The Mark of Cain

Traveling abroad, I carry two passports that weigh me down like the sea monsters who menaced Odysseus and his crew. 

The United States is Charybdis, a giant whirlpool able to swallow an entire boat. Israel is the six-headed Scylla primed to snatch up a sailor in each of her jaws.

A trip I took recently to Scotland coincided with a visit by my president. People I met reviled Donald Trump. America’s vengeance-driven, authoritarian whirlpool, surrounded by a cult of personality, gave us something in common to fume about. 

I chose not to mention that I was also an Israeli citizen. The face of the gorgon, and the enabler of messianic settlers who kill innocents in the name of God, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes me feel ashamed to even think that he represents me.

When I moved to Tel Aviv in 2019, I considered myself a left-of-center Jew. I was sympathetic to the Palestinians’ quest for statehood, while wary of those whose wish-fulfillment was contingent upon the destruction of modern Israel. 

The invasion of my new country by Hamas on October 7, 2023, pushed me rightward. After the intruders’ orgy of bombing, burning, raping, kidnapping, and killing, I supported a strong response by Israel and agreed that the best outcome for the war was the annihilation of Hamas. The idea of a two-state solution shrank in my mind to a feeble pipe dream.

While I bemoaned the death of children and other non-combatants used as human shields by Hamas, I accepted the sad reality that the only way to root out the enemy was to fight them where they hid, under hospitals, schools, and civilian apartment buildings. What other choices were there? Inaction? Surrender?

As we near the end of our second year of fighting, I find my position shifting again. I have not joined those on the far left who shout “From the river to the sea,” as they call for the end of the Zionist state, nor do I brand Israel’s soldiers Nazis following a methodical plan of genocide. I do stand with those demanding an end to the war.  

Israel has now neutralized Hamas’s forces, while proving itself to be the supreme military power in the Middle East. Netanyahu’s pursuit of total victory and the complete eradication of Hamas is a fantasy; we can not destroy an idea.

It is time to stop the war for the sake of the hostages, Israel’s soldiers and civilians. We must stop it for the sake of the starving children and other innocents of Gaza. And, perhaps most importantly, we must stop the war for the sake of Israel’s soul.

The idea of trading a prison full of inmates, some of them convicted murderers, for 50 captives, more than half of whom are dead, infuriates me. Yet I would support that decision now if it brought this terrible conflict to a close. Every day the war goes on, it threatens to drag Israel to hell.

On my recent trip abroad, from Scotland, I traveled to Cambridge to attend a conference on the subject of evil. One American professor gave a paper on the mark of Cain in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.”

In the book, Dostoevsky references the murder of Abel by his older brother Cain. I always understood the Biblical story as a cautionary tale about sibling rivalry and the consequences of choosing evil over good.

Professor Michael Ossorgin posited that the mark God smears across Cain’s forehead is both a curse and a blessing. 

“The blessing bestows a divine shield of protection upon the murderer,” he reminded me. “It also provides an opportunity for Cain to choose the good,” he said. 

Ossorgin’s reading of Cain and Abel seemed novel. If that is because it is an unfamiliar non-Jewish reading of the text, so be it. The professor’s emphasis on redemption offers Israelis like me staring into the abyss a way to step away from the edge and into the light.

In the Torah, Cain moves to a place east of Eden and founds the city of Nod.  Christian tradition suggests that Cain eventually drowns in the great flood. Jewish midrash tells us he is later killed accidentally by his great-great grandson. Either way, he fades from the Biblical narrative after leaving Eden.

Though we touched on these details, as well as Cain’s righteous other brother Seth, the professor and I spent more time discussing the notion of Cain’s blessing.  I came away thinking that, as the kin of a marked man, I am smeared with Cain’s brand and must constantly choose which path I take. We all must.

Ending the war in Gaza now is a step toward the way of blessings.