Dear Friends,
“In a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” (Genesis 1:1)
So commences our Torah. What hope! What optimism!
What a message – that beginnings are upon us, and that amid whatever we may be facing or undergoing, we can yet experience the vicarious creation of the world, when all was pure and pristine.
We even can read this text when the earth has become sullied again with atrocity and destruction.
It seems to be a pattern. It didn’t take very long in Genesis for misdeed and then violence to occur. Later in this week’s Torah portion we read of the snake manipulating Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and then her manipulating Adam with the same fruit, and then the fratricide of Cain slaying his brother, Abel.
We humans just can’t keep a good thing when we have it. We had Paradise. We had a garden with flowing waters and nearly unlimited fruits and vegetables, with totally seasonable weather so that the first man and woman could prance about naked. But, disregard of the then-rules resulted in our expulsion. Thereafter, a disappointment and a spat between Eve’s sons, resulted in the younger smiting the elder, and God crying out, “What have you done!?” (Genesis 4:10) God then cast out Cain, making him a rootless wanderer with the mark of evil on his face.
We don’t seem to be able to live with rules for living together. Initially it was simply manipulation or lying, but our behavior deteriorated to killing, and now to brutality and atrocity.
It is especially tragic, because it appears in Torah that humankind was destined originally to live together in a place of placid peace.
However, we were removed from that place not because of overcrowding, nor because we were looking for a better venue, but due to the violence which we wreaked on one another. This week seems to prove that.
It is especially tragic, because one might read into the text that Torah assumes that autochthonous and intrinsic to humanity is our predilection to evil and violence. This week would seem to prove that.
And, that, too, is tragic.
For a better Shabbat,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
“In a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” (Genesis 1:1)
So commences our Torah. What hope! What optimism!
What a message – that beginnings are upon us, and that amid whatever we may be facing or undergoing, we can yet experience the vicarious creation of the world, when all was pure and pristine.
We even can read this text when the earth has become sullied again with atrocity and destruction.
It seems to be a pattern. It didn’t take very long in Genesis for misdeed and then violence to occur. Later in this week’s Torah portion we read of the snake manipulating Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and then her manipulating Adam with the same fruit, and then the fratricide of Cain slaying his brother, Abel.
We humans just can’t keep a good thing when we have it. We had Paradise. We had a garden with flowing waters and nearly unlimited fruits and vegetables, with totally seasonable weather so that the first man and woman could prance about naked. But, disregard of the then-rules resulted in our expulsion. Thereafter, a disappointment and a spat between Eve’s sons, resulted in the younger smiting the elder, and God crying out, “What have you done!?” (Genesis 4:10) God then cast out Cain, making him a rootless wanderer with the mark of evil on his face.
We don’t seem to be able to live with rules for living together. Initially it was simply manipulation or lying, but our behavior deteriorated to killing, and now to brutality and atrocity.
It is especially tragic, because it appears in Torah that humankind was destined originally to live together in a place of placid peace.
However, we were removed from that place not because of overcrowding, nor because we were looking for a better venue, but due to the violence which we wreaked on one another. This week seems to prove that.
It is especially tragic, because one might read into the text that Torah assumes that autochthonous and intrinsic to humanity is our predilection to evil and violence. This week would seem to prove that.
And, that, too, is tragic.
For a better Shabbat,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn