Where is The Tree Of Life
Three Questions You Can Not Answer
From the moment the funerals for my cousins Shaul Junior and Teresa ended yesterday, the comments started. “He doesn’t believe in Jesus,” “He’s on the other side.” Family members know I have served as rabbi and chazan for the Jewish community since 2002. Despite this, no one asked me to speak. The silence was loud. It reminded me once again why this conversation matters.
Roxy, you and many others keep returning to the same point. You claim we are all sinners because of what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were in a perfect paradise. The serpent, also known as the devil, lied. They sinned, and humanity inherited original sin. Thus, someone had to die — Jesus — to pay the price.
Where Is The Tree Of Life
That is the foundation of Christianity. But when we closely examine the Torah itself, we realize that the story is simply not there. We need the help of our sages and the oral tradition to see this. The Garden of Eden is not a tragedy that requires an external savior. It is the deliberate beginning of humanity’s mission.
Let us start with the question that always stops Christians in their tracks: “Where is the Tree of Life today?” Three answers usually come back. First, some say the tree no longer exists. But the Torah tells us God planted the Tree of Life in the very center of the garden. He commanded Adam to eat from every tree.
That command included the Tree of Life. If it simply vanished or was destroyed after the sin, then God created something with no purpose. This idea contradicts everything we know about the Creator. Second, others say the Tree of Life is Jesus. Yet Genesis gives Adam and Eve no hint whatsoever about a future dying-and-rising savior or a cross.
If the tree were Jesus, God would have concealed the most important information in the story. He would have blocked access to his own redeemer with cherubim and a flaming sword. That makes God a confusing and even cruel storyteller. The third common answer is that the tree is hidden somewhere on Earth.
One Tree Not Two
It is in Israel near Caesarea, where a river bubbles up. But the geography in Genesis is different. One river flows out and splits into four (Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, Euphrates). This does not match any known location on the planet. The Talmud states plainly that “no eye has seen” Eden. So the tree is not lost or destroyed; it is guarded for a reason.
Rabbi David Fohrman explains the deeper truth in his lectures on “A Book Like No Other.” The Torah is not describing two separate trees. It is one tree with two faces. One face shows pure life and intimate closeness to God (the relational, Hashem aspect). The other signifies knowledge of good and evil (the Elohim aspect of rules and judgment).
They belong together. Adam and Chava reached for the knowledge side before they were ready for the full unity. That created the fracture. God then blocked access to the Tree of Life. This was not as punishment, but as mercy. This was so that humanity would not be locked forever in an immortal but broken state. We are meant to earn our way back.
The Angels With No Swords
We see the Tree of Life reappear in new forms as the Torah unfolds. At the burning bush in Exodus 3, there is fire, a tree, and an angel — but no flaming sword. God simply says, “I will be with you.” Then, God gives the instructions for the Mishkan in Exodus 25.
He tells the people to build Him a dwelling place. Why? Because this world is still tohu vavohu — dark, watery chaos, the same raw state as before creation. Human beings can’t live in raw chaos, so we need an ark. Noah survived the flood inside a literal ark. We survive by building the Torah as our spiritual ark. This structure of laws and mitzvot transforms chaos into a home for Hashem.
These cherubim once guarded the Tree of Life in Eden. Now, they stand over the Ark of the Covenant. They protect the Ten Sayings. What once blocked access now invites service. There is no gap in the story that requires an external savior. The blueprint is finished from the beginning.
The Great Choice
Yet, this also brought the possibility of real love, real children, and real tikkun (repair) of the world. God responded by naming her Chava, mother of all life. The sages teach that the righteous women in Egypt had a significant merit. This merit ultimately redeemed the entire people (Sota 11b). Throughout our history, women like Miriam, Esther, and Yael have possessed intuitive, big-picture wisdom. Countless others have also contributed. Their wisdom has saved Israel.
My own wife, Bathsheba, has been that woman for forty-one years. She does not quote verses the way I do, but she lives them every day. She has held our family together through funerals, weddings, birthdays, and countless crises, treating every relative as her own. My niece recently told her, “You have been the backbone of this family. You are a true woman of the Bible.” That is the Tree of Life in action — not memorized words, but lived Torah.
Modern science actually confirms this ancient wisdom. Dr. Iain McGilchrist has shown why the human brain is divided into two hemispheres. The left brain is narrow.
It focuses on grabbing, controlling, and manipulating details. Think of the serpent’s “take it now” whisper or Cain’s possessive nature.
Kayin comes from the root qanah, to acquire. The right brain sees the whole picture — relationships, empathy, flow, and wonder. Our culture today is heavily left-brain dominant — academia, rules, “I know everything.”
But real growth and redemption often come from the feminine, right-brain wisdom that Chava demonstrated. Without that balance, we stay stuck in acquisition and control.
The Tree and The Serpent
The serpent itself is not the devil. Rabbi Tovia Singer points out that the curse placed on it is actually ironic. It crawls on its belly and eats dust. This means its food is everywhere. It never has to depend on God or pray.
Humans, by contrast, must work, struggle, and partner with Hashem. Rabbi Fohrman makes a powerful checklist. Before the curse, the serpent walked upright. It talked. It was more cunning (arum) than any beast. Distinguishing delicacies. It checked every human box.
Human Or Beast
The Torah is asking each of us a question. Will you live like an animal that follows raw instinct? Or will you live like a human being who can choose and overcome? The yetzer hara — the evil inclination — is not an external enemy sent by Satan. It is part of us. It serves as a divine tool. Isaiah 45:7 teaches, “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil.” Without it, there is no real choice, no growth, no ascent.
There is no doctrine of original sin in the Torah. Adam and Eve began as beings of light, made in God’s image. After they ate, God clothed them in skin. The Hebrew words for “light” (or) and “skin” (or) are the same. It was a transition into physical life, not a total cosmic wreck. Even after Cain killed Abel, he confessed that his burden was too great to bear.
God did not destroy him; He placed a mark on Cain for protection and allowed him to live. Repentance and deliverance commonly recur again and again in Genesis. The story is teaching us the anatomy of the human soul. It shows us how to master our emotions. The Torah teaches us how to rule over the yetzer hara. It encourages us to take responsibility rather than fall into blame and victimhood.
Discipline and Auto Suggestion
This is where the teachings of Napoleon Hill, which I have studied daily since 1988, feel so deeply Torah. Hill repeatedly says that victimhood and blame are poisons. Discipline, not genius or strength, changes everything. We do not pray for miracles — we create them through consistent daily habits.
Judaism built exactly that system into daily life. Every morning in Shacharit, we recite the Shema and remind ourselves who we want to be. At Mincha, we pause the chaos of the day. In the evening, before sleep, we commit our spirit back to God. It is autosuggestion rooted in responsibility. Isaiah 26:3 captures the result: “Great peace have they whose mind is stayed on Thee, because they trust in Thee.”
At the funerals yesterday and in many conversations with Christian friends like Roxy, the deeper issue eventually surfaces: end-times theology. Both Christianity and Islam ultimately write endings in which Judaism does not continue as it is.
The End Of Your Book
In the Christian Book of Revelation, Jews return to the land and rebuild the Third Temple. They then follow a false Messiah (the Antichrist figure invented by Christian theology). Believers are raptured out. Jews endure the tribulation because they chose the “wrong” Messiah. Jesus returns to rule the world. It is a covert form of replacement theology. Islam is more overt.
Certain Hadith describe end-times battles. In which Muslims fight Jews. Until even the stones and trees cry out, “O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” In both visions — one whispered, one shouted — Jews ultimately disappear or submit. There is no ongoing role for the Jewish people as distinct witnesses to Torah.
The Torah itself never commands belief in a future “Messiah” as one of the 613 mitzvot. The word “mashiach” simply means “anointed one” and is used for kings, priests, and even the non-Jewish king Cyrus.
King David
Prophets speak of a Davidic king who will bring peace and ingathering. Nevertheless, the core demand of Torah is responsibility. We must fix ourselves and repair the world through mitzvot. We do not wait for a savior to do the work for us.
Zechariah makes this especially clear and closes the circle. Chapter 12 describes an end-time war in which nations attack Jerusalem like a heavy stone. God strengthens Israel, they prevail, and then comes great mourning over “the one they pierced.”
This can’t be Jesus’ crucifixion. The entire chapter is set in a future context of national victory and transformation. It is not a first-century Roman execution. Similarly, Zechariah 9:9 — the king comes humbly on a donkey. It is in the same end-time sequence of war. An ensuing peace follows after Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38–39, the coalition war involving Iran).
Prophecy Unfulfilled
Christians claim this was fulfilled on Palm Sunday, but there was neither the crushing of enemies nor global peace. Some Muslim traditions claim that the second Caliph, Umar, fulfilled it when he entered Jerusalem on a donkey.
Neither reading matches the full prophetic picture. The real fulfillment still lies ahead. It will come after the final war. The true anointed king will ride in humility to bring lasting peace.
The Garden of Eden, then, was never a story about irreversible catastrophe. It was the deliberate setup for humanity’s mission: to descend, to choose, to struggle, to repair. The Tree of Life was never lost — it reappears as Torah itself.
Women have repeatedly been the ones who see the bigger picture and save us. The yetzer hara is not an enemy to be eradicated by an outside savior. Instead, it is a divine tool we are meant to master. Daily discipline and responsibility — not blame or victimhood — are the path.
Both Christianity and Islam, in their different ways, still need the garden to be a total fall. This makes their invented savior necessary. The Torah never leaves that question unanswered.
At the funerals yesterday, I was sidelined. This was not because I lack faith. It was because my faith is in the Torah as it is. My Messianic past disappeared. I called myself a rabbi, but was still thinking entirely as a Christian. This fell away when I returned fully to Judaism. Many turned their backs. That is painful, but it is also clarifying.
No Ordinary Tree
My wife has been the quiet backbone of our family for forty-one years. My mother is now in hospice, returning to the place where all souls were created on the sixth day. Our family’s Cohen lineage reaches back centuries. We are still here, still witnesses, still building the ark of Torah in a chaotic world.
The Torah is a book like no other. It is philosophy, psychology, and the anatomy of body, mind, and soul all in one. It shows us exactly how to fix ourselves. Without the oral tradition and the insights of our sages, the Bible remains incomplete and easily misunderstood.
I have studied both Napoleon Hill and the Torah for decades. That is why I see the same eternal thread running through both. We do not pray for miracles. We create them through daily responsibility, discipline, and a mind stayed on God.
Christianity never got out of the Garden because it needs the fall to be total and irreversible. The Torah shows us the fall was never a fall — it was the beginning of the ascent.
The Tree of Life is still here. The path is still open. We do not need a savior. We only need to choose, every single day, to become the human beings we were sent here to be.
Hazan Gavriel ben David