Where is Your Brother - Bereshit

Last night I read an article by Rabbi David Goldwasser.

He takes us back to the beginning of humanity, to a field where one brother has killed another.

And it got me to think about a question that really never stops being asked.

Ei Hevel Achicha? Where is Hevel your brother? Hashem knows where Hevel is, but does Cain still know who Hevel is? And perhaps as we begin Bereshit again, we need to ask ourselves, who has disappeared from our field of vision? Whose struggle have we stopped noticing? Who is waiting for us to remember the word brother? The Torah tells us that Cain rises against Hevel and kills him.

Then Hashem asks where his brother is.

Cain replies, Am I my brother's keeper? Rashi explains that Hashem begins with a question.

Why? To give Cain an opening for Teshuvah.

Instead of confronting him immediately with the accusation, Hashem leaves room for Cain to acknowledge what he has done.

The question is an invitation to come out of hiding.

The Zer HaShem Shon draws our attention to a startling Midrash.

We picture Cain overpowering Hevel, but Rabbi Yochanan teaches that Hevel was stronger.

In their struggle, Cain was beneath him.

Cain pleaded, there are only two of us.

If you kill me, what will you tell our father? Hevel was moved.

He had compassion for Cain.

He released him.

Then Cain rose and killed the brother who had spared him.

There is something unbearable about that sequence.

Hevel had the advantage.

He could have continued the struggle.

But Cain's appeal reached a place deeper than anger.

Hevel remembered their father.

He remembered their family.

He remembered that the man beneath him was his brother.

Cain received his life back through that compassion.