Cain and Abel and Basic Human Nature

Jealousy and rivalry are the most primitive forms of evil. They will be the last to be eliminated. Our mission, at the end of this phase of history, is to prepare for that age.

CAIN AND ABEL AND BASIC HUMAN

NATURE

Will we Ever Learn?

The first crime ever perpetrated against another human-being was Cain’s killing of Abel. The rivalry and jealousy between them led to Abel’s death and Cain’s ultimate demise as well.

As we survey all of history from that day onward, it seems that nothing has really changed. Envy, rivalry, strife and outright hostility exist in all segments of our population. Internecine wars are not uncommon and it is all too frequent that one brother does not see eye to eye with the other brother.

The troublesome question arises. How could there be any hope for the world, if after so many millennia we have fundamentally remained the same? All the hatred and greed, jealousy and violence of the past still exist today. Will the world ever change?

When we examine Maimonides’ description of the Messianic Age, his very last statement— that reflects the Torah’s view of the final accomplishments of the Messianic Age— refers to how we will no longer suffer from jealousy and rivalry. The impression we get is that human nature will not fundamentally change until a more advanced stage in the process of the Redemption.

In light of this observation the question that arises is what have we accomplished in the past few thousand years in terms of human relations? Why is it that even in the initial stages of the Messianic Age the Cain and Abel rivalry will not cease?

It seems that the only real changes that we’ve experienced are technological. How can that be that cause for existence—to make the world into a G-dly and goodly place—has not been advanced significantly in the last few thousand years?

Individual Conflicts and World Wars

To answer this question let us see how the world developed after Cain killed Abel. Cain and his other brother Seth bore children, from which nations emerged. Ten generations later the world was destroyed by the Flood.

Now, when we inquire why G-d did destroy his world (save for Noah and his family), our Sages comment that society had become corrupt in every area, sexual immorality, idolatry, bloodshed and theft. But, the verdict to destroy the world was sealed due to the latter crime of theft.

Here again we see how the sin of Cain— jealousy—is what led to the world’s destruction. Theft is caused primarily by envy of someone else’s possession.

Hence the root cause of societal destruction is envy and rivalry. But at the time of Noah and the Flood, the malignancy had metastasized into global strife. Instead of one individual being envious of his neighbor, nations are now fighting wars of conquest to swallow up one another. No longer is it personal pride and avarice that blinds us to the needs and interests of others, but the aggregate power of a ruthless nation seeks to take over the whole world.

Indeed governments and empires needed the cooperation of all their citizenry to conquer others. As a result, the governments tried to control the behavior of its citizenry so that there were no serious conflicts between one member of society and another. Evil was now a colossus.

Just as individual needs and interests were suppressed for the common good, so too were the individual’s vices curbed by authoritarian systems of government. And whatever Cain and Abels there remained, the damage caused by them paled in comparison to the conflicts between empires. Evil became a collective force that overshadowed the individual vices.

Recent Dramatic Changes

What has changed over the ages, and particularly, in the last few decades is the almost total absence of empires that seek to control the whole world. The world due to economic and technological factors has become, to a certain extent, one large community, where competing empires for world domination cease to exist.

As a result of this dramatic change that we’ve witnessed in our own lifetime, the individual has assumed so much more freedom and power.

The end of world empires has resulted in two things:

First, when a bigger problem is solved we start to focus on the smaller one. Without the worry of empires colliding, we have ample time and energy to focus on the internecine conflicts. The power of the state to control the negative ambition of the individual has diminished so the natural feelings of envy have been exposed as the primary source of evil in society.

Second, we no longer have the power of the empires to suppress our natural instincts and inclinations; hence the increase in the feelings of envy and hostility towards others.

Wedged!

Sefer Yetzirah, a primary work of Kabbalah, states, “The end is wedged in the beginning and the beginning is wedged in the end.” The sin of Cain, with which human history began, is finally coming back in full force, because we are in the “end” times; on the heels of the Messianic era of Redemption.

But, since we are in the pre-Messianic Age, we can see the paradoxical energies, of individual evil, and terrorism on the one side, and unprecedented good performed by the largest number of people, on the other side.

Our task now is to take the good that we possess and has become so powerful a force and have it permeate every fiber of our being, so that we lose the “last” major vice in terms of human relations, our envy of others.

The process of refinement that the world has undergone and continues to experience is incremental, just as the decline of civilization occurred in stages.

First, the world had to experience the clash of civilizations culminating with the two world wars of the twentieth century.

After we essentially eliminated the desire for world domination, the focus has to be on getting rid of ethnic and tribal conflicts.

Once that problem is resolved, and peaceful coexistence between people of different races, ethnicities and ideologies, we then will have to tackle the internecine conflicts, followed by removing all feelings of hatred and envy from the human spirit. This final achievement will once and for all rectify the sin of Cain.

The lesson is that the difficulty we have with getting along with others is perhaps more pronounced today, not because we are backward, but it is because G-d left the most difficult challenge for the end.

But, since we are in the pre-Messianic Age, we can see the paradoxical energies, of individual evil, and terrorism on the one side, and unprecedented good performed by the largest number of people, on the other side.

Our task now is to take the good that we possess and has become so powerful a force and have it permeate every fiber of our being, so that we lose the “last” major vice in terms of human relations, our envy of others.

Everything we do to counter envy and discord between people will certainly hasten the Messianic process.

From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Breishis by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.