Cain and Abel
October 5, 2002

In accordance with Jewish tradition, this first Shabbat after Simchat Torah, we have begun, again, reading the Torah from the very beginning. In doing so, we see the dawn of civilization through the eyes of the biblical author. And we are reminded by a story told there that murder was present in society from its very inception. “And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him.”

According to our rabbis, the story of Cain and Abel is not simply about a murderous quarrel between the two sons of Adam and Eve. Rather, it is the archetype of the quarrels that throughout the millennia have plague the human race.

But what is it that Cain and Abel fought over? Our rabbis, cited in the midrash, offer several opinions. Anticipating Freud by some two thousand years, Rabbi Yehudah proposed that the argument was over the Eve. They fought over their mother to whom they were both attracted – shades of the Oedipus complex. Accordingly, the first murder in history had sex as its motive.

Another rabbi anticipated Karl Marx. This is how he described the argument. Cain and Abel said to each other, let us divide the world. You take the land and I will take the moveable property. But then one said: “the ground you are standing on is mine. Remember, I got all the land.” The other said, “the clothes you are wearing are mine. Remember, I got all the movable property.” The war of words got out of hand and Cain killed Abel. The source of conflict, as Karl Marx was to say one day, is the distribution of wealth.

A third rabbi offered yet another explanation for the fratricide. Rabbi Joshua explained that Cain and Abel, in fact, each possessed both land and moveable property. So what was the dispute about? One said: “God’s temple will be built on my land.” The other said: “No, it will be built on my land!” Accordingly, the first conflict in history was a holy war.

Our world today is pretty much post Freud and Marx, but holy wars are unfortunately still with us. However, this is not the way it is supposed to be. Religion is supposed to be – and often is – a source of consolation, hope and compassion. It fosters brotherhood by uniting people of different racial, ethnic and national origins into a single communion of believers. Religious teachings hold up the ideal of peace.

But religion also fuels intolerance that can ignite violence. In India today there are bloody conflicts between Hindus, Moslems and Christians; in the Holy Land between Jews, Christians and Moslems; in Sudan between Moslems and Animists and in Ireland, not so long ago, between Catholics and Protestants.

These conflicts are provoked by doctrinaire believers who claim that have exclusive possession of God’s blueprint to what is right and to what God wants of human beings. I don’t think it is simplistic to say that any religion that claims it, alone, knows the path to salvation approved by God lays the groundwork for violence against those who believe differently. And this is why. Because if you believe that you alone hold the keys to God’s kingdom you want to do two things: you want to bring as many people in through the door as you can, even if you have to nudge them and maybe even force them through.

Second, you want to make certain that you are not seduced by the false doctrines of others that will keep you from entering the kingdom. The only way you can keep the false ideas of others, the sins of others, from corrupting you, the fanatically pious claim, is by creating a society where sinful acts and heretical ideas are outlawed, punished and constantly purged. It is that kind of society that Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran and the former Taliban Afghanistan have sought to establish – and I might add, with a good measure of success. But for these nations, it is not sufficient to establish the law of Islam just in their own country. They understand that borders can’t prevent the detested civilization of the west from creeping in via the internet, TV, books and magazines. According to fanatic Islamists, there is only one way to gain protection from the long reach of the loathsome western civilization – destroy it. That is what El Qaeda attempted to do on September 11th, taking aim at New York City – in their view the capitol of corrupt western civilization, the modern Sodom and Gemorrah, the exemplar of sexual perversity, liberalism, and godlessness.

So, on one hand, you have to eliminate the sinners around you so that you don’t get you off track and so that you don’t get locked out of Paradise. On the other hand, you want to bring as many people as you can through the door with you – even if by force. After all, you are doing them a favor. You are saving their souls. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had no problem issuing the flourish Jewish community of Spain a choice: either become Christians or get out of the country. And they had no problem appointing the priest, Torquemada, as grand inquisitor to burn any person at the stake who lapsed back and practiced Judaism. After all, condemning people to a few moments of hideous suffering at the stake was a small price to pay for saving these souls from an eternity of Hell in the afterlife.

But what about free-will you ask? What about the right of every human being to make choices about the religious conduct of his or her life? The answer is that free choice is to be honored when dealing with mundane issues. But when the most important things imaginable are involved – the proper religious doctrine, the fate of one’s soul, living in accordance with God’s will, it cannot be left to freedom of choice. People need to be forced to do what is right even against their will. This is the voice of religious fanaticism speaking.

I assume that many of us hear a different voice. Many of us believe that people can be fervent in their own beliefs without forcing them onto others. In our United States of America, we have many very strong religious communities, living side by side, following the teachings of their own faith. While there are issues that cause friction between liberal and conservative religious expressions – abortion and separation of Church and State being prominent among them, very often there is also cooperation among religious denominations and faith groups.

Cooperation has been a hard lesson for religions to learn. The natural instinct is for a religion to strive for ascendancy over the others. In the process, they often denigrate competing belief systems and show contempt toward their adherents. For example, Christian theologians taught that God abrogated his covenant with the Jewish people and entered into a new and exclusive one with the followers of Christianity. In practical terms, this led to the widespread feeling among Christians that Jews were a people despised by God, and therefore, all good people should despise them as well.

But today many Church theologians speak of God’s dual covenant: one with the Jewish people and one with the Christians. Just recently Bishop William Keeler of Baltimore released a document prepared under his guidance that dealt with the Catholic Church’s missionary activities directed toward Jews. It stated: “A deepening Catholic appreciation of the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, together with a recognition of the divinely given mission to Jews to witness to God’s faithful love, leads to the conclusion that campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable to the Catholic Church.” The new attitude exemplified here makes a big difference in how the two faiths relate to each other.

The spiritual leaders of Islam, in our day, by and large, have yet to embarked on a similar ecumenical journey. But I should point out that historically speaking, Islam’s attitude toward Judaism and Christianity has not always been as hostile as it appears today. When Islam was in ascendancy in the Middle Ages, with much of the world under its domination, Jews and Christians faired well much of the time, although they had to accept certain limitations. A synagogue building or church spire could not be higher than the local mosque, for example.

But a weakened Islam today feels threatened and is less tolerant. Most Moslem countries today are Judenrein and Christians who live in them often suffer discrimination and even physical violence as has occurred recently in Pakistan.

However, it is possible to hope that Moslem scholars will recognize the need to rethink certain of their theological premises just as Christian theologians have done. The paradigm for doing so already exists. Sufis, who are Muslim mystics, have redefined the doctrine of “jihad”. Instead of connoting a war against the infidels, it has been transformed into a spiritual concept: “jihad” means going to war against one’s own imperfections.

The challenge of all religions today is to promote the life enhancing, moral and spiritual teachings of their faith, while transforming the negative residues into something positive. Surely it is possible for people to cherish their own beliefs while, at the same time, showing respect - and even admitting legitimacy – to the beliefs of others. Only when the voices advocating religious tolerance and cooperation find greater acceptance than those promoting religious triumphalism and claiming exclusive possession of the truth will the holy wars, begun by Cain and Abel, finally come to an end.