Hello everyone and welcome once again to the Temple Institute Parsha class.
My name is Gedalia Meyer and I am podcasting from Maale Adumim in Israel.
Among the all-time great unresolvable questions is the classic matter of good and evil.
This is such a basic question that it hardly needs to be voiced.
But when we actually think about it we realize that we may not be all that sure of what the
question really is.
The standard version might ask it as, What is good and what is evil?
But after even a small amount of pondering, we quickly understand that things could never
be so simple that a straightforward answer could be found for either side of that question.
There are too many variables and too many situations to ever hope for some one-size-fits-all
resolution.
To give a very familiar example of this, take stealing.
Most people agree that stealing is wrong and perhaps qualifies for genuine evil.
However, those same people would likely strip it of its evil if it was done for what could
be called a good cause.
They might even call it positively good.
The same could be said, by extension, for practically any other act that would normally
be deemed evil, even something as drastic as killing.
When it comes to more harmless examples of evil, such as lying or cheating, the matter
is so cloudy that it hardly hits anybody s moral radar any longer.
So what is a more appropriate version of this classic question?
Perhaps rather than looking for some universal definitions, which is probably a hopeless
task, we should attempt to narrow things down a bit.
What if we instead asked the question of what individual barometers we may possess that
allow us to glean our own ideas about good and evil?
In other words, assuming we have some internal mental or spiritual resources to come to an
understanding of these perplexing but ever-so-familiar terms, what would our personal feelings or
thoughts tell us about these opposite standards of morality?
Would we be able to come to some idea of what they are, strictly within our own minds and
without regard for what anybody else might believe, or would we be just as clueless as
before?
It is probably true that most people, once they hit a certain level of emotional and
intellectual maturity, do believe that they have an idea of what good is and what evil
is.
They may not be able to clearly explain their ideas, but the moral scale is there nevertheless.
There seems to be some inner sense of right and wrong that we all have, or perhaps all
should have.
We don t always shoot for the good and try to avoid evil, but we are still aware that
they are there, however buried they may be.
That inner sense is what we are looking for.
What does it tell us?
Unfortunately, this also is easier said than done.
We may really believe that we have that sense, but it is frequently pretty tough to really
pin it down.
It would be nice if there was some simple mental chart we could reference or emotional
balance to weigh everything on to know where we stand on the morality scale.
But there doesn t seem to be such a handy reference scale.
The rapidly changing times we live in and the immediate access to everything certainly
don t help us very much in this moral quest.
If anything, the picture gets murkier with each generation and with each new social trend.
In times past, people would look to a revered religious text like the Bible to answer this
question.
While it may be possible to find answers in the Bible or other classics, it is by no means
obvious even there.
Try searching through the Bible, or your favorite religious text to get some sort of answer.
You may find yourself disappointed or even disillusioned.
Apparently, this was never meant to be quick and easy.
It is a deep search that should take a lifetime, and even then, most of us never really get
there.
This week s Parsha is called Bereshit.
That word means In the beginning , and it is, of course, the first word in the Bible.
This is the first Parsha of the yearly cycle and is also seen as a kind of renewal of things.
It includes the universally famous creation story, with Let there be light , and Let us
make man . It has Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, complete with the snake, but not
necessarily with the apple.
It includes the tragedy of Cain and Abel and the classic question of Am I my brother s
keeper . It contains the first of many genealogies that are found in the Bible, which takes us
to the end of the Parsha.
This monumental collection of ancient narratives concludes with the first verses of the famous
Flood story.
It would be difficult to imagine any text of less than 150 sentences containing this
many fundamental ideas.
It is impossible to find a single other text of that length that contains this many universally
famous stories.
This is a power-packed Parsha if there ever was one.
It seems like there must be something in there that steers us somewhere on the good and evil
question, however we ask it.
Maybe it is found in the legendary Tree of Good and Evil from the Garden of Evil story.
Maybe it can be found in the events leading up to the Flood.
It turns out that as profound as those stories are, and as multi-layered as Judaism has made
them become, it is still not easy to find an answer in either of those places.
Instead, we shall look to the equally famous, but perhaps not as widely depicted in art
and literature, story of Cain and Abel.
This classic tragedy seems to be tailor made for getting right down to business about good
and evil.
Abel is obviously the good guy and Cain is unquestionably evil.
The only problem is that the words for good and evil never actually appear in this story.
The closest we get is some relatively vague line about what seems to be self-improvement.
It isn t even all that clear that Abel is necessarily a good guy in this story.
He seems to be more of a neutral character who plays the role of the victim of Cain s
unquestionable but unstated evil.
To recap the well known but surprisingly short story, Cain and Abel were brothers, the sons
of Adam and Eve.
Cain was a farmer who brought God an offering of his crops.
Abel followed with an offering of the firstborn of his animals.
God accepted Abel s offering but spurned that of Cain, for no apparent reason.
Cain is described as disappointed and angry over this, perhaps justifiably.
God asked him why he was torn apart emotionally.
God told him that if you improve your ways you will be uplifted and then warned him that
if you don't improve your ways, sin crouches at the door, it will be drawn to you, but
you can rule over it . This powerful but tantalizingly vague reminder may be a key to the Biblical
understanding of good or evil, though neither is actually mentioned.
Instead of following this advice, Cain enters into some unclear dialogue with Abel out in
a field.
With no textual warning, we read that he arose and killed his brother.
God then immediately asks him where his brother Abel is, to which he replies the fateful statement
of I do not know, am I my brother s keeper?
God s simple reply to this is the perplexing, What have you done?
The voice of your brother s blood cries out to me from the ground . Cain is then cursed
from the earth which swallowed his brother s blood and forced to become a wanderer all
his days.
While there is nothing here that overtly tells us any answers to our question, there may
be an underlying suggestion contained in the words.
God told Cain that if he improved his ways he would be uplifted.
What does it mean to be uplifted ? The Torah is vague on this important point.
It left the matter up to Cain, and by extension, to us, to figure out what this mysterious
but so familiar experience really is.
We all know this feeling but we all have difficulty describing it to someone else.
That nebulous sensation, the experience of being spiritually uplifted, is the personal
barometer of good.
What brings it on may vary from person to person, but within each one of us it serves
as about as clear an indication as we have that we are on a path that is good.
What about evil?
What is the barometer for evil?
It makes sense that the rest of that verse describes precisely that.
If you do not improve your ways, sin crouches at the door and it will be drawn to you . This
classic Biblical phrase, sin crouches at the door , could mean many things.
Sin is one of those religious words that tend to turn people off of wanting anything to
do with religion.
But if we strip away the negative imagery, we may find that this Biblical word points
to a hidden barometer within us.
Sin is whatever we believe to be wrong or improper.
The temptation to pursue it, even though we sense that it is wrong, is a telltale sign
of evil.
But Cain was given a way out of the seemingly inevitable tailspin into evil.
You can control it . This simple message, contained in three short Hebrew words, is
the greatest personal defense against evil.
It s all in our hands.
God does not tell him to hope for the best or to beat himself in frustration or even
to seek God s help out of this dilemma.
God tells him as clear as can be, you can control it . It s all up to you.
Of course we know the ending of the story.
Cain failed, despite this encouragement and this warning.
He killed his brother in cold blood.
He even denied his responsibility for his actions.
It is interesting that God s response to Cain s infamous reply of Am I my brother s keeper
is not the straightforward yes that we might have expected.
God seems to ignore Cain s attempt at denial and plunges right into Cain s mind.
What have you done?
However we may understand the Biblical dialogue between God and a human being, at the simplest
level, Cain heard a voice asking him this very question.
The voice may even have been his own.
The voice confronted him with the most powerful barometer of all, What have you done?
This is all that needs to be said.
There is no escape from this question through hiding or denial.
There is no running away.
What have you done?
This question is the universal barometer or evil within us.
When faced with it, we are forced to answer, or forced to admit that we have no answer.
It was there to force Cain to confront his own evil and to face the consequences.
We all have to face that voice at certain times in our lives.
It is sad and frustrating that this is the way things are.
But God did provide him with a defense against this form of internal torture.
It didn t work for Cain but that is why this story has such a prominent place in the Bible.
It is to remind us that, like Cain, if we so choose, we can control it.
Shabbat Shalom!