I am blessed with four daughters. Each of them is stubbornly, audaciously her own person. And one of the hardest things I try to do as a parent, some days more successfully than others, is figure out how to raise human beings who are both courageously their own people and partners in one household — carrying real responsibility for something larger than themselves.
That’s not only a parenting struggle. It’s the question underlying every attempt to build a society.
The Bible’s opening story is about just that: the dangers and opportunities inherent in building a society. Cain (Kayin) is a landowner, a person whose name evokes kinyan (acquisition, possession), and he kills his brother, Abel, out of jealousy, pride and ego. God asks him the question that motivates all moral consciousness: “Where is Abel (Hevel), your brother?” Cain answers: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
His response reflects the older brother’s propensity for self-interest over restraint, rights over responsibilities, individual advantage over collective accountability. The moment kinyan, what is mine, becomes more important than achi, my brother, we have already begun to walk in Cain’s footsteps. God condemns Cain to become a na va-nad, a restless wanderer, and places a protective mark upon him. God becomes the very keeper Cain refused to be for his brother.
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The question of moral responsibility is the question of the Bible and humanity. If the Torah opens with someone who eschews that responsibility, it returns to the exact same question by the time we reach this week’s Torah reading, Matot-Masei, echoed almost word for word by Moses (Moshe).
Two and a half tribes, Reuven, Gad and half of Menashe, ask if they can stay behind in the land east of the Jordan River, where the topography is good for grazing. Moses’ response is telling: “Shall your brothers go to war while you sit here?” (Numbers 32:6).
Acheichem — your brothers — is reminiscent of the world’s first murder, a haunting echo of Abel’s blood crying out from the ground. Maybe that’s what Moses hears when the tribes approach. He is bracing for another Cain. But he is wrong.
“We will build sheep pens for our flocks here, and cities for our little ones. But we ourselves will arm ourselves and go, hurrying, ahead of the children of Israel, until we have brought them to their place” (Numbers 32:16–17).
Despite Rashi‘s critique of their word order, flocks before children, this is a claim of profound relevance for every generation that follows. They will build the pens and cities, and settle their families, and then cross the river as chalutzim, pioneers, fighting for their land, alongside their brothers.
These tribes are Cain’s redemptive sequel. They answer the question Cain evaded. That covenant asks us neither to abandon our individual aspirations nor to absolutize them. They hold land and duty together, messily but honestly. They want the luscious land and the flocks, and the walled cities. And they know, just as clearly, that they belong to an inheritance no single tribe can claim alone. They build their own homes, and they cross the river to fight for their brothers’ homes. They are individually ambitious and collectively responsible.
This is the civic vision of the Bible. It is Cain checked by Abel and Abel driven by Cain. It is, in the words of psychologist Erich Fromm: having and being. It is, in the political theology of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, contract and covenant. It is modern-day Israel: the start-up nation and the reservist call-up.
So, when Moses accuses them, they don’t argue. They simply show him by restating the terms of the deal in his own words, “nachnu na’avor chalutzim lifnei Hashem, we will cross armed before the Lord,” and then they go and do it.
So how do we raise children who are individually driven and collectively responsible? The tribes are showing us. Not by asking them to surrender their individual ambition and drive. But by teaching them that it isn’t the whole story. You let them want the pasture, the flocks, their own room with the door closed, and you teach them that none of it means anything without a responsibility that extends outward.
We are living in a world that has forgotten how to hold these together. It reads private interests and public responsibility as antithetical. It sorts us into ever-narrower rooms. It says, like Cain, “I’m not my brother’s keeper, never was, never will be.” Reuven, Gad and half of Menashe turn Cain’s answer on its head and answer instead: Yes, we are our brothers’ keepers.
May we raise children, my four daughters, and yours, and all of them, who know both. That their lives are irreducibly their own. And that they cross the river first anyway.
This essay initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on July 11, 2026. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here.
