you get back to, you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, your heart again. That's part of it. You just do it. I mean, you don't have to know the reason. Yeah. You're not always entitled to a reason, although I think a lot of people today think because we're able to do so much that we are able to do, we're entitled to know what's in God's mind. No, we're not.

Well, and you know, I was— you said something a few minutes ago too about the Jewish people believe they need to be a part of making the world a better place, and where we live, to live out this call. And I was thinking of, you know, I mentioned Martin Luther in the intro, who was obviously no friend of the Jews, and in fact a great many atrocities have been done as a result of him. It's interesting to me that he wanted the book of James completely stricken from the New Testament. That's what I understand. Because it was so much about works. And by the way, my last name's James, so I always say it's the best book in the New Testament. But it's interesting to me in that because James might be a much more close understanding to this, this idea of faith without works is dead. Like it's not a matter of just belief. The Gnosticism or whatever was being taught at that time of it just being belief. That's so permeated our culture in some ways today that people just say, "It kind of doesn't matter how I live because I believe this." But I think a better understanding, a more biblical understanding is if we believe something, we act on it and we live it. Like when we are told to hear something like the Shema, "Hear, O Israel." Listen, it's It's the kind of thing where a parent is saying, like, "I told the kids to stop doing that," and then they say, "I guess my kids aren't hearing me today. I guess their hearing's not working." Good point. You know, it's the idea, like, "If you heard me, you would have stopped," you know, type of thing, because it's not enough just to hear. Right. But, well, this is a good conversation, and unfortunately we don't have all the time in the world to go into it.

Can I make a commercial? Yeah, please do. Just on the heels of what you were saying.

Just talking about, Rick Lee James, the book of James.

We're going to be having a speaker here at the end of April, April 30th and May 1st, Dr. Julie Gallenbush, who is a retired professor of Biblical, of Religious Studies from William Mary. She wrote a book several years ago called The Reluctant Parting. Okay. And the subtitle is How Jewish Writers of The New Testament created a Christian book. She's going to be talking about the Gospel of Luke, um, and on one night, and on another night about how translators of the Bible mistranslate. Okay. So if your listeners are in the Springfield area, those of you who are, you're more than welcome to, um, to come by, um, and call the temple office here, 614-399-1231. For more information. Definitely. Appreciate that.

And we'll make sure and get that information on the webpage too for our podcast. I'm planning on being there. I've been enjoying the book. I haven't quite got through it yet. Yeah, it's fascinating. I know that when I get closer to the time now, I've got to finish it now because of that. But that's going to be a great event, and I hope that several people listening will get to come and even continue these conversations like these. Just maybe one last question, because we're getting into the season of— for you, Passover, for us, Easter, and how they intertwine. How would you describe— if someone comes up to you and asks you, what's sin, and why does it need to be atoned for? Or does it— like, how How would you describe that today? Sin is a—

is the result of a choice that is a wrong choice being made. Okay. It usually has to do with an action or an inaction. In other words, our understanding of what God wants from us— he wants us to do certain things. I'm talking from a Jewish point of view. Sure. He wants us to do certain do certain things as spelled out in our Bible and in the commentaries of that Bible. He wants to do certain things, and He wants us also to refrain from doing other things. Okay? And some of those things make sense rationally. We think of— we call those laws mishpatim. There are other things like the kosher laws. Which don't have necessarily a rational basis. We call those chukim. Those are not irrational but irrational. Those are things that are divine commands, and as I said a moment ago, we do them because of our commitment to God, because of our covenant commitment to God. Some of them certainly make us different Sometimes that's the reason to make us different. Different doesn't necessarily mean better. It just means this is our— we believe God has a plan for every community and for every individual. Okay. You know, your listeners may know that we don't usually proselytize or evangelize. And it's because we believe there's— God has a covenant with us, and He has an agreement and a relationship with other people as well. And everyone's got to find their own way. We're all going up a mountain, but on different paths.

Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for taking time. It's always a pleasure. I wish we had more, and we'll have to do it again to just have some follow-up, because one thing leads to another conversation, leads to another conversation. Absolutely. But today we'll just leave it at that. We'll make sure and put the information up about the conference that you're having here on our website. Thank you. Anything we missed today that you want to say in closing? We covered a lot of stuff. We did, a lot of stuff. We did. And the part that you didn't get to see, listeners, is the part beforehand when the rabbi let me play his Gibson acoustic guitar.

Oh, and it was great to hear it from the other end. It was fun. There was some good bluegrass music.

Bluegrass. Yeah, good stuff. So, well, Rabbi Kosberg, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.