Now Abel was a keeper of flocks, and Cain was a tiller of the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the produce of the soil. Abel also brought the finest of his firstlings of his flock. The Lord turned to Abel and his offering, but to Cain and his offering he did not turn. ... Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go outside," and when they were in the field Cain, filled with terrible anger toward his brother, prepared to strike Abel.

And then something extraordinary:

Abel then turned to his brother saying, "The ways of Adonai are beyond our understanding, but they cannot be meant to sow dissent between us. Let us not allow this to destroy us, but rather let us multiply our offerings. My flocks shall eat of fodder from your land and in turn provide richness to your soil. And then we shall bring our gifts, more bounteous than ever, to our Lord."

And the Lord seeing this said unto Cain, "Why did you not slay your brother?" And Cain replied, "I am his keeper as he is mine."

And the Lord smiled upon the brothers saying, "I have tested you as I will test your descendants Abram and Job and the followers of your descendant Jesus. You will now be fruitful and multiply into great peoples, different in your worship of me, but both beloved in my eyes, and I will cause my coun-tenance to shine on you both and will watch over you.

The Cain and Abel story, as told in Genesis 4:1-12, can be understood as a tragic analogy of Jewish-Christian relations over most of the past two millennia. At the same time, the passage's unstated alternative -- the vision of these brothers living together in harmony -- represents our hope for the future. Both Jewish and Christian teachings, and the actions of courageous Christians and Jews in our time, support this alter-native vision by offering a resounding "yes" to Cain's infamous question.

In Genesis, Cain murders his brother. Seven times in these verses, we are reminded that Cain and Abel are brothers. But it didn't have to end this way. While the name Cain, a play on words, means "a man brought from God," the name Abel (in Hebrew Havel) means "nothing." It is as if God were leaving a blank for humankind, with its free will, to fill in. The blank could be filled in with "Loving Brother and Partner," or the blank could be filled in with "Hated Brother for Whom I Am Not a Keeper."

There was another way, and the very alternative silently posed by this Scriptural passage is our sign of hope. If the story of the murder mirrors the reality of Jewish-Christian interaction over the past two thousand years, the path not taken represents a vision for such relations in the future. Cain and Abel could have lived together in peace and enriched the lives of one another. They could have brought solace and comfort to one another during times of distress. Their work and their worship might have been complementary, indeed synergistic. Crops and livestock are interdependent. Fodder grown on the land can nourish livestock; fertilizer from live-stock can nourish crops.

In the same way Jewish and Christian communities have the potential to live together in peace and mutual respect while enriching one another through their differences. Complemen-tarities abound:

• Hebrew Scripture is common to both religions.
• Jesus, to Christians the Son of God, was a Jew.
• The Last Supper took place at a Passover meal.
• Ritual linkages are abundant: The Chatzi Kaddish pro-vided the structural foundation for the Lord's Prayer; the tithe, with its roots in Genesis and Deuteronomy,
  is a cherished precept in many Christian churches; Pentecost has its roots in Shavuot.
• The concept of repentance is important to both tra-ditions. Yom Kippur in Judaism is analogous to the Catholic practice of Confession and, in Protestant services, to the Confession of Sin.

But perhaps most importantly, the teachings and the scrip-tures of both Judaism and Christianity provide an unequivocal response to the dreadful question posed by Cain. After the murder, and when confronted by God, Cain offers that infa-mous question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain seems to imply that it is only God's responsibility to look after other humans. God does not reply directly, but God's answer is provided in the strongly affirmative response of the ethical traditions and teachings of both Judaism and Christiantiy. The essence of the Torah, Hillel announced while standing on one foot, is "Love thy Neighbor as thyself" (Leviticus 19:18). The Christian equivalent may be Jesus' words, "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" (John 13:34). The re-sponse of both traditions, offered loudly and clearly to Cain's question is, "Yes, you are your brother's keeper."

And, most poignantly, God's answer comes to us in the acts of rachmones (compassion) and tzedakah (justice) carried out by individual Christians and Jews on behalf of one another. God answered when the Christian "Righteous of the Nations" -- Raoul Wallenberg, the Christians of Le Chambon in France, Oscar Schindler, the people of Denmark -- came to the aid of defenseless Jews during the Holocaust. God answered when Jews joined actively in the struggle for civil rights of African American Christians in the Southern United States, and in the freedom struggle of Black South Africans, also primarily Christians.

At this hopeful time in history, the Cain and Abel story could be utilized, perhaps in conjunction with Isaiah 2, to promote understanding and to constitute common ground between our peoples. The idea that God chose Abel's gifts over Cain's is not the essence of the story for us. Rather we can utilize the story to offer the following teachings to fellow Christians and Jews of our time:

• that while religious belief can provide depth, meaning and moral structure to life, differing religious beliefs
  and worship -- beginning with Cain and Abel -- have
  too often in history led to conflict and bloodshed;
• that if God was testing Cain, as God later tested patri-archs, prophets and disciples, Cain failed the test;
• that the essence of both Jewish and Christian teachings offers a condemnation of Cain's action;
• that another way was possible then and is possible now;
• that indeed both Judaism and Christianity offer the strongest possible answer to Cain's question -- and
  that answer is affirmative; and
• that our vision of the future must embrace the hope of Jews and Christians living together in mutual respect, and, as pictured by Isaiah, climbing that mountain together on occasion to worship, side by side, their common God.

Dorothy Levinson, a 20-year-old from Marlboro, Vermont, is a junior at Tufts University double-majoring in Community Health and History. She received $10,000 for her prize-winning essay, which helped to fund her summer work in Tanzania identifying groups at particular risk for HIV-AIDS. Last summer, she volunteered for a mother and child health care project in India and assisted her brother Noah, a physician who runs a mobile clinic for homeless children in Calcutta. Upon gradua-tion, Dora plans to work in the field of international public health.