Why did Adam and Eve disobey God and eat from the tree of knowledge?

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch argues that Eden was a society based on the system of divinely rooted ethics.  For this reason, God instructs Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil as God is the ultimate arbiter.  In disobeying God and eating from the tree of knowledge Adam and Eve were rejecting this principle.  They opted for a world based on ethical humanism, where human beings alone decide right and wrong. This is dangerous for human thinking tends to be relative.  What is unethical to one person is ethical to another.  If, however, ethics have their source in God they become objectively true.

From this perspective, the goal of redemption is to return to the Eden milieu where God is acknowledged by all as the ultimate decider of good and evil.

Another possibility comes to mind.  Perhaps Eden represents the perfect “angelic world” where evil does not exist.  Adam and Eve found themselves dissatisfied in this world.  After all, in a society which is totally good, there would, in reality, be no good says Rav Avraham Yitzhak Ha-Kohen Kook.  For good is a relative term.  There is good only when evil exists. 

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler adds, there would be no challenge in a perfect world.  There would be nothing to overcome.

And Rabbi Chaim Volozhin notes, that without evil we could not do wrong; the essential part of humanity would be lost, the ability to possess free will and choose between good and bad.  Without freedom of choice, we would be stripped of our humanity.  

Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge because they opt to leave the “angelic world” and enter the “real world” – a world in which good exists, challenge prevails and the human being is blessed with freedom of choice.

From this perspective, the goal of humankind is not to return to Eden.  Rather it is to shape a messianic society in which one attains goodness despite the existence of evil.  The pathway to reach that “ideal world” is in fact the Torah and the halakha.  (Halakha comes from the word halakh to go, as it takes us on the path toward redemption.)  

Eden is not the ideal.  For this reason Adam and Eve leave Eden, to face evil and overcome it.  The expulsion from Eden is commonly perceived as the gravest sin of humanity.   Yet the Eden experience is rather a lesson in human nature.  And is even a necessary prerequisite for the redemption of the world.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Avi Weiss