If leadership is the solution, what's the problem? On this, the Torah couldn't be more specific.

It's a failure of responsibility. The early chapters of Barashid focus on two stories,

Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, and both are about a specific kind of failure. First, Adam and Eve, as we know,

they sin, embarrassed and ashamed, they hide, only to discover you can't hide from God. This is what

the text says. The Lord God called to the man, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden,

and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

The man said, the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? The woman said,

The serpent deceived me, and I ate. Both insist that it wasn't their fault. Adam blames the

woman, the woman blames the servant, and the result is they're both punished and exiled from Eden.

Adam and Eve deny personal responsibility.

They say, in effect, it wasn't me.

The second story is more tragic,

the first instance of sibling rivalry in the Torah

and the first murder.

Here's the text.

Kane said to his brother Abel. Then when they were in the field,

Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is your brother

Abel? I don't know, he replied, am I my brother's keeper? The Lord said, what have you done?

Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

Kane doesn't deny personal responsibility. He doesn't say it wasn't me or it wasn't my fault.

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