Below is the teaching of Chaplain (soon to be Rabbi) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing yourself for the High Holidays.
רפואה מן התורה
They heard the sound of God manifesting
itself in the garden toward evening, and the man and woman hid from God
… (Gen. 3:8)
After Adam and Eve partook of the apple, the story
tells us that they saw the world differently than before, going from being
naked and unafraid to afraid and full of shame.
We are going to make mistakes, and we are going to have to try again. We
are going to fall and sometimes it will be easier than other times to get back
up. Why did Adam and Eve feel
shame? What good can come of shame and
guilt? Shame and guilt or regret and
blame seem to be a part of the emotional ecosystem of reaction that belongs to
us as people. In fact, King Solomon says
in Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) that all of his wisdom caused much grief and knowing
increases pain (Ecc. 1:18). The human
consciousness gives birth to the wisdom to know wrong from right (both learned
and intuited behavior) and in turn it helps us to frame our responses to both right
and wrong reactions. The above passage
teaches us to learn how to better embrace our convictions of wrong in order to
aim for the higher values of right. Sometimes hiding appears easier than the
pain of self-revelation. It is indeed a challenge to take our negative feelings
and let them be the very means to achieve a better path.
Embarrassment and regret pave the road to
change.
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