Gardens
Harvey Gillman writes about the nature and symbolism of the garden
There is something archetypal about that cultivated enclosed space we call the garden, something profoundly ambiguous also. Eden was the place of encounter with God in the cool of the evening, but also of the snake urging the forbidden. Its layout, with angels with flaming swords at the entrance and the exit and water flowing through, derived from the beautiful Persian gardens the Hebrews admired when they themselves were in exile. They were so overwhelmed by them that they adopted the Persian word into Hebrew: Pardes. They had lost their land and dreamed of a glorious return; if not in this world, at least in another. The garden was an image of their loss and their deepest dreams.
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