The Original Sin, According to Judaism It may be of interest to those who are unaware of it to know the Jewish doctrine, concerning the original sin; we borrow the following explanation from the Jewish journal, The Family of Jacob, published in Avignon, by the direction of the chief rabbi Benjamin Massé, in the July 1868 issue.
“The dogma of the original sin is far from being among the principles of Judaism. The profound legend reported in the Talmud (Nida XXXI, 2) and that represents the angels making the human soul, when it is about to incarnate in an earthly body, taking the oath to keep itself pure during its stay on this planet, to return pure to the Creator, is a poetic affirmation of our native innocence and of our moral independence from the fault of our forefathers. This statement, contained in our traditional books, is consistent with the true spirit of Judaism.
To define the dogma of the original sin, it will suffice to say that people take literally the account of Genesis, whose legendary character is ignored, and starting from that erroneous point of view, they blindly accept all consequences that follow, without worrying about their incompatibility with human nature and with the necessary and eternal attributes that reason assigns to the divine nature.
Slave of the letter, it is affirmed that the first woman was seduced by the serpent, that she ate of a fruit forbidden by God, that she made her husband eat it, and that by this act of open revolt against the divine will, the first man and the first woman incurred the curse of heaven, not only for them, but for their children, their race, for all mankind, for the complicit mankind, however distant in time they are from the crime, for which it is, consequently, responsible in all its present and future members.
According to this doctrine, the fall and condemnation of our first parents was a fall and condemnation for their posterity; hence innumerable scourges to humanity that would have been endless without the mediation of a Redeemer, as incomprehensible as the crime and the condemnation that call for him. As the sin of one was committed by all, so the atonement of one will be the atonement of all; mankind, lost by one, will be saved by one: redemption is the inevitable consequence of the original sin.
It is understandable that we do not discuss these premises with their consequences, that are no longer acceptable for us, both from a dogmatic and from a moral point of view.
Our reason and our conscience will never come to terms with a doctrine that erases both human personality and divine justice, and that to explain its claims, makes us all live together in the soul as in the body of the first man, teaching us that, however numerous we may be in the succession of times, we are part of Adam in spirit and in matter, that we took part in his crime, and that we must have our part in his condemnation.
The deep feeling of our moral freedom refuses such fatal assimilation, that would deprive us from our initiative, that would unwillingly chain us into a distant, mysterious sin, of which we are unaware, and that would make us suffer an ineffective punishment, since it would be undeserved in our eyes.
The unfailing and universal idea that we have of the Creator’s justice, refuses even more strongly to believe in the engagement of free beings, successively created by God over the centuries, in the fault of only one.
If Adam and Eve sinned, they alone are responsible for their wrongdoing; their own decay, for their expiation, their redemption by means of their personal efforts to regain their nobility. But we, who came after them, who, like them, have been the object of an identical act on the part of the creative power, and who must, as such, be of a price equal to that of our forefather in the eyes of our Creator, we are born with our purity and our innocence, of which we are the only masters, the only custodians, and whose loss or preservation depends absolutely only on our will, only on the determinations of our free will.
Such is, on this point, the doctrine of Judaism, that cannot admit anything that does not conform to our conscience, enlightened by reason.
B.M.”
