The Building Blocks of Cities

In “Of Man and Earth,” we learned that Adam’s first role upon his creation was to work and guard the Garden of Eden:

 The Lord God took the man, and He placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it [לעבדה] and to guard it [לשמרה].

Beresheet 2:15

God told Adam not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In turn, Adam told Hava not only to abstain from eating from the tree, but also not to touch the tree, lest she die. We learn this by observing Hava’s response to the serpent when he tried to trick her into eating from the tree; she explained that God commanded them: 

You shall not eat of it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.

Beresheet 3:3

God never told Adam not to touch the tree; thus, we learn that Adam added a stringency to what God commanded without qualifying it as a stringency. 

Now, the serpent was quite a cunning creature. The serpent took advantage of the situation and preyed on Hava’s misunderstanding; the serpent urged her to touch the tree and in so doing, proved to her she would not die. 

After seeing that the serpent spoke the truth, Hava reasoned that eating the fruit wouldn’t bring death either. The stringency Adam added without qualification caused Hava to lose sight of the essence of God’s command. Thus, the receiver of the command, Adam, lost all honor for the command when he saw Hava did not die from actually eating the fruit. Suddenly, “the eyes of both of them were opened” (Beresheet 3:7); Adam and Hava knew what was good and evil. 

Now, one may ask: isn’t it good to know good from evil? Yet right and wrong differ from good and evil — the former represents the objective, the latter represents the subjective. Good and evil is processed through one’s subjective faculties: intellect, emotions, desires. Right and wrong depends only on what God commands us; not on one’s feelings, logic, or other subjective factors. 

Only God is able to pronounce something to be good or evil, for He is the Master and Creator of everything. Repeatedly we read in Beresheet, “and He saw that it was good” (Beresheet 1:4-25). Nonetheless, after eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, mankind took on the role of assessing good and evil, thus entering a subjective mode of existence. This enabled us to divorce ourselves from God’s will and justify ourselves and our actions through our intellect and logic. By presuming to be a judge of good and evil, man attempts to subvert God’s role; as a result, recognizing His mastery is at constant odds with our subjective desires, emotions, and experiences. 

God exiled Adam and Hava from their idyllic life in the Garden of Eden and proclaims:

Behold, man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil, and now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever.

Beresheet 3:22

The Tree of Life is compared to God’s Torah. Adam and Hava, having usurped God’s role and entering a subjective mode of existence, consequently divorced themselves from recognition of His mastery and were no longer able to benefit from His Torah, His instruction. 

Thus, Adam and Hava were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and with this came several curses. We will analyze the following curse:

To Adam [God] said, “Because you did as your wife said and ate of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ Cursed be the ground [אדמה] because of you; By hard labor [בעצבון] shall you eat of it all the days of your life. And it will cause thorns and thistles to grow for you, and you shall eat the herbs of the field. By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground [אדמה] — for from it you were taken. For dust [עפר] you are, and to dust [עפר] you shall return… And the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to till the soil [לעבד את האדמה], from which he had been taken.

Beresheet 3:17-23

God created Adam from the earth outside the idyllic Garden of Eden, then placed Adam into the Garden of Eden to work it and guard it. Adam was meant to cultivate the idyllic reality God placed him in, and in return, He would provide Adam with every need; it was a direct, tangible relationship. 

Not so after the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. You see, from the Garden of Eden, Adam was meant to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Beresheet 1:28). However, following the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and his wife were sent back to the very soil that Adam was originally made from. Adam’s starting point, from which he would populate God’s creation, was no longer the soil of the idyllic Garden of Eden; now he would have to cultivate soil that was cursed (as a result of their actions); he would have to work hard, by the sweat of his brow. Even then, after all this hard work, there would be thorns and thistles growing. Adam would know no rest, and when his days came to an end, he would go right back to the dust from which he was taken. 

The relationship with God was no longer as direct. To be sure, work in and of itself was not the issue in order to maintain a direct relationship with God; after all, Adam’s role was to work the soil of the Garden of Eden. Indeed, in the context of this work, Adam had a very revealed relationship with God. Rather, the issue now was that tedious obstacles and challenges would be intrinsic to Adam’s work. No longer did God bless Adam’s work to yield fruit in the way it did in the Garden of Eden. Adam’s mind and body were consumed by trying to stay one step ahead of these obstacles and challenges. It is as if God was saying, “In the Garden of Eden, you didn't recognize Me as the Master. Now it will be you who will have to master nature.” 

Of course, it is impossible for us to master nature for we are not its master, only God is. We can cultivate it, we can use what God gave us and partner with God, but we cannot master it. These challenges, which were seemingly agricultural in nature, had nothing to do with Adam’s ability to cultivate land; rather, they were a curse that came as a result of purely moral failings. God removed Himself, to some degree, from His relationship with mankind. From then on, our labor consumed us, and our consciousness of God’s mastery was naturally diminished.

Nonetheless, life continued. Adam and Hava were fruitful and multiplied and had two sons: Cain, a tiller of the soil, and Hevel, a shepherd. The Torah relates to us that both brothers brought an offering to God; Hevel brought the choicest of his flock while Cain brought the most inferior of his crops. God favored Hevel’s animal sacrifice, but not Cain’s offering of the inferior crops. 

It is worth noting that crops, given the new post-Garden of Eden reality, were now difficult to grow. It is much harder to get a consistently good crop yield; if the crops got infested, the whole field could be affected. One needs to be constantly involved in problem solving and disaster management when it comes to crops. On the other hand, flocks and cattle can often be more resilient. They can eat imperfect pastures; illness and death do not necessarily impact the rest of the flock. It is likely an easier task to bring the choicest of one’s flock, of which there would be quite a few, than the choicest of one’s crops, of which there may very well be few.

Furthermore, it is interesting to mention that many of our nation’s role models – including our forefathers Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov; our greatest leader, Moshe Rabbenu; our greatest king, David Hamelekh; and one of the greatest Tannaim, Rabbi Aqiva – were all shepherds. Shepherds’ minds are freer; they have time to think, ponder, and reflect on God’s world. Shepherding is indeed a lifestyle more suitable for cultivating a relationship with the Creator. Thus, we may perhaps understand Hevel’s choice of profession as a herder, and why this profession positioned him for a relationship with Hashem that involved less stumbling blocks.

Cain had more to contend with; he was distressed that his offering was not accepted by God. God, knowing Cain’s innermost thoughts, spoke to Cain:

Why are you annoyed, and why has your countenance fallen? Is it not so that if you improve, it will be forgiven you? If you do not improve, however, at the entrance, sin is lying, and to you is its longing, but you can rule over it.

Beresheet 4:6-7

God is essentially telling Cain that everyone is challenged by the temptation to sin. If we work through the given challenge, we can change the dynamics of reality as we know it. A sin that previously ruled over us as a master does over a slave, can be conquered and subdued, as if it never ruled over us.  However, if we let these challenges and our subsequent sinning define us, the challenge will continue to drive us to sin. Each time we repeat a sin, the sin becomes more and more a part of one’s fundamental fabric of existence. As the adage goes: first you form the habit, then the habit forms you; you become a slave to the sin, seemingly unable to resist. However, even then, you can, and should, work to overcome it. 

Cain, unfortunately, didn’t take well to God’s advice. He allowed his jealousy to grow until it became his master, thus signing a deal with the devil, so to speak. He became like a rabid dog, losing all control over himself. Yet the key difference is that a rabid dog has no choice in its actions. Cain chose to be enslaved; a slavery of choice is considerably more oppressive than that of a rabid dog enslaved to its disease.  And so, Cain kills his only brother; the first murder in the Torah. Cain became so consumed by his self-serving, subjective emotions, that rather than resolving to bring the best of his crops next time, he allowed his jealousy to take control of him and drive him to murder. Cain chose to eliminate his brother, who served God correctly and stood as a constant reminder that he could do better, rather than work on his own service of God.

God came to Cain and told him:

What have you done? Hark! Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the earth. And now, you are cursed even more than the ground, which opened its mouth to take your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the soil, it will not continue to give its strength to you; you shall be a wanderer and an exile in the land.

Beresheet 4:10-12

God essentially sentenced Cain to be a nomad, a hunter gatherer. The ground beneath Cain’s feet no longer yielded produce, not because God added a curse to the soil itself on top of the curse God gave to Adam, but rather because Cain himself became cursed. The blood of Hevel, that Cain shed, “cried” out to God. This “cry” came forth from the very soil that sustained Cain, and it would forever plague every attempt Cain would make to work it. The soil “remembered” Cain’s deed and thus God made it so that Cain could not cultivate it.

Being able to settle is critical to developing a relationship with God. The place you settle is where you hope God will bless the fruits of your labor; this is essential in one’s relationship with God as it allows one to recognize His mastery. However, if one is forced to constantly be on the move, one has less and less time to focus on God; and one cannot settle if the soil yields no produce. Thus, Cain was sentenced to be unable to work the land and would always be on the move, and with this, there was a greater rift between him and God.

Once Cain was exiled, he and his wife bore a child, Enoch. In Enoch’s honor, Cain built the first city mentioned in the Torah, naming it after his son. That’s the end of Cain’s story in the written Torah; it could almost seem that it ends on a neutrally positive note. After all, Cain built a city for his son…that’s a good thing, right? Building a city is no small feat, and doing it in honor of one’s child seems like a positive thing to do. Seems like a decent end to the story.Let’s analyze the situation more closely. Cain was no longer able to cultivate land due to his grievous sin and was sentenced to being a wanderer on the earth. He had to constantly be on the move – not a simple life. In fact, it’s a very difficult life; a life filled with a lot of uncertainty. A city, given the circumstances Cain faced, seemed to be a practical solution. Afterall, there was no use in owning land, for it could not be cultivated by his hand, and being on the move was physically and emotionally draining.

Building a city was a logical, practical step. First, let’s understand what a city is. Physically speaking, humans have primary needs and secondary needs. Primary needs are needed for immediate survival: food, water, shelter, etc. Secondary needs are derivatives of primary needs; they are not needed for immediate survival, but they are necessary in order to be able to settle and support primary needs. 

Let’s take a look at the following example: one is growing a large field of crops and is getting ready to till it. The crops are a primary need. Without them, one does not eat and therefore does not survive. Now, in order to till the field, one uses a horse. However, without a horseshoe, the horse, over time, is not able to complete the task at hand. Thus, one needs to go to a blacksmith to buy a horseshoe. The horseshoe, fashioned by the blacksmith, is a secondary need. It is not immediately necessary for survival, but it ensures a system by which one can maintain their field, which in turn yields primary needs. 

What’s all this got to do with a city? Well, a city is a place where primary and secondary needs are largely divorced. A city mainly produces secondary needs in exchange for primary needs found outside the city. Why would Cain favor such a set up? It is worth noting that Cain was not the only one who “wandered.” As we read in Beresheet:

And Cain went forth from before the Lord, and he dwelt in the land of the wanderers, to the east of Eden.

Beresheet 4:16

There were other hunter-gatherers like him, never able to settle and cultivate the land. If we think about it, Cain, and these other people, were leading a life almost entirely focused on constantly relocating in hope of finding their primary needs. So Cain makes himself useful by building a city where he, and presumably others, can focus on producing secondary needs in exchange for primary needs produced outside the city. Thus, the city became a place where people were divorced from land and at the same time completely reliant on those who work it. The city’s sole purpose is the production of secondary needs; as such, they had to be considerably more efficient at producing secondary needs in hopes of encouraging the demand of those living outside cities for their products, who in turn would sell or trade the primary products of survival – food, building materials, etc.. 

Although for Cain and the other nomads this solution was a practical one, it not only stemmed from a regression in the human relationship with God, but it can be argued that this solution furthered the regression. 

We start with Adam and Hava in the Garden of Eden, an idyllic reality where Hashem’s mastery was tangible. After Adam and Hava sinned with the Tree of Knowledge, man became an usurper of God’s role, operating through the lens of subjectivity and competing with God’s Mastery. As a result, God banished Adam and Hava from the Garden of Eden and cursed the ground to be difficult to cultivate, thus causing a further rift in mankind’s relationship with God. 

A generation later, Cain allowed feelings of jealousy to take control of him, a direct result of living a subjective reality, thus murdering his brother Hevel. God cursed Cain to not be able to cultivate the ground at all. 

Due to the fact that Cain was no longer able to cultivate the ground, he became a wanderer, and the nomadic lifestyle naturally prompted the building of a city. The city was perhaps the best Cain could do, but it can be argued that it caused an even further rift between man and God. It’s true that God wouldn’t bless the work of Cain’s hands if he were to work the land, thus making Hashem’s mastery more difficult to perceive – but a nomad is still forced to rely on God for sustenance, which gives room to recognize God as Master and Creator. In contrast, the divorce between man and God deepens in a city; everything is built on man’s innovation.

We have witnessed an extreme urbanization in recent centuries, and perhaps because we are so accustomed to it, it is difficult to fully grasp the implications this urbanization has on our relationship with God; after all, we know nothing else. 

Indeed, even in the context of extreme urbanization, there are many God-fearing people. One should be God fearing in any circumstance, but we must look to the stories of Bereisheet to examine the circumstances conducive to a relationship with God, and circumstances which are not conducive to a relationship with Him. 

Although one may have great faith in God despite living on the seventh floor of a high-rise apartment building, where downstairs you find bars, night clubs, restaurants, and shops, one is tangibly divorced from God’s creations and from the natural rhythm of life He created.

A city, in its origins and nature, is divorced from God’s Mastery. As we learn in Of Man and Earth, being able to perceive God’s mastery is a fundamental basis for being able to serve God on His terms.

Cain’s city was a symbol of the deepening divorce of mankind from God’s mastery, from His creations. The mission of our generation is to repair the broken relationship with God and His creations, to return to the land and to the role He made for us.