Rav Shai's Torah on the Grow

The Torah’s first question, from God no less, is a one-worder — “Ayeka?” “Where are you?” It is tantalizingly unclear if the question is geographical or psychological. Adam, whose enzymes of guilt were just beginning to digest the forbidden fruit, responds as if the question were, “Why are you hiding from Me?”

East of Eden, Cain is the first human to ask a question. When God asks Cain where his brother Abel is, Cain answers the question with a question: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain did know — he had just killed him. Defiance, murder, and duplicity — not an auspicious start for the family.

Raised as an unchurched, rugged individualist, when I first heard the “question” about being my brother’s keeper, I assumed the answer was no. Caveat emptor. As a young adult, I eventually understood that the question was rhetorical, but it was years before I learned of its biblical source. Not long after that, my teacher introduced me to the grammatically disruptive interpretation of the Kli Yekar (Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, 1550–1619). Cain’s answer to God was not a snarky evasion, but a rueful confession: “I didn’t know I was my brother’s keeper.” 

Whether disingenuous or contrite, Cain is the anti-hero. The only way to redeem the tragedy of fratricide is to learn Cain’s lesson by answering God’s question. Thank God, guilt runs in the family. 

Where are we?

The geographic center of the continental US is Lebanon, Kansas. In the very heart of the heartland, there is the overlay of our promised lands. Someone even mislabeled Kansas’ juniper trees as cedars to perpetuate the scenery of the Lebanese landscape. In addition to the cedars of Lebanon, the other association with the Levantine Lebanon is mountains. Indeed, Lebanon (Levanon in Hebrew) is related to lavan, a Semitic root for white. The mountains of Lebanon were snowcapped. There aren’t too many snowcapped mountains on the Great Plains.

We are a people of myth and ritual, the power of which transcends botany and topography. Most of our ancestors celebrated Passover, the Festival of Spring, in the snowy Pale. Our foundational myth of struggling for freedom was rehearsed even while substituting potatoes for the vernal greenery of carpas. (Karpos in Greek means a green vegetable.) Kansas, the last state to enter the Union before the US Civil War, is nicknamed “The Free State” because their citizens rejected slavery, though not without the beginning of bloodshed.

The script of our struggle is worth rehearsing and the rituals worth repeating (and improvising upon as necessary), because the goal of freedom is still worth pursuing. We name, rename, and misname to keep conscious of the goal to preserve and promote freedom for all. Attaining that goal, ultimately, demands action. In the heart of the land of the free, we are challenged to build a country that invites God’s presence and blessings for all as did the ancient Temple in Jerusalem which was built with the straight, strong cedars of Lebanon. The American pioneers, though pious and desirous of immigration, may nevertheless have been unaware that the largest courtyard of the Temple was reserved for the nations of the world. How else could the city upon the hill be a light unto the nations?