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Man Should Not Be Alone
There is a reason why the most tried-and-true punishment in prison is solitary confinement; we desperately crave conversation and connection. Mankind does not manage loneliness well. When we are alone, we tend to spin out of balance, becoming odder and odder as time passes. In time, depression becomes mental imbalance which in turns morphs into flat-out crazy. We need each other.
G-d recognizes this in Adam: “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.'” (Gen. 2:18)
But the story does not end there. Genesis does not stand alone: it forms the basis for all the books that follow. In this case, the Torah tells us that man’s loneliness can be satisfied through offerings.
The key word is the word for “alone,” levado. It appears for the first time when G-d identifies Adam’s loneliness: “it is not good for man to be levado.”
The grammatical root of that word, levado, appears much later in the Torah, in the perceived minutiae of the sacrifices. That root word is vad. It refers to linen garments that are brought during only two offerings: the olah and the kaparah. Here is why it matters: both the olah and the kapparah are unique among the offerings for their message: those offerings express our loneliness and a desire for a connection with our creator.
The inventor of the olah was Noah. The world had been washed away. Noah’s was the last family in the world: everyone else had perished. What does he do? He takes animals and offers them to G-d in an olah, an elevation-offering. This offering was so well received by G-d that there are 19 straight verses of praise for Noah and mankind. G-d wants us to reach out to Him. Admitting our loneliness, as scary as it can be, is a key step in forming new relationships of any kind, whether with man or with G-d. The olah is how a lonely person reaches out for G-d.
The kaparah is the national offering on Yom Kippur. Mistranslated as “atonement,” the word in the Torah actually means an insulating layer that allows incompatible forces to come very close to each other: Noah’s Ark was given a kaparah to keep the life within and the water out. In the case of Yom Kippur, the kaparah is to allow G-d to come as close to the Jewish people as possible, both on Yom Kippur and especially on the festival of Sukkos, when we believe that G-d’s presence descends to right above our makeshift roofs in our sukkah huts. We offer a kaparah in order to invite G-d to visit us.
Both the kaparah and the olah are about resolving loneliness! The former is about a national desire for G-d’s company, and the latter is about the individual’s desire to reach out and connect with our creator. These are two different dimensions of our desire for a relationship with G-d.
Footnote: there is one other time the fabric vad is mentioned: the undergarments worn by the priests were made of this material as well. I believe this is for the same reason: priests should always feel G-d’s presence up against their skin, even if the garments are invisible to the outside world. The olah and kaparah are brought for others – while the service of the priest was personal to the priest himself. Thus the vad resolved loneliness for each priest through their vad undergarments, it resolved loneliness for individuals in the community using the olah, and it was fulfilled for the community with the kaparah.
[another @iwe and @susanquinn production]
Notes for those desiring the source text:
The olah, the individual offering to reach out to G-d:
Command Aaron and his sons thus: This is the ritual of the olah: The olah itself shall remain where it is burned upon the altar all night until morning, while the fire on the altar is kept going on it. The priest shall dress in vad raiment, with vad breeches next to his body; and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire has reduced the olah on the altar and place them beside the altar. He shall then take off his vestments and put on other vestments, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a clean place. (Lev. 6:2-4)
The kaparah, the national offering to allow the people to come closer to G-d on Sukkos:
Published in GeneralThus only shall Aaron enter the Shrine: with a bull of the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall be dressed in a sacral linen tunic, with linen breeches next to his flesh, and be girt with a linen sash, and he shall wear a linen turban. They are sacral vestments; he shall bathe his body in water and then put them on. And from the Israelite community he shall take two he-goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. (Lev. 16:3-5)
…
Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. (L. 16:10)
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And Aaron shall go into the Tent of Meeting, take off the linen vestments that he put on when he entered the Shrine, and leave them there. (16:23)
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The priest who has been anointed and ordained to serve as priest in place of his father shall make expiation. He shall put on the vad vestments, the sacral vestments. He shall kapar the innermost Shrine; he shall kapar the Tent of Meeting and the altar; and he shall kapar the priests and on behalf of all the people of the congregation. (16: 32-33)
After a week alone in the forest I hear the burbling stream talking. Unfortunately I don’t understand streamese. The history and the secrets that stream could tell.
Not because they go crazy, but because they can’t get food and aren’t allowed to farm.
You brought up oddity, so I responded about oddity.
But since you’ve changed the subject, I’ll go along with it and point out that being able to farm, or even hunt for a living, required more than just a solo individual. Garrison Keillor used to talk about Norwegian Bachelor Farmers, but the way he told it is misleading fiction. I had a pair of bachelor farmers among my uncles. But there was a woman in their life: their mother. They were the two youngest sons. There is no reasonable way a hermit bachelor (or pair of them) is going to make a go of it in farming, even in more modern, mechanized times. My bachelor uncles each got married long after everyone figured they were going to be bachelors for life, and pretty much got out of the dairy farming business at the time. Lots of adjustments were required. It’s hard at that age, but they did it. One of them is still with us, living on the old farm place.
Another farmer relative continued to farm into his 90s, after his wife had died and he was alone except for kids who looked in on him from time to time, but at that point his farming consisted of putting up hay and selling it. He was able to manage that much by himself, but he wasn’t relying on that for a living. When we visited him a few years ago one of the party remarked on how clean his house was. Usually after the wife dies and a man lives by himself, the house quickly shows the difference. But he told us, “I can clean, but I can’t cook.” And that was a problem. He always was a skinny guy, but at that point he needed attention to avoid malnourishment. People are just not made to live alone.
One of my grandfathers lived alone after his wife divorced him. He was always a genial person but definitely developed some coarse edges. Several years after the divorce my mother ran away to live with him instead of her mother, and she helped him keep his place up, but after she got married and had a kid (me) and moved away, his living conditions deteriorated. To me, that was just the way my grandfather lived. I liked visiting him, and he spent a lot of time with me, his oldest grandchild. But later, older persons told me how different it had been back when he wasn’t living alone.
Let me just throw in my two cents. Social activity has a normalizing effect on an individual, normalizing his manners and behaviors to a societal median. If you don’t have social activities, the individual drifts from that societal median, and therefore society views him as odd and unbalanced. He is unbalanced because his behaviors are no longer part of the median. Now this loner killer in Colorado adds (perhaps) mental illness into the mix. I hope that explains what iWe is saying in a way Skyler can accept.
I remember being on a business trip for two and a half weeks by myself quite a few years ago. I still interacted with people during work days and work hours but I was alone after work hours and on the weekends. This was before widespread cell phones and internet, so my contact back home amounted to a quarter of an hour or less. I really was going nutso toward the end.
Talking to your dog isn’t a problem.
Getting answers is.
Okay, no one here is talking about the same thing.
Well, iWe hasn’t answered yet. My question still stands: Linguistically can “It is not good that man should be alone” also be reasonably translated as, “It is not good that man alone should be.”
In other words, Adam was not lonely; he, and his life and his lot in life, was good. My question is not spiritual or social, but numerical. I’m asking – in contrast to modern Christians, who say, “Isn’t that sweet, it was not good that Adam didn’t have a wife” – could the statement be as true and pertinent when read, “It is not good that only this one man should exist.”
I’m speaking only for myself. I think that G-d wanted to have people to partner with, to continue creation, and He knew what it was like to be without a partner. So if He missed having a partner, He believed that man would miss having someone to partner with on earth. So I’m guessing that was His plan; that it wasn’t about there being only one man.
Yes, and I know (or sincerely believe) that Adam was created with genitalia. I’m really referring to the literal meaning of the sentence. Also, in the Christian understanding, God was never lonely, and He was never alone. He Himself was three persons in loving communion.