חנוך

Enoch is the man who walked with God and simply did not return. Within the dry list of the generations before the flood, 'and he lived, and he begot, and he died,' one verse stands out entirely differently: 'and Enoch walked with God, and he was no more, for God took him' (Genesis 5:24). It does not say of him 'and he died,' but 'and he was no more.'

Tradition is divided about him. Some expound in praise: a righteous man who cleaved to his Creator so completely that he was taken alive to the upper worlds, and the literature of the secret made him an angel. And some expound with caution: a righteous man he was, but 'at times righteous and at times wicked,' and therefore God 'took him' while still in his goodness, lest he turn and spoil. Both views honor him.

What is clear is the walking: 'and he walked with God,' he did not merely believe but walked with Him, step by step, in a daily life of cleaving. Enoch is the first hint in the Torah that a person can be so close to his Creator that the boundary of death is blurred.

What do we learn from him? That one can 'walk with God' within ordinary life, and that true cleaving changes the very nature of existence. Enoch teaches that tradition knows how to honor even one whose path is mysterious, and that there is a rung of closeness to God in which, in the Torah's own words, a person 'is no more' in the ordinary sense, for he already belongs above.