Feels like so much time has passed between last Shabbat and this one. The Jewish world has changed in a mere week… It's hard to even remember our state of being last Friday afternoon before Shabbat arrived. And here we are… seven days later and yet again entering the day of rest. Like God might have felt after 6 days of creating the world, so many are exhausted and ready for rest.. And so rest, I pray, is what folks can find.
It seems unfathomable, even unreachable… how can we rest when lives are at stake, when we are mourning, anxious, terrified of what is to come.
Like this week’s Torah portion, the story doesn’t end with Shabbat. The story keeps going and it gets ugly. We get no break, no breath, before we arrive at humanity’s first murder, when Cain kills his brother Abel out of jealousy.
The text sets the story up in a really interesting way. Before Cain kills Abel, God gives him a chance to do the right thing. God introduces the concept of yetzer hatov and yetzer harav, the good inclination and the bad inclination and urges Cain to choose good, and to not allow his evil inclination to get the best of him. And then in the very next verse, Cain kills Abel.
It’s a tragedy. Why? For what? Is this the way the world is going to be? What’s the lesson and what can we take away? Where is the hope? As we’ve seen so tragically this week, there are human beings out there in the world who are like Cain. Who have intent to kill, who choose evil over good, who cause suffering and sorrow on purpose. But it doesn’t need to be this way… and I believe in my core that there has to be another way.
As I enter Shabbat, I enter in mourning and I enter in trepidation. In mourning for the lives lost so brutally and with trepidation for what is coming. I pray that good will prevail over evil and that we will find a way to value life. And for now, at least a little rest.
