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National Student Essay Contest

Cain and Abel:
Reinterpreting the Story
to Facilitate Jewish-Christian Understanding
by Dorothy Levinson

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 offer-ings. 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 keep-er 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 countenance 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 alternative vision by offering a resounding "yes" to Cain's infamous question.

Understanding the Passage

Two brothers, Cain and Abel, believe in the same God but worship that God differently, one through the offer-ing of crops, the other through the offering of livestock. Their gifts or sacrifices constitute the very first examples of worship in Hebrew Scripture. But these well-intentioned though different acts of divine worship lead to confusion, envy and blame. Cain then murders Abel, and he himself is diminished and punished.

The blood of that first murder cries out to God from the earth. In Hebrew, the word for blood, d'mei, is in the plural -- "bloods." The rabbinic interpretation of this is that not only the blood of Abel but also the blood of Abel's unborn offspring has been shed. But perhaps the meaning of d'mei extends further. Perhaps the victims of this murder also are the descendants of the perpetrator and, indeed, all of us through the generations who have suffered from this inability of siblings to live in peace. A midrash on the Cain and Abel passage offers the grim pronouncement that when one destroys a single human life, it is as if he has destroyed the whole world. The two brothers were not able to live in peace; and, tragically, the cause of their discord was in the very offerings they brought to God, in the manner in which they worshipped.

So it has been with Jews and Christians during much of the past two thousand years, two peoples from the same roots, worshipping the same God but in different ways, all too often leading to misunderstanding, confu-sion and mistrust -- even to claims of deicide -- and ultimately opening the door to pogroms and inquisitions and worse. The earth wept, and surely God wept as well.

When Cain perceived a misfortune, he blamed Abel for it. And this we also have seen between Jews and Chris-tians. When times were hard, Jews often were held responsible. When Jews faced difficulty, Christian anti-Semitism has often been blamed, whether justified or not.

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, there is 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 land can nourish livestock; fertilizer from livestock 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 differ-ences. Complementarities 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 Seder.
• Ritual linkages are abundant: The Chatzi Kaddish provided 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 traditions. 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 scriptures 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 infamous 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 Christianity. 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 response 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 "Right-eous 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 Chris-tians in the Southern United States, and in the freedom struggle of Black South Africans, also primarily Chris-tians.

From the subsequent saga of the Tower of Babel (Gen-esis 11:1-26), we get a clue of the blessings of diversity that might have come with Cain and Abel themselves. Even amidst the subsequent tragic history of the past two millennia there have been stunning examples of different but related peoples living in peace and sharing the richness of their traditions.

• In medieval Spain, the "golden age" of Spanish Jewry, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony, one philosophical and mystical tradition affecting and enriching the other.
• In Philadelphia in 2004, a Freedom Seder cele-brating Passover and the death anniversary of Martin Luther King brought Jews and Christians together in ritual-filled celebration, palm branches waving to the refrain of Dayenu.
• And in Calcutta, India, an American Jew (my brother) and an Iranian Muslim joined together with an organization founded by a Christian to create a mobile health clinic for street children who are mostly Hindu.

These examples reinforce the message I saw recently on a T-shirt at a peace rally: "God's goodness is too great to be contained in only one religion."

The Cain and Abel story did not have to end as it did. There could have been two communities, worshipping the same God in different ways, but respecting one an-other and living in peace. Most days they would worship according to their respective traditions. But from time to time they would "ascend together unto the mountain of the Lord" (Isaiah 2:2) as "representatives of the na-tions," and seek to do the bidding of their common God.

Using the Passage to Build Common Ground

The time may be ripe to utilize such passages as the Cain and Abel story in building common ground between Jews and Christians. Over much of the nearly two millen-nia of Jewish exile, Christians have often characterized Judaism as a failed religion, or, at best, one which mere-ly "paved the way" for Christianity. Since the Holocaust, however, an increasing number of Christian church bodies, institutions and theologians have publicly apolo-gized for the Christian mistreatment of Jews and have sought a new relationship with Jews based on genuine mutual respect.

Although some Jews have been suspicious of these Christian overtures, others have welcomed them warmly. In September 2000, more than 170 Jewish scholars issued a statement entitled Dabru Emet (Speak the Truth), which recognized and embraced such Christian initiatives.

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 fol-lowing 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 patriarchs, 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.

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