Bereshit: Oct. 17, 2020/29 Tishrei 5781

This Shabbat, we will begin the annual cycle of Torah reading once more with Parashat Bereshit. While the big, flashy part of the narrative happens right at the start, with the creation of the world happening in the first chapter, there are four whole chapters and the start of an additional one that make up this parashah. There's the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, and a whole lot of genealogy.

When I was little, I took karate classes, and, while I know now that the whole organization to which I belonged was relatively disreputable in the wider martial arts world, one thing that I do remember was reciting the school motto (more like an ethos than a motto) every class. One of the lines of the motto declared that "We use self-control and take responsibility for our actions", something that perhaps could benefit some of this parashah's dramatis personae.

After creating the world and its inhabitants, God makes a garden in Eden, and there he places Adam, providing him with all manner of edible plants - grains and fruit trees and vegetables - to eat from. There's only one plant that Adam was not allowed to eat from: the Tree of Knowledge. Now, in the meantime, God had given Adam a consort in Eve. In the course of exploring the garden, is convinced by a snake - perhaps the first of its kind, given the text's use of the definite article - to break the one rule and eat the Fruit of Knowledge. Eve, of course, shares the fruit with her husband, and God, being omniscient, finds out about it all and confronts his creations. Adam attempts to assign the blame for his eating the fruit to Eve, who shifts the blame to the snake. While there is certainly blame to share, neither Adam nor Eve are capable of taking responsibility for having done the one thing they were not supposed to do (the text does not record the snake's defense of itself). Further on in the narrative, Adam and Eve's two sons come along. In a fit of jealousy surrounding sacrifices, Cain kills his brother Abel, and once again, God confronts someone for their misbehavior. Just like his parents, Cain fails to take ownership of his actions, even going so far as to play dumb, acting like he didn't know about Abel's disappearance, famously asking "am I my brother's keeper?"

So, what can we learn from all this? We are allowed to mess up, whether that mess up is something minor or even as big as fratricide. It's still bad, and we may be punished for it, but things happen - we have incomplete information, we misjudge situations, and sometimes we just don't think. But that doesn't absolve us of the responsibility for our mistakes. Trying to cover it up or blame someone else only ever makes things worse in the long run. We also cannot take credit for our triumphs without recognizing our responsibility for our failures. Even if someone else is responsible for part of the failure, we should not shrink from our share of the fault. This is especially true when we hold positions of responsibility. If, as the Talmud tells us, "all Israel are [as] princes", then it would behoove us to exhibit the qualities befitting such a station. 

President Harry Truman famously kept a plaque on his desk in the Oval Office reading "The Buck Stops Here". Many years later, President George W. Bush echoed that sentiment, saying "I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best." Both presidents understood that leadership brings with it an extra call to take responsibility for good or ill. Presidents are advised by experts and advisors to give them the best tools to make the best decisions, but at the end of the day, the decision rests with the president, and it is at his feet that the credit must be laid, whether for a success or for a failure. Leaders do not project their mistakes on others, as medieval commentator Rabbi David Kimhi (Radak) sees Adam doing - blaming God, because had God not given him Eve, Adam would never have come to sin. And leaders do not do as Cain did and try to hide their errors, especially from One who sees and knows everything. The saying goes that "to err is human", and we are human. We will err, some of us more often than others, but all of us will make mistakes. That is alright though because perfection is not expected of us. As Jews, indeed, as people, we should strive for the best, but when we accomplish less than that, we have to own it too.