Blame the Tree
“If a man should commit a sin worthy of death, hang him (blame it) on the tree.”
(Deut. 21:22)
At the funeral of the holy Kabbalist Rabbi Moses Cordovero, the holy Ari spoke:
“When a tzadik passes on, and there is no reason he should have died, no sin, no fault—blame it on the Tree of Knowledge.”
Not the bite of the snake. Not its venom. Not the sense of ego and self-concern that was born from that sin.
No, simply the tree. A good tree, but a tree through which the Creator wished to bring mortality to the world. And why must the creatures of this world be mortal?
And why did it have to be through our own choice?
For the ultimate good. So that human beings, through the toil of their own hands, would have a part in building a truly good, eternal world.
In truth, the words of the Ari apply to every one of us.
Beneath all the layers and strata of faults and failures, at the very core of each and every one of us lies a pure soul.
And all the journeys of that soul, all its ups and downs, beauty and ugliness, all lead in one direction: Upward, the direction plotted by the Creator of this universe when He placed that tree in the garden.
It is only that to reveal the pure inner reality of the human being, we need the pure teachings of the Inner Torah, as revealed to us by such sages as the Ari and those who unfold for us his light.
(Likutei Sichot vol. 24, p. 132)
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