The Emperor Antoninus once pressed Rabbi Judah the Prince with a sharp question. At the day of judgment, he said, neither body nor soul could be justly punished. The body would plead that the soul had sinned, for since the soul departed it has lain in the grave as still as a stone. The soul would plead that the body had sinned, for since it left the body it has flitted through the air as innocent as a bird.
The Rabbi answered with a mashal, a parable. A king owned an orchard with fine young fig trees, and he appointed two gardeners to guard it, one blind and the other lame. One day the lame gardener said to the blind one, I see ripe figs. Carry me on your shoulders and we shall eat them together. The blind one stooped, the lame one climbed on his back, and together they stripped the trees bare.
When the king came and found his orchard plundered, each gardener claimed innocence. The blind one said, How could I have eaten them? I cannot see them. The lame one said, How could I have eaten them? I cannot walk to them. So the king set the lame gardener on the back of the blind one and judged them as one.
So too the Holy One returns the soul to the body and judges the two together. Neither escapes by pointing at the other, because neither sinned alone. This teaching is preserved in the dialogues of Antoninus and the Rabbi (Sanhedrin 91a, as cited in Harris, Hebraic Literature, 1901). The lesson is plain: a person is one whole, and the whole is answerable for what the whole has done.