RAV KOOK Bereishit: Part 1 Tasty Fruit Trees

The account in the Torah describing Creation and the beginnings of mankind is not particularly encouraging. We read of Adam’s sin, the murder of Abel, the origins of idol worship, the corrupt generation of the Flood, and so on. The Kabbalists used the term shevirat ha-keilim, breaking of the vessels, to describe the many difficulties that occurred in the process of creating the world. With this phrase, they wished to convey the idea that the limited physical realm was incapable of accepting all of the spiritual content that it needed to contain. Like a balloon pumped with too much air, it simply burst. The Midrash (Breishit Rabbah 5:9) relates that these failings were not only with the human inhabitants of the universe, but also with the heavenly bodies (a power struggle between the sun and the moon) and even with earth itself. The “vessels broke” on many different levels. What was the “rebellion of the earth”? God commanded the earth to give forth “fruit trees producing fruit” (Gen. 1:11). The earth, however, only produced “trees producing fruit” (Gen. 1:12). God’s intention, the Midrash explains, was that the trees would be literally fruit trees — i.e., the taste of the fruit would be in the tree itself. Were one to lick the bark of an apple tree, for example, it would taste like apple. What does this mean? Why should the trees taste like their own fruit?