Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry Benjamin Edidin Scolnic (bio) Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry, by Anne Lapidus Lerner (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2007). Though I have always had great respect for Anne Lapidus Lerner as a teacher, administrator and voice in the Conservative [End Page 91] movement, I opened her new book with a sigh of boredom: Another book about Eve? After all the feminist interpretation in the last few decades, how, I wondered, could anyone say something about the biblical figure that we haven't heard? So it is with surprise and delight that I report that this book is well-conceived and executed with learning and sophistication. It is impossible not to feel the love of Jewish literature that jumps off the pages. The book is divided into three major chapters, "The Creation of Woman" (with a very full exploration of the richness found in the two parallel/contradictory accounts in Gen. 1 and 2), "Life in the Garden of Eden" (with a detailed discussion of the varied views on Eve's disobedience, defense of her actions and her subsequent banishment from Eden) and "Eve Beyond the Garden" (with engaging, close readings of some breathtaking modern revisions of the image of the first mother). This arrangement facilitates personal study, as it allows one to find, say, a midrash or a modern poem about Eve after the expulsion from the Garden in Eden. Lerner does not pretend to be disinterested, which is just as well: Never trust a scholar who says he/she is objective. She is "self-aware" and does not claim to present a definitive or objective reading. To say that there are levels of meaning in a text is beautiful but controversial. It assumes a mystical view of the biblical text or the literary view that every text is the sum of all its readings. But some of us would still say, in our pedantic one-dimensional way, that a text was written in a certain time and place and that some interpretations are invalid. So if Lerner brings us an open yearning for egalitarianism, how will we harvest the various gleanings, poems and midrashim she brings for understanding the story of Adam and Eve? At the very least, with a fascination for the way the different generations bring their world-views to this ancient story. And we appreciate that Lerner, because of her respect for the biblical text, always sees the later writings, as their authors do, in dialogue with the Text itself. Since there is no way to do justice to all the knowledge transmitted here in this brief review, I will just take one verse, Genesis 3:16, in which God punishes Eve by saying that not only will she and her female descendants undergo severe pain in childbearing but that "your urge shall be for your husband/ and he shall rule over you." We find a close parallel in the next chapter where God warns Cain that though he is about to sin and "its urge is toward you/ yet you can be its master." Cain, as John Steinbeck famously explained in East of Eden, can control the temptation to sin. So the parallel apparently means that despite the pain involved in delivering children, women's desires will be for their husbands who will thereby rule over them. Even though Genesis 1:27 teaches that both sexes are created in the Divine image, this text is surely very problematic for egalitarian interpretation. Eve ruined the ideal situation by defying God's will and now must submit to Adam because she did not obey God. Rashi comments that the verse means that since men initiate the sexual act, [End Page 92] women are dependent on their actions. Ramban reads the whole verse to say that even though women will have pain in giving birth, they still will want sex. According to one traditional source, God's attempt to restrict Eve's sexuality to her husband was justified very quickly. In Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 21, Eve is likened to a fertile garden...