The Genesis of Justice by Alan M. Dershowitz Read Free Book Online

other men. In the
     command that wives must be submissive to husbands, we also see the origins of misogyny.
    An anthropological explanation of Eve’s punishment might take the form of a “just so” story. 14 These mythological tales begin with observable phenomena—for instance, a leopard’s spots or an elephant’s long ears—and weave
     narratives that purport to “explain” them. Just as leopards always had spots and elephants long ears, so too the double standard
     and the submissiveness of women had long been observable realities. The punishment of Eve could be viewed as a “just so” story
     explaining these observable phenomena. Yet there is an obvious difference: Spots and ears are biological facts with no moral
     connotation, whereas the double standard and the submissiveness of wives is anything but biologically determined and morally
     neutral. It is prescriptive as well as descriptive of past practices that are capable of changing—unless, of course, they
     are deemed to be divinely ordained.
    The inequality of women—a characteristic of most traditional religions and cultures—violates modern sensibilities. For that
     reason, contemporary religious law struggles mightily to interpret the punishment of Eve as the decision by God to assign
     to women a different, but not unequal, role in the life of the family. These efforts cannot help but invoke analogies to the
     “separate but equal” doctrine under which blacks were segregated from whites during the Jim Crow era of American history.
     Just as blacks were surely separate but never equal, so too wives were assigned different roles but were never the equals
     of their husbands. God’s own words prove this inequality beyond dispute: Your husband “will rule over you.” There is nothing
     ambiguous—either in the original Hebrew word
yimshol
or in the English translation “rule”—about the relative status of husband and wife. He is the ruler, she the ruled. All because
     Eve was persuaded by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit and then invited Adam to do likewise.
    Based on this sequence of events, it is neither logical nor moral that husbands should rule over wives. Eve had a far more
     compelling defense than Adam. She was never told directly by God about the prohibition, and she was misinformed about its
     scope by Adam, who told her that God’s prohibition extended beyond eating and included even
touching
the fruit. This misinformation allowed the serpent—who was “more shrewd than all the living beings of the field”—to entice
     Eve into sin. Indeed, a midrash cautions: “You must not make the fence [around the law] more than the principled thing, lest
     it fall and destroy the plants.” 15 In other words, if you make prohibitions so broad they will not be enforced, the law may lose its credibility, as it did
     to Eve. Meanwhile, Adam—the direct recipient of God’s commandment—did not need to be enticed. He was simply offered the fruit
     and accepted it. Eve did not compel or order Adam to eat it. She did not act as a ruler and Adam as a subject. Why then does
     Adam and do all future Adams get to rule over Eve and all future Eves? We are not given a good answer. By any standard of
     law, justice, or equity, the punishment inflicted on all women on account of Eve’s sin is unfair. Nor did the punishment rationally
     “fit the crime.” What do labor pains, lust, and subordination have to do with Eve’s sin?
    It is interesting to speculate what God’s punishments would have been had Eve eaten the fruit but never offered it to Adam
     or if Adam had rejected it. (In an effort to mitigate Adam’s sin, a midrash speculates that “he had engaged in his natural
     functions [in other words, intercourse] and then fallen asleep,” so that he was not present during the serpent’s conversation
     with Eve and presumably was unaware that the fruit given to him by Eve came from the forbidden tree. 16 ) If Eve alone had eaten,