Craving Pity

In the morning we are continuing our teaching series on how to get along with families. We took a couple of weeks to talk about parents and this week we will focus on how to get along with siblings. Cain and Abel seemed like a good place to start for this one. The only thing I'm going to teach them is not to compare themselves to their siblings. I'm also going to tell only children to listen up because they need to learn not to compare themselves to others too. I picked up Biblical Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin to brush up on the story and to get some extra commentary on the story.

I appreciated his observation of Cain never saying that he was sorry. He never even responded to G-d's rebuke. Rabbi Telushkin connected that with a quote from Isaac Bashevis "People who don't show pity to others, crave it for themselves."