Parshat Bereshit

This week we go back to the beginning.  There is a year’s worth of comments to make on this week’s Torah portion, but I will restrain myself and pick one small point.  One of the better known stories in the parsha is that of Cain and Abel . The world’s first brothers, whose story meets tragedy when Cain kills Abel.  The terse telling of this story has invited rabbis for generations to create midrashim or imaginative interpretations as to what happened.  A big part of the problem is how the story is told.

We find in Genesis 4:8 “Cain said to his brother Abel…and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him.”

There is a big gap in this text.  What did Cain say to Abel?  It must have been something pretty significant if the very next thing that happens is that Cain kills Abel.  But what?  There are many traditional imaginings of this conversation.  Perhaps they argued over how the world was to be divided between them?  Perhaps they argued over a woman?  Maybe they fought over in whose domain the Temple would one day be built?   All of these interpretations presuppose that the conversation led to a physical conflict where in the end Cain killed Abel.   I have often wondered about what that conversation must have been about, and yet today, I don’t think that the content of the conversation is as telling as the fact that they had one. 

In addition to not telling us what the content of the conversation was, the Bible also chooses not to describe the way in which Cain kills his brother Abel.  I think that these two missing details, when read together open us up to another area of interpretation.  I can’t help but think that the proximity of the mention of this mystery conversation to the killing is meant to tell us about their connection.  That is to say that perhaps we should be reading into this text a message about the power of our words. 

More and more today as a Jewish professional who works with teens I am concerned with the dangers presented by bullying.  We know today better than ever the power words have to cause pain and distress to the targets of bullying. 

Is it possible that Cain, in his jealousy of Abel, took to tormenting him verbally?  What if Cain each day in the field was torturing Abel with his words?  I wonder if this might be one of the ways that Cain killed Abel.  We read in the Talmud in tractate Bava Metziah that “Shaming one’s fellow in public is like spilling his blood.” (58b) Further on the same page it is suggested that there is no redemption for those who among other things, shame their fellow in public or give someone a disparaging nickname.

When we read the story of Cain and Abel this week, I challenge us not only to think about the ways jealousy can lead us to act out physically, but to think also about the ways we attack others verbally as well.  In the end all we know is that Cain said something to Abel and he killed him.  We don’t know what he said, and we don’t know how he killed him, but I think we can make enough of a connection between words and physical harm to teach us to pause and think about the effect our words can have on others before we speak.

Shabbat Shalom