On Woman

God was pleased with his creation. In fact, nearly everything he made was good. The light he pried from the darkness of the void on the first day? Good. The gathering of waters into seas and the appearance of dry land with vegetation, seed and fruit to populate the dry land? All good, even, inexplicably, durian fruit. The two guiding lights of day and night? Both good. The sea monsters and birds? Yes, good. The animals and creeping things? Good. Even man, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has ever met a New Yorker, also good. "God saw everything that he had made," Moses tells us, "and indeed, it was very good."

There was, however, one thing that was not so good. It was not so good, God reflected, that poor Adam, solitary in his Edenic existence, should be without a peer to share in the good glory of existence.

And so God created woman. He had saved the best of his creation for last. For neither the gentle river watering the varied garden, nor the sun that set the ancient horizon ablaze seemed to arouse in Adam any emotion whatsoever. But Eve, simply standing before Adam in her unashamed nakedness, provoked in his stirring heart creation's first poem. Adam sang:

"This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

this one shall be called Woman."

There is a living recitation of this poem when we walk with our wives, our sisters and our female friends.