Moderation and Extremism in the Scheme of Creation

 https://traditiononline.org/good-and-very-good-moderation-and-extremism-in-the-scheme-of-creation-by-norman-lamm/

On the verse, “And God saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good” (tov me’od) (1:31), the Midrash comments – enigmatically and paradoxically:“‘very good’—that is death.” When the individual parts, assigned the mission of tov, presume to the glory of the very good, of tov me’od, a prominence reserved by the Creator for the whole, death establishes its ominous foothold. And, as the late talmudist and kabbalist R. Joseph Engel commented: every “very” leads to death..

The biblical account of creation and the emergence of man is therefore largely a tale of virtue run amok, and thus the ideal whole – earth as Paradise – reduced to a meaner and more perilous place as a lower level of equilibrium replaces that of Genesis, an attenuated “whole” which accommodates itself to mortality and immorality, to exile and homelessness, to pain and suffering as the price for man’s absurd rejection of moderation. In the words of Ecclesiastes (7:16), “Be not righteous overmuch, neither make yourself overwise; why should you destroy yourself?”