Bereishit

Bereishit – Michael Wegier

Michael Wegier is the Executive Director of Melitz in Jerusalem, an informal education centre dedicated to pluralistic Jewish education among Israelis and Diaspora Jews. Michael has been attending Limmud UK fairly regularly for over 25 years.

The global economic crisis, religious fundamentalism, food security and human trafficking are major challenges facing our world. It is extraordinary to consider how the Rabbis interpreted the story of Cain and Abel in a manner which shows how well they understood the capacity for human beings to resort to conflict regardless of their seeming closeness.

The biblical text invites the Rabbinic (and lay!) imagination as recent translations such as the Jewish Publication Society's makes clear. Shortly after God accepts Abel's offering of a lamb but rejects Cain's fruit offering, we read "Cain said to his brother Abel ... and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him." (Chapter 4 – Verse 8).

What exactly did Cain say to Abel and how did this conversation lead to an act of extreme violence? The Torah does not tell us. Some have suggested it was a dispute about the best use of land, livestock rearing as opposed to agricultural production. Louis Jacobs among others rejects this as there is no other biblical culture of such a conflict in ancient Israel.

The Midrash offers three other possible reasons for the dispute. Firstly it might have been an argument over land and property. One brother took dominion over the land and the other brother over movable objects. The practical impossibility of such a division must necessarily end in violence. A second Midrash says they argued about in whose land the Temple would be built. A third view is that this was a dispute about women. Who would have 'first rights' to the twin sisters born together with Abel.

Let us not be concerned about the anachronistic nature of a Midrashic reading. As much as it is a comment about the Torah, it is equally, if not more important as a lens on how the Rabbis saw their own society and the legacy they wished to transmit through the generations.

It seems to me that the Rabbis are making the powerful argument that Cain and Abel's dispute will serve as a paradigm of human conflict for eternity. Sometimes the conflict will be personal/familial and other times it will be between groups. In many cases, economics, religion and sexuality will be the engine for our disputes despite our best intentions. We all know by now that religion can be a force for enormous good but also for tremendous evil.

Particularly noteworthy in the case of Cain is that God is anxious to help him to be better. After committing the act of violence, he marks Cain with a sign to protect and not condemn him. Paradoxically, despite the eternal nature of human conflict, each of us has the capacity to atone and change.

Some years ago, I heard Dennis Prager argue that contemporary Jews (and others) need to embrace both moderate religion and moderate secularism. Either extreme is a recipe for conflict. The story of Cain and Abel seems to confirm this simple and wise approach.