In the fourth chapter of Genesis we are told that “the man knew his wife; and she conceived and bore Cain, and said: ‘I have acquired a man with the help of the Eternal.’

א וְהָ֣אָדָ֔ם יָדַ֖ע אֶת־חַוָּ֣ה אִשְׁתּ֑וֹ וַתַּ֨הַר֙ וַתֵּ֣לֶד אֶת־קַ֔יִן וַתֹּ֕אמֶר קָנִ֥יתִי אִ֖ישׁ אֶת־יְהוָֹֽה:

Already the conception of Cain is problematic. Eve is named, her husband is not. She conceives and bears a son who is apparently already named and maybe even already grown, and then she says something that appears to be designed to remove her partner from the narrative.  The name Cain comes from the root to acquire, to have material ownership. Eve says she has acquired a man with God.  The role of her husband, the man to her woman, the father of the child – is diminished in the text. I remember years ago studying this with a family therapist who pointed out that many a family goes through difficulties when a new baby is born, and that often the relationship between mother and child can freeze out the father who feels to be of little use in those early chaotic days .  If this is not addressed and worked on, it can cause serious dysfunction in the family in later years.

And then comes the second child – is it a different conception or is Hevel the twin of Cain? There is no mention of Adam at all here, not the act of procreation nor the pregnancy. Instead we are told “and again she bore his brother, Hevel, and Hevel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a worker of the ground

ב וַתֹּ֣סֶף לָלֶ֔דֶת אֶת־אָחִ֖יו אֶת־הָ֑בֶל וַֽיְהִי־הֶ֨בֶל֙ רֹ֣עֵה צֹ֔אן וְקַ֕יִן הָיָ֖ה עֹבֵ֥ד אֲדָמָֽה

Havel comes into the world without any reference to Adam, but clearly in relationship to Cain – she bears ‘his brother’ and his name too is ready made. While Cain, the acquirer, the one who is in deep relationship with the land appears as a material figure, Hevel’s name has quite a different resonance. Hevel means breath; implicit in it is the idea of transience, even pointlessness. The preacher Kohelet in his book (read at Succot) begins by lamenting

הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל  Vanity of vanities, says Kohelet; vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

The brothers, one too firmly grounded, one apparently totally transient, choose work that suits their natures – Cain tills the ground, Hevel shepherds his flock. And when they bring their thanksgiving offerings to God – another curiosity since this is the first we know of such a practise – the fruits of the ground brought by Cain are rejected, while the firstborn of the flocks brought by Hevel are accepted by God.

Why? Why would God accept the offerings of one brother and not the other? Is there a suggestion that Cain does not bring of the best, of the first? Are we to believe that God is a carnivore and not a vegetarian? Is this a moment that comes to every parent and child when the child complains that something is not fair, only to be told “who ever said that life was fair?”

Cain is angry and depressed, and God asks the first of the questions in the text – “Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen?” And then God continues with a slightly sinister statement – “If you do well/make it good – you will be lifted/accepted, but if you do not do well/make it good, then sin lies at the doorway, and its desire is to you, but you may rule over it”

What on earth does God mean? And how is this a response to a dejected Cain who has presumably never been thwarted, who was the clear favourite of his mother, the man who provides and has acquisitions and wealth? The last part of the phrase echoes the words God spoke to Eve when she and Adam are sent away from the garden – she will desire her husband yet he will have power over her. Is this a reference to the dislocation within the family? The more one looks the less one understands.

But we know that Cain spoke to Hevel, though the content of the conversation is not recorded. Then both Cain and Hevel were in the field, Cain rose up against Hevel his brother and killed him. And in the very next verse God asks the next question

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָֹה֙ אֶל־קַ֔יִן אֵ֖י הֶ֣בֶל אָחִ֑יךָ וַיֹּ֨אמֶר֙ לֹ֣א יָדַ֔עְתִּי הֲשֹׁמֵ֥ר אָחִ֖י אָנֹֽכִי:

Where is Hevel your brother? And he answered “I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?”

Finally a conversation between the two of them, finally we hear clear voices in the text. And the voices resonate down the generations until now.

God asks a question to which God already knows the answer – a question similar to the one asked in Eden – “where are you?” The reply – sullen, angry, also a question – does not admit to the truth – Cain most certainly knows where his brother is. And then comes the climax –“What have you done? The bloods of your brother are crying out to Me from the ground”

The story then quickly spirals to its conclusion. Cain is cursed from the ground he has worked, it will no longer produce for him. He is no longer the one who owns the land but is destined to become a transient, one who wanders. With some compassion at Cain’s horror at what his future will be, at the mercy of anyone who comes across him, God provides him with a token to protect him. Just as Adam and Eve were provided with clothing by God when they were driven out of Eden, Cain too is provided with some protection as he is sent away – and then bible turns its focus on to the children of Cain who become powerful figures, and onto the birth of Seth to replace the lost Hevel.

The story is rich in metaphor, in parallels with which to read the stories of Cain and Hevel’s parents, with mythic understanding of the first human beings and human family, in lacunae in the text which we might fill with our creative understandings and midrash.

But I think the most powerful piece in the story is the rhetorical question asked by Cain and the divine response – “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and “the bloods of your brother are crying out to me from the ground”

This question – “am I my brother’s keeper” is asked throughout the book of Genesis – from the relationship of Abraham to Lot, the son of his dead brother, through the complicated relationship of Isaac and Ishmael, the painful rivalry between Jacob and Esau, the violence and toxic competition between Jacobs twelve sons that ends only after a lifetime of separation and agony for the brothers and their father. The book of Genesis ends with one brother (Joseph) financially supporting the others who had wronged him, and reconciliation between brothers occurs when Judah shows that he is prepared to take the place of Benjamin as hostage in Egypt, so that Joseph sees that Judah has indeed learned the lesson of “Am I my brother’s protector?”

But the question does not end with the book of Genesis, even though the dénouement closes the narrative of the founding families. For bible continues to record how careless we can be of the other, how little we understand about our role in community, how ambition and self-indulgence and habit of categorising the ‘other’ as less than our own is embedded in our psyche. We too sullenly ask of the world “am I my brother’s keeper? – Do I have to care what happens to other people?”

The answer of course to Cain’s question is “yes – you are indeed responsible for the care and protection of your brother” God’s response, that the bloods of his brother are crying out from the land into which they seeped is an absolute imperative that reminds us that our actions have consequences, that we are all interconnected, and that we have a responsibility to ensure that everyone is acknowledged and their needs fulfilled.

Indeed, the word “brother” is to be understood in biblical tradition not simply in terms of genetics or of closeness of family or geographic proximity or ethnic tie – here we are talking about the foundation of the human race – the brother of Cain at this point is every other human being in the world. We are each other’s guarantors, supporters, protectors. If we fail in that duty and their blood is spilled or their lives diminished, then God will hear of our failure and will demand justice from us.

While the biblical story of the first sibling rivalry leading to fratricide is one that raises more questions in us the more we read it, a narrative filled with difficulties and complications, there are some lessons that we can understand easily, even though we may not really like them or find them comforting.

One is about our privilege and what it leads us to expect. Cain was the eldest son, well beloved, a man connected intimately to the land which he worked and which provided wealth and sustenance. He never noticed his privilege just as we don’t notice the privilege with which we live in a first world country as a settled people. He expected his sacrifice to be accepted and welcomed, gratitude from God in response to his thanksgiving offerings. His face fell, he was distressed when this did not happen, and he felt cheated and angry. God challenges his privilege asking him why he is so upset – and God goes further, reminding him that if he works hard and does well then he will feel good, but that sometimes working hard doesn’t lead to doing well – “sin crouches at the door” in the words of the bible, chata’at, is a word from archery meaning missing the mark, not doing all we could, not fulfilling what is required from us. God goes on to tell us – we can control that behaviour of chata’at, but it takes will, mindfulness and effort. We have to acknowledge our disappointment when our privilege doesn’t benefit us, recognise that when someone else gains it does not have to mean that we lose – even if it can feel like that. We must confront our own unacknowledged privilege when we work to recognise the humanity of others and understand that the luck of living in 21^st century Europe, with enough money to buy food and shelter and entertainment and education, to feel secure and rooted in a community – it really is random.

Another lesson we learn from this narrative is that we often repeat the mistakes of our parents, and add a few more mistakes for good measure. We are connected to our pasts and they have influence on us – often more than we might notice. And unless we become aware of the influences we are destined to act them out. It is not for nothing that the most repeated commandment in bible is to remember that we were slaves in Egypt in order not to treat people lower down the socio-economic scale than we now are as we were once treated.

And another lesson is that life is not fair. God – or the universe – can appear to us to be random. There is no causal or mechanistic relationship between good people having good lives and vice versa. So we must not judge those who are unfortunate in their lives, and we must work to remedy the unfairness. When their bloods cry out, not only God listens, we must too.

Where does this lead us? The bloods of our brothers and sisters call out to us – the word is in the plural in bible to tell us, say the rabbis, that everyone is connected to many others – no life is in isolation, not even Hevel who is almost vapour, who never married or had children – even Hevel has bloods – he is connected to the rest of humanity.

In today’s world of increasing unrest, of wars and political uprisings and hurricanes and storms, of terrorism and uncertainty there are huge movements of people who are severed from their ancestral lands, refugees from their villages and cities. There were 31.1 million new internal displacements by conflict, violence and disasters in 2016. (1) This is the equivalent of one person forced to flee every second. Be they the Rohynga Muslims fleeing Myanmar or the people escaping civil war in Syria, be they the people desperately crossing the Mediterranean sea in flimsy boats and arriving destitute at the foot of Italy, or the more than five thousand who drowned in that sea in 2016 meaning that on average, 14 people died every single day last year in the Mediterranean trying to find safety or a better life in Europe.

Their bloods call out to us – what are we going to do?  Life is not fair but it is not for us to accept our privilege and ignore what others suffer. Jewish tradition reminds us that only one human being was created originally so that no one can say, ‘my father was greater than your father.’ In other words, every human being is unique and inherently precious (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5).

We have a responsibility to each other. As Jews, as human beings, we have to check our privilege and work for justice for the people who need it. As we begin this new year having reminded ourselves with the succah of the fragility of our lives and transience of material possessions, we are reminded too that other people’s lives are even more fragile right now, their material possessions lost or even never existing. And we must apply ourselves to the tikkun, to being the support of our fellow human beings, and to helping God create a better world for us all to live in.

(1) http://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2017/