The faith of God.

There's a deep question at the heart of Jewish faith, and it's very rarely asked.

As the terror opens, we see God creating the universe day by day, bringing order out of chaos, life, out of inanimate matter, flora and fauna.

In all their wondrous diversity, at each sage, God sees what he has made and declares it good.

What then went wrong? How did evil enter the picture, setting in motion the drama of which the Torah, and in a sense the whole of history, is a record?

The short answer is man, humanity, us, homo sapiens.

We, alone of all life forms so far known to us, have free will, choice and moral responsibility.

Cats don't debate the ethics of killing mice.

Vampire bats do not become vegetarians.

Cows don't worry about global warming.

It's this complex capacity that we have to speak, think,

and choose between alternative courses of action that is at once our glory, our burden, and our shame.

When we do good, we are little lower than the angels.

But when we do evil, we fall lower than the beasts.

Why then did God take the risk of creating the one form of life capable of destroying the very order

he'd made and declared good? Why did God create us? That is the question posed by the Gomorrah

in Sanhedrin. When the Holy One, Blessed be he came to create man, he created a group of ministering angels

and asked them, do you agree that we should make man in our image? They replied,

Sovereign of the universe, what will be his deeds? God then showed them the future history

of humankind. The angels replied, what is man? That you are mindful of him? In other words, don't create him. God then

destroyed the angels. He created a second group and asked them the same question and they gave

the same answer. So God destroyed them. He then created a third group of angels and they replied

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