Persuading the “Other” Adam: What Rav Soloveitchik Can Teach Us
By Rabbi Nadav Caine, Beth Israel Congregation
For thousands of years, Jewish commentators have offered various interpretations of the two Adam’s of Genesis. In chapter one, Adam is created in the image of God and told to rule over and subdue the earth and its lifeforms. In chapter two, Adam is created from adamah, the earth, is split into two, and is told to serve and guard the earth. “Adam 2” seems a natural environmentalist, with “Adam 1” seeming to be the opposite. In The Lonely Man of Faith (1965), the great “Rav” Joseph Soloveitchik argues that every individual contains both Adams and is destined to oscillate between these two conflicting states. Adam I seeks to advance and conquer, while Adam II is called to retreat and serve. Nevertheless modern society privileges Adam 1, praising the “dignity” that comes with being “master” of the earth: from industrialization, to individualism, to hierarchy, to technology and science. The Adam 2 within us, and especially when it rises to the level of consciousness, is a “man of faith” who seeks the few others who also see ultimate purpose in service, community, and a relationship with the holiness within all creation. This person of faith will always be lonely within a secular, technological society that prizes Adam I’s success while often ignoring or dismissing Adam II’s spiritual depth.
As an environmentalist rabbi, I resonate with Adam 2 as describing the overlap between my religiosity and my environmentalism.
I have often struggled, however, with Soloveitchik’s praise of Adam 1 as a person of “dignity.” I don’t want to see “dignity” as a quality of ecological exploitation and materialism: I only want to see dignity as a quality of the holiness within creation that gives everything from a cow to a tree fundamental rights.
But truly hearing Soloveitchik teaches me how to talk to a non-environmentalist because they see dignity, not just profit or comfort, in the mastery of the earth. It is Adam 1, after all, who cures diseases, invents dwarf rice, and builds desalination plants. That is worthy of dignity!
So appealing to an Adam 1 person is to focus on how they can increase their dignity/glory through using nature to solve climate change. Adam 1 most assuredly does not want to live off-grid with a composting toilet and a vegetable garden. But Adam 1 types love being challenged with a technological puzzle. Challenge them to invent a low-cost clean energy source or battery, a new kind of water filtration system, lab grown meat, and appeal to their desire to master nature for a human purpose and their own glory and they will get interested. Skip the conversation about animal rights and carbon emissions: challenge them to develop a food source that produces less methane and less infection in cows.
Adam 1 likes to use nature, invent things, and solve problems. If we lean into appealing to those instincts, we have a partner.