The life story of Adam and Havah

by Shira Halevi

The story of Adam and Havah (Eve), the first man and woman as told in the Bible, has greatly influenced our ideas about relations between the sexes, reward and punishment, and free will versus predestination. An imaginative approach to this well-known yet enigmatic myth, The Life Story of Adam and Havah offers a complete summary of the traditional, rabbinic view of the characters and their implications, as well as a refreshing new reading of the text. Targum is a Hebrew word that literally means "translation," but implies much more. In the act of translating from the original Hebrew text, the way in which certain words are rendered is in itself a form of interpretation. Because many Hebrew words have an ambiguous meaning, and often more than one meaning, the opinion of the interpreter as to how the word appears in the secondary language colors the understanding of the translation's reader. It is common practice for scholars to use biblical translations as a form of commentary and inter