The Tomato Plant: A read-aloud midrash
Gellman, Marc
MARC GELLMAN A READ-ALOUD MIDRASH FOR CHILDREN THE TOMATO PLANT WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING THAT EVER DIED?" The Garden of Eden had everything. Bears and monkeys, fish and butterflies—everything!...
...For many days the man and the woman watered the ground, kept the weeds away, turned up the soil, and waited and waited...
...After a while God answered them, "The tomato plant is dead...
...Nothing ever died, so nothing was ever born to replace it...
...One day it drooped over and turned brown...
...In the days that followed, when the man and the woman looked at the strong new tomato plant, they would also think of the scraggly little plant they once peeked at through the crack in the wall...
...The man picked up the tiny green tomato which was barely hanging on, and planted it in the brown dust...
...It was a funny feeling...
...Why did it have to die...
...now it looks worse...
...The man and the woman were surprised and delighted...
...The man looked at the woman and said, "It never looked good...
...They were happy and sad at the very same time.......and so was God...
...It was full and green with many big red tomatoes on each stem...
...said the woman...
...Then it happened...
...The man and the woman walked right out of the garden and right over to the little tomato plant which had drooped over and turned brown...
...Both of them sat for a long time, peepMarc Gelltnan is Hillel Director at Northwestern University...
...Inside the garden nothing needed help...
...What they saw through the crack in the wall looked like it needed help...
...In the garden all the tomato plants were tall, and full, and green with many big red tomatoes on each stem...
...In the garden everything was always just the same...
...One day the man and the woman came upon a crack in the big wall that surrounded the garden...
...God said to them, "You can leave, but you can't come back...
...Through the crack they could see that in the brown dust outside the garden was one scraggly little tomato plant, with one tiny green tomato barely hanging on...
...Every day the man and the woman would come to the crack in the wall and peep through, but each time they came the little tomato plant looked even scragglier...
...A green shoot poked through the dusty ground, and in a few days it became...
...ing through the crack in the wall at the little tomato plant which had drooped over and turned brown...
...The man and the woman fell to the ground and cried and cried until they had cried out all their tears...
...Nothing in the garden ever needed help...
...What could have happened to it...
...But God would not answer this question no matter how many times they asked...
...Even the first man and woman were there...
...a tomato plant...
...they said, "Nothing dies here in the garden...
...So they got very angry at God and said, "We want to get out of here...
...At first they could hardly recognize it...
...And even though outside the garden everything needed help, they were not sorry that they could not return...
Vol. 2 • April 1977 • No. 6
