Dear friends
This Jewish New Year, I made a commitment to write a snippet of the weekly Torah portion beginning with Bereshit. Who could have imagined that our world, our people, and our lives would be so changed forever since then!? One part of me thinks that to write anything about the Parsha right now is a typical rabbi move – write and talk about irrelevant things at a time when there are so many, much more pressing matters to address.
But actually, I think this Parsha can illuminate quite a bit. The most obvious is the story of Cain and Abel, the story of the first murder in the Torah. The grotesque scenario of one brother killing his innocent well- intentioned brother for no other reason other than his own depraved emotions, certainly resonates. What’s more, Cain’s duplicitous response when asked about his brother ‘am I my brother’s keeper?!’ has eerie resonance to defenders of Hamas. God’s thunderous response fills us with goosebumps ‘What have you done?!! The voice of your brother’s blood is screaming to me from the ground!!!’
We have been grappling all week with that voice in our head. The voices of the blood of of our brothers and sisters are screaming to us from the ground. 1,200 voices and counting. Defenceless and innocent. The elderly, the women, and worst of all babies. Killed in the most barbaric ways imaginable. How can human beings behave with such depravity?! It boggles our minds, bewilders our spirits, and makes us scream of pain.
The Torah’s answer lies in the story that comes just before the murder. The story of Adam and Eve eating from the forbidden tree, which I think this is the most misinterpreted story in the Torah. According to all the traditional interpretations, God planted this incredible garden along with the tree of knowledge. He then instructs humans ‘from everything you can eat, just not this one’. At which point, of course, the humans eat it and are punished for all eternity for not listening to God’s instructions. As a result, the punishment is: Men have to work for a living, women must labour in birth, and death becomes the only certainty in the human condition.
What a terrible story! What a nasty conception of God! He supposedly creates humans to be curious, adventurous, and rebellious by nature; piques their interest and then when they bite he slams the book at them. In our courts of law, we call that entrapment; and, the defendant would go free. But even if you insist on a punishment, where’s proportionality? Seriously, God, in this description, is a sadistic tyrant.
To me, this story has nothing to do with listening to the voice of God and everything to do with the unique human condition of self-consciousness. What happens as soon as they eat from the tree? They become aware they are naked. The eating of the forbidden fruit symbolises our gift of self-consciousness; and, it is our unique feature of self-consciousness which makes human beings liable for their behaviour.
Other animals have intelligence, no animal so far as I’ve ever come across has been hurled before a court of law and punished. Why? Because they lack the appropriate awareness that is the basis of moral and legal responsibility.
The gift though is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the awareness of our self-consciousness allows us to soar like angels to the heavens; to realise we’re not bound by selfishness, like every other biological organism. But rather, we can transcend our animal instincts when they cause harm. On the other hand,, that awareness can lead us to sink in to the abyss, to the knowledge of evil and its absolute embrace.
The forbidden fruit is the story of humanity. We have become ‘like God, knowers of good and evil’. We have self-consciousness and can decide what to do with it.
In my lifetime, I’ve never experienced so close up the monstrous face of evil. I am a man of peace and love but this evil is so dark it must be entirely eliminated. It is the product of more than just hatred. I have no words for it other than pure evil. And those who do not call it out for what it is, have lost their moral compass.
At this time we stand with Israel 100%. No, I do not celebrate innocent children or any civilians dying in Gaza. But yes I support Israel’s response because it’s on Hamas that their innocent people are dying.
Sending all the love to our broken-hearted brothers and sisters worldwide, and strength and support to our fighting women and men.
Am Yisrael Chai!