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© 2016 John D. Brey.

Rab Judah also said in Rab's name: Adam was a Min,¹ for it is written, And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou?²  i.e., whither has thine heart turned? R. Isaac said: He practiced epispasm:³  For here it is written, But like man, [Adam] they have transgressed the covenant;⁴ whilst elsewhere it is said, He hath broken my covenant,⁵  R. Nahman said: He denied God.⁶  Here it is written, They have transgressed the covenant;⁴ whilst elsewhere it is stated, [He hath broken my covenant,⁸  and again,] Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord their God.⁹

Sanhedrin 38b.

1.     V. Glos. V. p. 234, n. 4; it is to be observed that Min is contrasted (in the next passage) with unbeliever.

2.     Gen. III, 9.

3.     I.e., he removed the mark of circumcision.

4.     Hos. VI, 7.

5.     Gen. XVII, 14. with reference to circumcision.

6.     Lit., 'the fundamental (principle)'.

7.     Gen. XVII, 14. Ms.M. omits the bracketed passage; rightly so, for it is irrelevant.

8.     Jer. XXII, 9, referring to belief in God.

The Talmud calls Adam a "min." ---- As used in the Talmud, the word means a Jew who's become a heretic of one sort or other. The Talmud is calling the first human, i.e., the adam, a Jewish heretic:

As expressly stated by R. Nahman (Hul. 13b), the term "min" is applied only to a Jewish sectary, not to a non-Jew. It is variously used in the Talmud and the Midrash for the Samaritan, the Sadducee, the Gnostic, the Judæo-Christian, and other sectaries, according to the epoch to which the passage belongs.

Jewish Encyclopedia.com.

According to the Talmud, Adam (the first human) was initially a Jew, and subsequently a min, a Jewish heretic. In explanation for why Adam is a min (a Jewish heretic) the Talmud references Hosea 6:7, which says: "Like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant." ----- Similarly, the Talmud references Genesis 17:14, which says: "And the uncircumcised male whose flesh of his uncircumcision is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant."

In a passage pointing out that Adam begins as a Jew, and becomes a min, a Jewish heretic, karat . . . twice the Talmud references transgressing the covenant, or breaking the covenant, as it relates to un-circumcision. The first human being began as a Jew, the first Jew, and then became a min, a Jewish heretic, when he broke the covenant; a breaking of the covenant directly associated with un-circumcision.

In the notes to BT Sanhedrin 38b, we're told that breaking or transgressing the covenant is associated with "epispasm," which is undoing circumcision. Technically speaking the ritual of "epispasm," is stretching the foreskin to make it appear that a ritual circumcision hasn't taken place; it's hiding the fact of circumcision.

Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith, XLVI. 13, in speaking of the same verse quoted in BT Sanhedrin 38b, concurs with BT Sanhedrin 38b. It reads, "HE HATH BROKEN MY COVENANT. This refers to one whose circumcision is disguised." . . The note to the verse says "disguised" means epispasm.

The first human, Adam, is created the first Jew. And since everyone born of a Jewish mother acquires the mother's Jewish identity, everyone born of the first adam, the first human, was slated to be Jewish:

If Adam would have been worthy and would not have sinned, then all of his descendants would have been worthy of the Torah. If not for Adam's sin, all mankind would have had the status of Israel. . . To some degree, circumcision restored Abraham and his descendants to the status of Adam before his sin.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39, 47.

A careful reader, and presumably a not so careful reader, will no doubt question how the first human can be a Jewish mother when presumably the first human is a male? And yet most Jewish scripture assumes the first human, the adam, is androgynous; possessing aspects of male and female unified in one body. A point often noted in Jewish midrashim is that circumcision marks the flesh that distinguishes gender itself. The scholar Elizabeth Wyner Mark points out an oddity concerning circumcision and the flesh associated with male gender:

. . . the Talmud offers a double rationale for the location of circumcision on the penis and nowhere else: one the penis is the part of the (male) body that distinguishes male from female and, two it is the fruitful part of the male body. I contend that the intermittent foregrounding of this symbol of maleness/fruitfulness reinforces a major dynamic of the patriarchal narrative -- namely, the increasing importance of the institutionalized system of patrilineal descent, a system that ultimately overwhelms vestiges of matrilocality and matrilineal descent. At strategic points in the story, the phallic trope reiterates its “subliminally insistent” iconic flashes until, finally, the descendants of Jacob are imagined as emerging not from the wombs of mothers but from the penis of the patriarch. They are yotsei yerekh Yaakov, “those who went out of Jacob’s `thigh’ (yerekh)” (Gen. 46:26; Exod. 1:5).

Mark/Wounds, Vows, Emanations, in, The Covenant of Circumcision, p. 4.

In her essay, Mark points out that although the penis is typically imagined the fleshly member associated with male gender, iconic flashes throughout the Torah fancy the very member associated with male gender as being transformed, through the ritual cutting of the Abrahamic covenant, into the flesh, or member, associated most closely with the process related directly to female gender: birth.

In a similar vein, it's been pointed out that Rabbi Samson Hirsch draws a direct parallel to circumcision as a birthing ritual. He says point blank that a Gentile is born the first day, and a Jew on the eighth day in association with ritual circumcision. In other words, Elizabeth Wyner Mark is merely pointing out a fascinating aspect of a truism Rabbi Hirsch took for granted, that birth as a Jew occurs on the eighth day, not the first, and through the opening up of the male (bris milah), rather than the female (phallic-sex).

The Talmud, with Midrash Rabbah, equates the first human's breaking of the covenant with God not just with un-circumcision, but with epispasm in particular. According to the Talmud, the first human is created a Jew, and becomes a min, when the human distorts the circumcised body. This makes it clear that the first human is created in a state that signifies circumcision. And that later, the first human distorts the original body in such a way that the original body, the nature of the original body, is disproportioned, covered up (hidden), in the most sacrilegious way: a way that turns the first Jew into a min, a heretic; a Jew cut out of the original covenant between God and the human. 

The nature of the distortion of the original human body is clearly of utmost concern. Professor Gershom Scholem calls the distortion a "primal flaw" that inverts and distorts the very polarity of the world, the original nature of the world:

The primal flaw must be mended so that all things can return to their proper place, to their original posture. . . If Adam had not sinned the world would have entered the Messianic state on the first Sabbath after creation, with no historical process whatever.

Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, p. 46.

Nothing seem clearer from the foregoing than that epispasm represents the primal flaw (breaking the original covenant) which creates a cover-up of the nature of the original human body. ----Epispasm -- as a ritual ---- signifies what's being covered up, i.e., the nature of the original human body, such that epispasm is part and parcel of the original sin and thus the Fall which resulted in the casting-down of Eden leading to the current world order.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's implication that apart from the original sin all of Adam’s offspring would be Jewish, members of the corporate body known as Israel, not only segues with all of the foregoing, but cuts to the chase. If Adam is Jewish, the first Jewish mother, then even becoming a min, a heretic, even a ritualistic epispasm, wouldn't affect the Jewish identity of Adam, or the offspring (a min/heretic is still Jewish). For Adam's offspring to be other than Jewish, they would have to have other than a Jewish mother. Consequently, if Adam is the first human, and the first Jewish mother, then there must be a new human, another human, another mother, in order for the human race to introduce the first Gentile born to other than a Jewish mother.

It seems like it would be asking too much for the narrative in the Torah to seamlessly (so to say) pull everything together in a manner that not only makes perfect sense, but makes sense of the post-Fall Jewish rituals situated around all this. And yet Sanhedrin 38b implies that Adam was firstly Jewish (the first Jew) and secondly a Jewish min (heretic). The profundity of the Talmud's claim escapes those who can't get their head around the fact that Jewish identity comes from a Jewish mother, and a Jewish mother's Jewish identity comes from a Jewish mother . . . in sort of an infinite regression of Jewish mothers.  

The context of Sanhedrin 38b claims that Adam was the first Jewish mother (and consequently the first Jew); and that Adam was made pregnant by the breath of God before the creation of Eve, which, Midrash Rabbah implies, is the time of the creation of the first human penis, which Midrash Rabbah suggests is the "satanic organ" (Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith, XVII, 6 . . . see, Creating the Phallus: Satan Incarnate).

. . . The first Jewish mother is the first human prior to the breaking of the covenant that makes the first Jewish mother a min (a heretic). And what’s the crime that makes the first Jewish mother a heretic? According to the Talmud, epispasm, covering up a circumcised body. The first Jewish mother becomes a min when, in Genesis 2:21, Adam becomes a male, rather than just a man.

The scripture never sets a date or time when Adam is circumcised. So Adam is created with a body already existing in the state represented by a body after it undergoes ritual (symbolic) circumcision. . . Coincidentally, if ritual-circumcision is symbolic-emasculation, then Adam is created without the very penis that’s marked for elimination when, as Rabbi Kaplan says, ritual circumcision symbolizes the return of the Jew to prelapse time. Bris milah, Rabbi Kaplan says, somehow makes the Jew like Adam before the sin.

If that likeness to Adam before the sin is the elimination of the organ that made the sin possible, that made Adam a min and a male simultaneously, i.e., that separates gender, then clearly the circumcised Jew is ritually (symbolically) gender-less like the first Adam. . . But it gets more interesting when we ask why, or how, if Adam was the first Jewish mother, did this Jewish mother birth Gentiles? Even a min's offspring will be Jewish by reason of the mother's Jewishness. Such that all human beings should be Jewish?

Unfortunately, or fortunately, for this line of reasoning, Adam didn’t give birth to Cain, Abel, or Seth. They're all Gentiles since Adam is not their mother. Eve is their mother. And Eve is not Jewish. Only Adam was Jewish.

Why wouldn't Eve be Jewish if Adam was a Jewish mother? Because Eve wasn't born of a Jewish pregnancy. The first pregnancy was aborted so that Eve could be made from the sela of the original pregnancy. Eve was made by a particular serpent-angel who violated Adam’s body, as every Jewish woman's body is subsequently violated by flesh created in the image of this serpent. Except the one Jewish woman’s body that births the first Jewish first-born slated to be born prior to Genesis 2:21.

All we have to do to make Jewish identity make perfect sense, legally, and ritually, is realize what the Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b) is getting at when it makes Adam the first Jew, the first Jewish mother, the first min, and therein makes epispasm, undoing a circumcised body, transform the first human into the first male, a Jewish min (rather than a Jewish mother). The original desecration makes the original sin possible at the same time it makes the birth of Genitiles possible.

How fitting then that the original desecration, adding a penis to a penis-less human body, makes it possible for the first Jewish mother to “father” the first Gentile bastard (Cain). How fitting that Abraham paid penance for that sin by offering his own penis and then his own son Isaac as a fitting sacrifice for the twofold sin of Adam, i.e., the creation of the phallus and the conception of a Gentile son with it . . . How fitting that Rabbi Kaplan says offering the penis as a fleshly sacrifice makes a Jew like Adam before the desecration that was the creation of the first penis. . . How fitting that ritual circumcision is situated as the sacrifice of the Jewish firstborn.

The first human was the first Jewish mother. Eve is the first Gentile mother. Adam is the first father of a Gentile (even though he’s Jewish), since he became a min (the first male), a Jewish heretic, by allowing his body to be desecrated (reversing what circumcision ritualizes, lack of gender).

The sages of the Judeo/Christian scriptures are clear that human history is the playing out, on some level, of things playing out in heaven. In other words, to some degree human history is allegory for God's attainment of concrete self-knowledge (he had all other knowledge before Creation).

The first human is a fleshly analogue (representation) of God himself (a Jew, Sanhedrin 38b). ----That human is created already pregnant with God's Son. Which is to point out that the first human is not androgynous (and thus God is not androgynous). The divine fetus in the first human is God's Son, thus the mother (Adam) is not androgynous. Adam is a mother in relationship to the Son insider her (but Adam is not necessarily female), and the Son is a Son in relationship to Adam (which is not androgyny), but neither is the son necessarily a male (Gal. 3:28).

He blew into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). The word is inclusive, but He blew into his nostrils the breath of life---into that dust, like a female impregnated by a male, for they join and this dust is filled with all [Kol]. With whom?

The Zohar, Pritzker Edition, Be-Reshit, 1:49a.

Because modern Judaism misinterprets the nature and extent of the Fall and the original sin, which is to say they're unaware that Adam was a mother until the desecration of the first human body, which created the first uncircumcised flesh (Gen. 2:21), which is fancied "epispasm," they're forced to commit the theological original sin that is the creation of Adam as a male-androgyny. 

Since Judaism is unaware that Adam is a pregnant mother from the get-go, and that the desecration and original sin are related to a premature murder of of God's Son, the original abortion of justice, coterminous with the creation of Eve (the first Gentile), and the creation of the uncircumcised flesh (the phallus), they have no recourse (theologically speaking) but to fancy the first human a real androgyny. Adam is male, and his female half is separated from him in Genesis 2:21.

But this is theological suicide since scripture is nothing if not clear that the marriage between a bridegroom and bride is the quintessential symbol of God's relationship with mankind (the original covenant between God and Adam). . . Apart from recognition that bris milah is a wedding ritual (ritual emasculation under the chuppah), the phallus is left to become the primary mediator between the polar opposition representing God and man, i.e., male (groom) and female (bride). . . . The phallus becomes the connector, mediator, connection, between God and man, in the very instance that best portrays the consummation of the relationship between God and man (the original covenant), the consummation of the wedding on the wedding night.

Judaism recognizes no mediator between God and man, such that the very flesh that mediates groom and bride, in the consummation of the wedding, i.e., the serpentine phallus, is symbolic of the mediator between God and man which (mediation) Judaism rejects. -----Ergo, bris milah, ritual emasculation, which just happens to be the sign of Jewish identity, perfectly symbolizes the rejection of the flesh that purports to negotiate, mediate, between the polar opposition (bridegroom and bride) when that covenant is consummated on the wedding night.

As previously quoted, Rabbi Kaplan says that ritual circumcision in some manner returns the Jew to the status of Adam before the Fall. If Adam was a pregnant mother, then we have our first Jewish mother, such that Rabbi Kaplan's further comment is perfectly sensible. He says that if not for the sin, the desecration, all mankind would be worthy of the Torah. All mankind would be Jewish.

Adam is a pregnant Jewish mother with God's Son in her womb. Rabbi Kaplan says that if that Son is born, then all mankind will be worthy of Torah (there will be no distinction between Jew and Gentile); all mankind will be Jewish. Professor Scholem adds that if that Son is born, mankind will enter the Messianic age immediately. The Son of a virgin Jewish mother will be Messiah and the Messianic age will have begun at his birth.

But that doesn't happen. Mankind is separated into polar opposites: Jew and Gentile, male and female. . . And the mediator of this polar opposition is the serpentine angel in whose image the penis is created; the serpent who violates the first Jewish mother's non-phallic pregnancy to transform her into the first human male, the first Jewish heresy, the first min, the first man, ameliorated by ritual emasculation.