Sermon: Shabbat B’reishit – taking responsibility when things go wrong

Written by Rabbi Josh Levy — 22 October 2022

“It wasn’t my fault, she made me do it.”

“It wasn’t my fault, the snake told me to.”

So begins the human story.  With a denial of responsibility.

 

God has given Adam and Eve one negative commandment, one ‘thou shalt not’ – ‘don’t eat from that tree’ – and they have messed it up.

And in their moment of error, of failure, each of them refuses to take even a share of the responsibility.
Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake.

According to one rabbinic account, God, in divine frustration, takes away the snake’s ability to speak before he even gets to state his case. God knows that he too will find a way to pass on responsibility – “It’s not my fault they listened to me,” he would argue, “I’m just a snake – You’re God, You made them”. Or perhaps, “You made me. What did You expect me to do?”

It is a pattern to be repeated in the next generation. After killing Abel, what is Cain’s response? “Ha-shomer achi anochi” – “Am I my brother’s keeper?” What responsibility is it of mine?

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One of the ways we might engage with the first 11 chapters of Torah – the universal stories that are about all of us, before the Torah turns its attention to Abraham and the particularistic story of one people – is to ask what they are saying about human nature.
The story of Eve and Adam in Eden names a fundamental truth about us.

That it is hard to be honest with ourselves and others – about what we have done, about the share of liability we should bear when things go wrong.
Each blames the other. No one in this story says, “Yes, they did something wrong, but I did something wrong too.”

Over the last few weeks, we have seen this pattern amply demonstrated in our national politics.
After a shambolic few weeks in which government has failed in the most basic of its duties, almost every actor remains unrepentant.

Responsibility must always lie elsewhere. There is always someone else to blame – the BBC, the pension funds, the markets.

The fault, we are told, lies in the response not in the act. It is not that we did something that was ill-thought through, despite multiple warnings to the contrary, but we went ‘too far and too fast’. We know what that is supposed to mean: if only they were quicker, they were smarter, they would have been able to keep up, to cope with our brilliance.

No statement of responsibility has been forthcoming from those who enabled either person or policy:
Not from the newspapers or parliamentary colleagues who promoted this vision, who preached the value of disruption. Nothing from those who proclaimed our now soon to be former Prime Minister as ready for the task, or her mini budget as transformative and stunning.
Suddenly they swing without a moment of recognition of their role in that which has happened – Nothing to see here. Nothing to do with us.

We have now heard a second prime ministerial resignation speech in less than four months with barely a hint of remorse. The fundamental message? That, well, this wasn’t my fault. And now, the extraordinary possibility that we may return to the deliverer of the first of those speeches without any evidence of reflection, of change, of making amends.

No recognition that to be in authority – as they were – is to be the author. And therefore they need to own the consequences of their authorship.

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Of course, it is hard to name our own authorship. To own the implications of our action and our inaction.
It is, inevitably, something with which we struggle. That is part of our very nature – which is what the story of Eden reminds us.

Yet this is a fundamental Jewish value.

It is the core message of the period of the year just ended. That we need at least once a year to take stock. In the quiet of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, standing in that moment, to be honest with ourselves and with God. We can’t pretend that we didn’t know, that someone else made us do it, that if only someone else had behaved differently everything would have been ok. In the Yom Kippur liturgy we proclaim that God sees into our hearts and minds. God knows the reality, and it gives us the ability to acknowledge it too.

Because, as human beings, we are authors of what we do. We are capable of thinking through the implications of our actions, and our inaction.

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There is an interesting expression of this idea in the context of rabbinic damages law. This grapples with questions of how financial liability might be apportioned in case of physical damage.

There is a concept there of mu’ad – being forewarned. It is specifically brought to refer to an ox that gores the animal of another person. A shor mu’ad, a ‘forewarned’ ox, is one that has a repeated pattern of goring, and so the owner has full liability in that case for not taking enough care – if you know your ox can do damage then you are fully responsible when it does.

But what about when people cause damages to property?

The Mishnah states ‘adam mu’ad l’olam’ – a human being always has the status of mu’ad – of one who is forewarned. A human being is always fully liable. That is, as human beings we are always responsible for what we break, for the consequences of what we do. Even if it is unintentional, even – the Mishnah states – if we are asleep, we cannot separate ourselves from the consequences of our actions.
We are, ultimately, the actor, the author, the originator.

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And, importantly, it is only when we take that responsibility that we are able to begin to restore and rebuild. According to one of the most powerful midrashim – rabbinic tellings – of the story of Eden, God came in gently, was ready to forgive Adam for eating from the fruit of the tree. And God would have done so, but for Adam’s refusal to accept responsibility. Adam and Eve were not banished from the garden of Eden until they rejected God by arguing about their role, instead blaming others. It was that act, rather than the eating of the fruit that sealed their fate – not the disobedience but the refusal to take responsibility for having done so.

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“It wasn’t my fault, she made me do it.”
“It wasn’t my fault, the snake told me to”
“What are you looking at me for, I’m just a snake.”

It is part of our reality as human beings that it is hard to own our part in something going wrong. But as human beings, ‘adam mu’ad l’olam’ – we are always forewarned, always the author, always liable for our part in what we do, for what we break.

As Conservative MPs choose yet another Prime Minister for this country, perhaps this time they will ask one important question of their candidates – will you take responsibility for what you do. Or if things go wrong, will you always blame it on the snake?

And perhaps, we too will learn to ask ourselves the same question.