Rabbi's Blog

As we commemorate Yom Hashoah, the Memorial of the Holocaust, it seems fitting that we will read this Shabbat the Torah portion Shemini which begins with the death of Nadav and Avihu, two of Aaron’s children who perished inexplicably becoming, as the word Holocaust means originally - an offering consumed by fire. At that moment, his dead before him, Aaron could only silence himself

This silence intertwined with catastrophic loss echoes a different, more sinister silence. At the dawn of human experience we learn of Cain and Abel, the first two people described as born into the Earth rather than formed directly by their Creator. Their story as we well know ends in tragedy. Cain, the first born, becomes dejected when his offering of produce from his field is ignored after his younger brother gives what is judged to be a more suitable sacrifice from the first of his flocks. G*d admonishes Cain that he must overcome the desire to act sinfully even if he is angered by what he sees as an unjust circumstance. Instead we are told “Cain spoke to Abel. And when they were in the field Cain rose up and killed him” What did Cain say to Abel? Was it just as simple as “Let’s go into the field?” and therefore left out? The Sages for the most part believe otherwise and imagine ways that Cain could start a conversation as a pretext for the attack to come. A chilling reminder that for everything that changes, the dynamics of twisting words into violence, of pairing rhetoric and murder have not changed at all.

The murder of Abel by Cain proceeds without words until G*d intervenes to ask Cain “Where is your brother?” and Cain answers with words that still echo “Am I my brother’s keeper?” G*d proceeds to invoke the crying out of the blood spilled on the ground for which Cain will be cursed to never be able to settle in one place. The question has to be whispered though, all these generations later “why not intervene before the murder? Is G*d not the keeper of G*d’s own creation?” And the answer has to be, at least here, no. Cain, never told the rules for Abel, was never-the-less responsible for the life of his brother. In a disturbing coda, the first thing Cain does after his punishment of eternal wandering is to settle the first city, East of Eden. The city called Nod which means wander.

G*d is capable throughout the Torah of punishment against the wicked, enemies of the Israelites and Israelites themselves. G*d also is depicted, as in Nadav and Avihu, of lashing out without explanation in a moment of terror. Yet Abel is still slain and Cain is, fundamentally, unpunished. the lesson of Cain and Abel is that G*d’s most consistent presence in the face of evil is to amplify the voice of the blood crying out.

The murder of Abel figures prominently in a poem written by Israeli Holocaust survivor Dan Pagis. In only a few haunting lines his “Written in Pencil in a Sealed Railway Car”* transposes the biblical story to the Nazi death machine

here in this railway car

i am eve

with abel my son

if you see my other son

cain son of man

tell him that i am

There is a familiar silence at the end of this verse. “Tell him I am what? Unlike Cain and Abel, however, the aftermath of the murder is never touched on and unlike Nadav and Avihu the deaths are never mourned. Instead, the only continuation of this fragment is to go back to the top… “I am here in this railway car.”

The Holocaust was not only the slaying of the innocent but the relentless denial of humanity. The earth swallowed so much blood that even its cries were silenced.

Today, then, we cannot do as Aaron did and stay silent nor can we wait for Cain to be chastened. We must be the ones to amplify the call from beneath the ground. To make sure those slain are never forgotten and to insist that the world answer humanity's pressing question “are we not each other's keeper?”

כָּתוּב בְּעִפָּרוֹן בַּקָּרוֹן הֶחָתוּם*

מאת דן פגיס

כָּאן בַּמִּשְׁלוֹחַ הַזֶּה
אֲנִי חַוָּה
עִם הֶבֶל בְּנִי
אִם תִּרְאוּ אֶת בְּנִי הַגָּדוֹל
קַיִן בֶּן אָדָם
תַּגִּידוּ לוֹ שֶׁאֲנִי