ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I interpret the kabbalistic notion of the original sin in keeping with the possibility of “knowing life” that it opens. According to Zohar, God’s prohibition had to do not with the actual eating of fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but with eating (and, hence, with knowing) that disrespected the unity of existence. When Adam and Eve disobey this prohibition, they grasp the fruit of this tree, linked to the lowest divine emanation, šeḵīnah, apart from the rest and, in doing so, convert this tree into a tree of death. In line with the kabbalistic notion I consider two kinds of šeḵīnah’s emptiness: the welcoming withdrawal that receives the flows of divine emanations and life itself, on the one hand, and the void of death that engulfs and nullifies all that is, on the other. I then discuss the formal knowledge harboring the second kind of emptiness in terms of its separation of life from death in a metaphysical attempt to purify life that achieves the opposite, deadening effect. The essay concludes with speculations on why the vegetal model of wisdom is celebrated by the Book of Zohar and how it is propitious to processes of “knowing life” otherwise within the framework of a major Western tradition.
