Although Eve was the very first of all women she was yet not the first love of Adam. Before he ever set eyes upon her and her dew-fresh loveliness he had a passionate and stormy affair full of troubled delight with the elfin sprite, Lilith. Of course when Eve appeared on the scene she quickly saw to it that Lilith was kept in the outer darkness to which she and those of her ilk properly belonged, and Adam, who really adored Eve and would have done anything to please her (did he not later on even eat of an apple for which he had not the slightest appetite?) consented willingly to make the break with Lilith quite complete and to avoid his erstwhile doxy and all her haunts. Yet, despite all this, there was always a certain resentment in Eve’s heart whenever she thought of Lilith, and she spoke of the fair sprite with an asperity which showed clearly that she considered her still a potential danger.
Lilith herself rather enjoyed the enmity of Eve which she somehow, and justly, considered a compliment to her seductive charms, and sometimes went out of her way to confront the first young wife and to annoy her with a subtle and mocking smile which Eve could not read but in which she sensed an offense. And even after Adam and Eve had been driven out of the Garden and were leading a hard and dreary existence in the stony waste of an unfriendly world, even then Lilith did not forego the malicious desire to tease and annoy young Eve, and one day she set out to visit Eve in the small wattled hut in which Adam’s wife was now living. But if Lilith had expected to encounter in Eve the old enmity and the old jealous fear, she was disappointed. She met an Eve who had gained a new calm, poise and dignity. Lilith shook her flaming red curls (Eve’s hair was golden brown and of a silken fineness), and her mysterious green eyes sparkled (Eve’s eyes were dark and limpid like a forest pool) while with serpentlike grace she strolled into the humble hut and considered Eve and her new raiment.
“Rather small here,” said Lilith, “you must feel quite cramped after the spaciousness of Eden. And I can’t say that I find your furs so extremely becoming. I concede they may be practical but believe me, they don’t improve your figure.” But Eve received all these taunts with untroubled composure.
Lilith was dumbfounded. “Are you not afraid of me any longer? She demanded. “Formerly you trembled with jealousy when I came near you, and you were furious when you imagined that Adam would catch a glimpse of me. Do you find me less lovely now? Or do you think that you have gained a greater beauty?”
“No,” said Eve, “but so many things have happened since then Since then we have labored together and built a home. We have sown our field with aching backs and we watched our crops with a fearful heart. We have known toil and disappointment, weariness and hope deferred-in short, we have shared troubles, and that is a bond which nothing can ever break.”
And when Lilith heard this she faded and disappeared like a thing of neither substance nor valor, and never troubled Eve and Eve’s heart again.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
