Tag Archives: Creation

Cain and Abel: A New Understanding

This week we restart the Torah reading cycle with Beresheet. One of the most complex, mysterious, and intriguing passages in the parasha is the story of Cain and Abel. The entire account gets only 17 verses total. First, Cain has a bright idea to bring Hashem an offering—the first time we hear of such a concept explicitly in the Torah. Abel then copies his brother, and gets rewarded for it, while Hashem seemingly ignores Cain’s offering. This upsets Cain and he is “greatly distressed” (Genesis 4:5). Hashem asks Cain why he is so upset. “Surely, if you do right, there is uplift. But if you do not do right, sin couches at the door; its urge is toward you, yet you can be its master.” (v. 7)

The next thing we are told is that Cain is speaking to Abel, and suddenly “rises up” to kill him. God questions Cain, points out the blood of Abel calling out, and then curses Cain to be a wanderer upon the Earth. Cain’s response is that “my sin is too great to bear!” (v. 13) Cain worries that once he becomes a defenceless wanderer, anyone who finds him will kill him. God promises to give Cain a protective mark. Cain then goes to live in the land of Nod, gets married, has a son called Hanokh (“Enoch”, not to be confused with the other, more famous Enoch who never died), and builds a city that he names after his son (v. 17). That’s the whole narrative, and it brings up numerous big questions:

  1. Why and how did Cain kill Abel?
  2. When God asks Cain “where is your brother?”, Cain answers that he doesn’t know. How could Cain blatantly lie to God? Is he not aware of the basic fact that God is omniscient? Did he learn nothing from his parents (Adam and Eve) who tried to hide from God?
  3. On that note, Cain is clearly on a high prophetic level, able to communicate openly and directly with God. He seemingly invents the concept of offerings to Hashem, and later admits that his “sin is too great to bear”. This does not sound like an evil person. On the contrary, it sounds like someone who deeply wishes to serve God, and who is remorseful and repentant. Which is it? Who was Cain really?
  4. Cain worries that if he becomes a wanderer, “hidden from God’s face” (4:14) and without God’s protection, anyone who finds him will kill him. If there are no other humans besides Cain, Adam, and Eve at this point, who is he worried about? And who, exactly, did he end up marrying?
  5. Finally, despite being cursed to wander, we are told that Cain did not actually become a wanderer at all and, on the contrary, build the first human city! Why was his curse not realized? And why did he build a city? Why is a whole city necessary for a single family? And why did he specifically name his city Hanokh?

To answer the first question, the commentaries provide several answers. Continue reading →

Vav or Waw?

This article is a follow-up to the previous one about the correct pronunciation of God’s name (יהוה), YHWH. Recall that our Sages teach that the nekudot vowels on God’s name are shva, cholam, and kamatz, meaning that the right way to pronounce the name would be “Yehowah”. A number of people reached out arguing that the letter vav is pronounced with a “v” sound, and therefore the name is “Yehovah”. Some referred to the work of Dr. Nehemiah Gordon, who makes the case for the vav being “v” partly based on words in Ezekiel (more on that below), and partly based on a poem by Elazar haKalir (c. 6th century CE) where he rhymes levi (לוי) with navi (נביא). The implication is that Jews as far back as the 6th century were pronouncing the vav as a “v” sound. Gordon himself notes that great rabbis like the Ibn Ezra were puzzled by this rhyme, because it was common knowledge then that the vav is really a “w” sound. Indeed, we find that the vav was a waw for most of Israelite and Jewish history. Below are ten big reasons for why the vav is a waw. Continue reading →

40 Mystics Interview

An interview with Rabbi Benji Levy for his ’40 Mystics’ series, covering a range of fascinating topics including the true meaning of “mysticism” and Kabbalah, an exploration of Jewish cosmogony and Jewish eschatology, and what we can do to bring Geulah and tap into the “Mashiach” spark within each person.