The early history of humanity is told in the Torah is a series of disappointments.

God gives human beings freedom, which they then misuse.

Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. Cain murders Abel.

Within a relatively short time, the world before the flood has become dominated by violence.

All flesh had perverted its way on the earth. God creates order, man creates chaos. Even after

the flood, humanity in the form of the builders of Babel is guilty of hubris, thinking they can build a tower whose top

reaches heaven. Humans fail to respond to God, which is where Abraham enters the picture.

We're not quite sure at the beginning what it is that Abraham was being summoned to.

We know that he was commanded to leave his land, birthplace and father's

house and travel to the land which I will show you. But what he was to do there, we don't know. On this,

the Torah is silent. What was Abraham's mission? What made him special? What made him not simply a good

man in a bad age, as was Noah, but a leader

and the father of a nation of leaders. To decode the mystery, we have to record, recall what

the Torah has been signaling prior to this point. I suggested in previous essays that A, perhaps

the theme of the Torah, is a failure of responsibility.

Adam and Eve lacked personal responsibility.

Adam said it wasn't me, it was the woman.

Eve said it wasn't me, it was the serpent.

It is as if they were denying being the author of their own acts, as if they didn't understand

either freedom or the responsibility it entails.

Kane didn't deny personal responsibility.

He didn't say it wasn't me.

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