Aesthetics: when beauty conceals the truth — a journey from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life

Source: The opening of the eyes: when beauty led to the fall

The serpent said to the woman: You will certainly not die, for God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God - knowing good and evil. The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes and the tree was desirable for gaining insight. She took from its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. The eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

(Book of Genesis, Chapter 3, Verses 4-7)

Explanation: The seduction of sight: between craving and awareness

In the Garden of Eden stands a tree called the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil," and God forbade eating from it. Eve sees the tree, and it is pleasing to the sight and good for food, a delight to the eyes and desirable to look upon. The serpent promised that eating from the tree would open their eyes, and so it happened. When their eyes were opened, awareness of their naked bodies arrived. The attraction to the beautiful brought craving and the original sin.

Perspective: A choice between trees: beauty versus truth, surface effect versus essence

In the Garden of Eden there is another tree, the Tree of Life. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is an enticing tree, drawing the heart toward the craving for food and the desire for beauty; from that point on, human beings are drawn more and more toward physical splendor, toward the beauty that has become synonymous with the good. Humans chose beauty instead of truth, determined the measure of good by what is beautiful, and favored what is pleasing over what is right. After eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the two were expelled from the Garden of Eden so that they could not eat from the Tree of Life, lest they live forever in a world of external effects.

Going Deeper: Rav Kook and the path from the profane to the sacred: when aesthetics ascends

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Shemonah Kevatzim, Volume II, paragraph 111

The sense of love must develop in all its details, displaying all its intellectual, emotional, and imaginative treasures of life, and then the treasure of God will be brought in, to ascend toward that noble love upon which God's name is called. Likewise, the aesthetic sense in general must develop beautifully, to the point where the soul can gird itself in the noble depiction of splendor, so that it can stand at the heights of its levels. And the literature of the generation, and the urge for beauty's expansion that has gripped it, even though they tend toward mundane matters and at times become deeply defiled, are nothing other than rungs and preparations toward the supreme purity of heavenly majesty that will appear in the world.

Thus, according to Rav Kook, aesthetics is the root of sin, yet also the root of drawing near to God through emotion and beauty — a beauty that expresses order and harmony, and thereby reveals the depth of things.

Culture: The tomato: when beauty embarrassed the language revivalists

Wikipedia, "Tomato" entry

The Hebrew name — agvaniya, rooted in the root ‘-g-v, associated with courtship, lovemaking, and lust — was coined by Rabbi Yechiel Michel Pines in parallel to its popular European nickname, the "love apple." For about twenty years, until the days of the Second Aliyah, the word agvaniya was boycotted by several revivers of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda among them, due to its sexual connotation. With the arrival of later waves of immigration, the name agvaniya became universally accepted, likely due to its affinity with European languages — the aforementioned "love apple." Other proposals for the vegetable's name came from Rav Kook, who objected to the sexual nature of the word and suggested admoniya (from the root for red), and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who suggested the name badura, a Hebraized form of the Arabic word bandura (بندورة), which itself was an Arabization of the Italian word pomodoro (pomo d'oro — golden apple).