Garden of Eden גן עדן
The garden where the first man was placed, and the place from which all later history begins — the history of return.
Eden is the Torah's first place that has no map. Scripture describes a garden in the east, a river dividing into four, and two trees at its centre — the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Commentators debate its location, but tradition is largely uninterested in geography: the garden matters as a condition, not a coordinate.
Here Adam is given work — to till and to guard — and a single prohibition. Here the first question addressed to a human being is asked: «Where are you?» And from here comes the first exile, sealed by cherubim and a turning sword of fire.
The sages read this as the pattern of every later exile: a person leaves the place where he belonged and spends history trying to return. In later usage Gan Eden no longer means a garden on earth but the world of souls — the name of something lost and promised at once.