Author: Leslie Cook

All in the Family: Transactions

וְהָ֣אָדָ֔ם יָדַ֖ע אֶת־חַוָּ֣ה אִשְׁתּ֑וֹ וַתַּ֙הַר֙ וַתֵּ֣לֶד אֶת־קַ֔יִן וַתֹּ֕אמֶר קָנִ֥יתִי אִ֖ישׁ אֶת־יְהוָֽה׃ 

Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gained a male child with the help of the LORD.” (Gen. 4:1)

And so begins the tragedy of Cain, born to a mother who views his birth and her relationship to this son through a transactional lens. While קַ֔יִן (Cain) doesn’t derive from קָנִ֥יתִי (gained/acquired/purchased), the alliteration (ka-yin, kaniti) links his name to Eve’s description of his birth.

In contrast, we read of the birth of Abel simply:

וַתֹּ֣סֶף לָלֶ֔דֶת אֶת־אָחִ֖יו אֶת־הָ֑בֶל וַֽיְהִי־הֶ֙בֶל֙ רֹ֣עֵה צֹ֔אן וְקַ֕יִן הָיָ֖ה עֹבֵ֥ד אֲדָמָֽה׃

She then bore his brother Abel. Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain became a tiller of the soil. (Gen. 4:2)

Abel’s very name (הָ֑בֶל – Havel), meaning vapor or breath, alludes to his vulnerability, the vulnerability we usually associate with an infant. At the same time, the word can mean “worthless,” as in Ecclesiastes 1:2: הַכֹּל הֶבֶל (All is fruitless/worthless), contrasting with Cain’s worth, alluded to in Eve’s reference to “gain.”

Two infants, one referred to by his mother as gain or enrichment, the other as vulnerable and possibly of no value. And a father who is not in the picture after impregnating his wife. What a sad portrayal of the first human family. What could possibly go wrong?

The names of the infants and their mother’s attitude toward them also hint at their future. As Cain’s mother’s relationship with him is transactional, so is Cain’s relationship with God. How could it be otherwise? Children reflect the relationships they have with their parents in their own relationships as they grow. And Abel is but a breath, a brief and vulnerable life.

וַֽיְהִ֖י מִקֵּ֣ץ יָמִ֑ים וַיָּבֵ֨א קַ֜יִן מִפְּרִ֧י הָֽאֲדָמָ֛ה מִנְחָ֖ה לַֽיהוָֽה׃ 

In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the LORD from the fruit of the soil;

וְהֶ֨בֶל הֵבִ֥יא גַם־ה֛וּא מִבְּכֹר֥וֹת צֹאנ֖וֹ וּמֵֽחֶלְבֵהֶ֑ן וַיִּ֣שַׁע יְהוָ֔ה אֶל־הֶ֖בֶל וְאֶל־מִנְחָתֽוֹ׃ 

and Abel, for his part, brought the choicest of the firstlings of his flock. The LORD paid heed to Abel and his offering,

וְאֶל־קַ֥יִן וְאֶל־מִנְחָת֖וֹ לֹ֣א שָׁעָ֑ה וַיִּ֤חַר לְקַ֙יִן֙ מְאֹ֔ד וַֽיִּפְּל֖וּ פָּנָֽיו׃ 

but to Cain and his offering He paid no heed. Cain was much distressed and his face fell.

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר יְהוָ֖ה אֶל־קָ֑יִן לָ֚מָּה חָ֣רָה לָ֔ךְ וְלָ֖מָּה נָפְל֥וּ פָנֶֽיךָ׃ 

And the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you distressed, And why is your face fallen?” 

הֲל֤וֹא אִם־תֵּיטִיב֙ שְׂאֵ֔ת וְאִם֙ לֹ֣א תֵיטִ֔יב לַפֶּ֖תַח חַטָּ֣את רֹבֵ֑ץ וְאֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ תְּשׁ֣וּקָת֔וֹ וְאַתָּ֖ה תִּמְשָׁל־בּֽוֹ׃ 

“Surely, if you do right, There is uplift. But if you do not do right Sin couches at the door; Its urge is toward you, Yet you can be its master.” (Gen. 4: 3-7)

There is no suggestion in this story that Cain experiences loving intimacy, not with his parents, not with God. Cain brings an offering “in the course of time,” eventually, without any sense of urgency. The offering isn’t remarkable. It’s not singled out as the best of what he has to offer or as first fruits. There is no sacrifice involved.

Cain’s offering, like his life in general, is transactional in nature. There seems to be an assumption in the text that an offering is due. Cain brings the offering but with a minimum expenditure of energy and resources.

In contrast, Abel brings the choicest (וּמֵֽחֶלְבֵהֶ֑ן) of the firstlings of his flock. He brings to God the fat of the lambs, his most precious lambs, the firstlings. It is easy to imagine that for a shepherd, these firstlings have more than economic value. Giving them up is a sacrifice, economically and emotionally painful.

Before heaping all the responsibility for a transactional worldview on Cain, though, or on Eve, his mother . . . or even on humanity . . . I wonder. Is God, too, implicated in this view of relationship?

While the text doesn’t explicitly state that God requires sacrifice in exchange for giving life and a beautiful and abundant world in which to live it, where else would Cain and his brother, Abel, have gotten the idea that a sacrifice was required?  And the text does tell us that God appreciates Abel’s sacrifice more than Cain’s. In this way, the story may suggest that God, too, has a transactional view of relationships. There is an implied economy of being in this universe.

This transactional view turns out to be the basis of animal sacrifice, as we will see in later chapters.

The Root of Transaction: Desire

The worldview presented in the Cain and Abel story is very different from that of Genesis 1-3, but the seeds of the latter are in the former. Compare these two verses, one from the Creation Story and the other from the current story of Cain and Abel:

וְאֶל־אִישֵׁךְ֙ תְּשׁ֣וּקָתֵ֔ךְ וְה֖וּא יִמְשָׁל־בָּֽךְ׃

“Yet your urge shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” (Gen. 3:16)

חַטָּ֣את רֹבֵ֑ץ וְאֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ תְּשׁ֣וּקָת֔וֹ וְאַתָּ֖ה תִּמְשָׁל־בּֽוֹ׃

“Sin couches at the door; Its urge is toward you, Yet you can be its master.” (Gen. 4:7)

The first verse, Gen. 3:16 is in the context of God telling Adam and Eve how things will be going forward. In a word with sexual overtones, teshukatech, God declares that a woman’s longing and desire (urge) will be toward her husband — and that he will rule (yimshol,יִמְשָׁל) over her.

In the current story of Cain and Abel, Gen. 4:7, God warns Cain of sin, personified and “couching” at the door. The longing and desire (teshukato, urge) of this sin, a seductive, sinister, lurking external entity, is toward Cain — but as God instructs, Cain can rule (timshol, תִּמְשָׁל) over it if he chooses.

Why is this juxtaposition of detail important? Because both Adam and Cain, representing humanity, are set to rule over creation, over all creatures both seen and unseen, but both find it exceedingly difficult to do. They can scarcely rule over themselves. And as they fail in their task, they blame what appears to be external to them, Adam blaming Eve and Cain his brother, Abel.

Neither recognizes their own responsibility in the choices that result in sin. Both bring into existence the sin lurking seductively outside the door waiting for the right moment to spring into action through human agency. Sin, like the love and abundance imagined in Gen. 1-3, is mere potential until human choices make it reality. Then it becomes part of a person, desire rules human nature, and transactions prevail over gifting, subverting the intended order of creation.

The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Even the ground is called to task for swallowing the blood of Cain’s dead brother, Abel, as well as Cain for spilling that blood onto the ground:

וַיֹּ֖אמֶר מֶ֣ה עָשִׂ֑יתָ ק֚וֹל דְּמֵ֣י אָחִ֔יךָ צֹעֲקִ֥ים אֵלַ֖י מִן־הָֽאֲדָמָֽה׃ 

Then He said, “What have you done? Hark, your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!

וְעַתָּ֖ה אָר֣וּר אָ֑תָּה מִן־הָֽאֲדָמָה֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר פָּצְתָ֣ה אֶת־פִּ֔יהָ לָקַ֛חַת אֶת־דְּמֵ֥י אָחִ֖יךָ מִיָּדֶֽךָ׃ 

Therefore, you shall be more cursed than the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

כִּ֤י תַֽעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה לֹֽא־תֹסֵ֥ף תֵּת־כֹּחָ֖הּ לָ֑ךְ נָ֥ע וָנָ֖ד תִּֽהְיֶ֥ה בָאָֽרֶץ׃ 

If you till the soil, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. You shall become a ceaseless wanderer on earth.” (Gen. 4:10-12)

The ground, already cursed in Gen. 17, withholding its abundance from Adam, will now withhold its abundance from Cain, Adam’s first son. And the humans, living but alienated from the connectedness of all being, increase the distance between themselves and a living but unyielding earth. Cain, condemned to wander the earth, leaves the presence of the Lord, settles in another land with his wife, fathers a son, Enoch, and founds a city in his son’s name:

וַיֵּ֥צֵא קַ֖יִן מִלִּפְנֵ֣י יְהוָ֑ה וַיֵּ֥שֶׁב בְּאֶֽרֶץ־נ֖וֹד קִדְמַת־עֵֽדֶן׃ 

Cain left the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. 

וַיֵּ֤דַע קַ֙יִן֙ אֶת־אִשְׁתּ֔וֹ וַתַּ֖הַר וַתֵּ֣לֶד אֶת־חֲנ֑וֹךְ וַֽיְהִי֙ בֹּ֣נֶה עִ֔יר וַיִּקְרָא֙ שֵׁ֣ם הָעִ֔יר כְּשֵׁ֖ם בְּנ֥וֹ חֲנֽוֹךְ׃ 

Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he then founded a city, and named the city after his son Enoch. (Gen. 4:16-17)

From Abundance to Scarcity

So we are no longer in the world of the first three chapters of Genesis, a world filled with joyful energy, overflowing abundance and harmony. A world in which all beings share the spiritual round table. In the Cain and Abel story, we find ourselves in a world of separation and scarcity, a transactional world that assigns value to living beings, a world of competition, envy, desire, violence and animal sacrifice.

The story of Cain and Abel is one of the increasing alienation of Cain from his parents, from his own brother, from God, from humanity, and finally from the earth itself. What is the source of Cain’s anger? What causes the tragedy and isolation of his life?

The literary details of the story suggest that tragedy begins with Cain’s transactional relationships from the day he is born. What an odd statement Eve makes about his birth, that she “acquired” a child as though he is an item she purchased at the market. There is a profound emptiness associated with that word in this context. We can only imagine the additional pain Cain must experience as he learns that God notices Cain’s brother, Abel, and favors Abel’s offering over Cain’s own.

Cain’s response to God taking note of Abel’s offering is another story element that builds on the transactional theme. Cain brings an offering — and expects a particular return for it, turning the offering into a transaction.

In contrast, the first humans, Adam and Eve, are part of an abundant world they share with non-human animals and with God. They are gardeners, caring for the world God gifts to them. “In the beginning,” they live in harmony with their world.

Did the characters “evolve” through the story? The text suggests, perhaps not. At the end of Gen. 4, Adam and Eve once again have a child, a third son:

וַיֵּ֨דַע אָדָ֥ם עוֹד֙ אֶת־אִשְׁתּ֔וֹ וַתֵּ֣לֶד בֵּ֔ן וַתִּקְרָ֥א אֶת־שְׁמ֖וֹ שֵׁ֑ת כִּ֣י שָֽׁת־לִ֤י אֱלֹהִים֙ זֶ֣רַע אַחֵ֔ר תַּ֣חַת הֶ֔בֶל כִּ֥י הֲרָג֖וֹ קָֽיִן׃

A son is gone — a replacement provided. Like Eve’s comment about Cain, that she “acquired” a son, her comment about Seth, that he replaces Abel, leaves us with a feeling of emptiness. Eve’s unemotional evaluation of her situation is surprising. It’s hard to imagine life improving for this family as they move into their future.

The story of Seth’s birth continues in Gen. 5:1-3. We return to a theme of Gen. 1, a hierarchical worldview in which Adam is to his third son, Seth, as God is to Adam:

This is the record of Adam’s line.—When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God;

זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בְּרָאָ֑ם וַיְבָ֣רֶךְ אֹתָ֗ם וַיִּקְרָ֤א אֶת־שְׁמָם֙ אָדָ֔ם בְּי֖וֹם הִבָּֽרְאָֽם

male and female He created them. And when they were created, He blessed them and called them (hu)man… (Gen. 5:1,2) 

וַֽיְחִ֣י אָדָ֗ם שְׁלֹשִׁ֤ים וּמְאַת֙ שָׁנָ֔ה וַיּ֥וֹלֶד בִּדְמוּת֖וֹ כְּצַלְמ֑וֹ וַיִּקְרָ֥א אֶת־שְׁמ֖וֹ שֵֽׁת׃

When Adam had lived 130 years, he begot a son in his likeness after his image, and he named him Seth.

God creates and humans give birth . . . And as the humans are in the image and “likeness” of God, so Seth is in his father’s “likeness” and “image.” Do these echoes of the first chapter of Genesis suggest a repetition of the experience of the first family . . . Or are they more hopeful, foreshadowing a new creation, coming in the events of the Flood and following?We leave the story skeptical of a future built on either a transactional or a hierarchical foundation . . . But perhaps also with some hope that life goes on, and a fresh start may go better.

Postscript on the Cain and Abel story

In Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Prof. Yuval Noah Harari describes the evolution of religions from animism to polytheism to monotheism. Of animism, he says, “When animism was the dominant belief system, human norms and values had to take into consideration the outlook and interests of a multitude of other beings, such as animals, plants, fairies and ghosts…Hunter-gatherers picked and pursued wild plants and animals, which could be seen as equal in status to Homo sapiens. The fact that man hunted sheep did not make sheep inferior to man, just as the fact that tigers hunted man did not make man inferior to tigers. Beings communicated with one another directly and negotiated the rules governing their shared habitat.”

Conversely, “farmers owned and manipulated plants and animals, and could hardly degrade themselves by negotiating with their possessions. Hence the first religious effect of the Agricultural Revolution was to turn plants and animals from equal members of a spiritual round table into property.”

Perhaps these different worldviews are one way to think about the difference between Gen. 1-3 and Gen. 4-7. What if the first chapters of Genesis represent a hunter-gatherer worldview while the story of Cain and Abel points to a worldview more closely associated with an agricultural setting? If the agricultural revolution signifies a transition from a world in which “beings communicate with one another directly and negotiate the rules governing their shared habitat” to a transactional world of ownership and wealth, it also signifies a transition from a mindset of abundance and gifting to scarcity, greed and jealousy. Possessions necessitate guarding, and unequal distribution generates desire and envy.

Yet as Charles Eisenstein points out in Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition, we are not fated to live in one world or the other. Our world is what we make it, the story we create and in which we choose to stand. Harari, too, tells us that the human ability to create fictions, to imagine, and then to persuade many others to believe our fictions, is a unique characteristic of Sapiens. It is that unique ability that allowed humans to “rule over” creation.

Reimagining Creation, Our Human Purpose

At any moment, we can place ourselves back in the Garden, that world in which all beings communicate “with one another directly” and negotiate “the rules governing” our “shared habitat.” We can share the spiritual round table. We can create a world of abundance, freeing ourselves to share and live harmoniously with each other, other beings and with the earth itself.

Or our existence can be transactional, measured, even self-serving. We can view the world as a place of scarcity, guarding our possessions and wealth jealously in our state of alienation and viewing others in a utilitarian way (Martin Buber’s “I-It” way of relating) or with suspicion and fear. It all depends on the power of our imagination and the way we choose to use it.

And this brings me to the message of faith in the amazing ancient text which is the Torah. The times that serve as the backdrop to the biblical text were not free from scarcity and bloodshed. I imagine there was as much cause to feel overwhelmed by fear, suspicion, anger, grief and despair then as now. The text describes many of those events, wars, famine, disease, loss of home and family.

The Torah doesn’t deny or neglect those realities. It doesn’t whitewash the nature of human beings or of other living beings and doesn’t deny that the earth itself can be intransigent. There is no horror in our world today that doesn’t find its echoes in those times. Yet the vision that drives this text, the story that it insists on telling in the face of tragic circumstances, is a story in which there is meaning, justice, beauty, harmony and great abundance for all creatures.

There is, after all, something eternal in the Torah story even in a secular age. It is a story about the reality of our existential condition but also about the power of imagination to create worlds. What world do we want to create? A transactional world of scarcity, alienation and fratricide or a world of abundance and harmony, where we share the spiritual round table with all other living beings? The world we live in is the world we imagine into reality. The Torah shows us both and urges us to “Choose life…” (Deut. 30:19)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Addendum: January 10, 2021 – I think this story also points to the twin themes of ruthless self-preservation and altruism / reciprocity. According to evolutionary science, acting from self-interest preserves and enhances the life of the individual, but acting on the basis of altruism and reciprocity preserves the life of the group or species.

I can see these two characters, Cain and Abel, as archetypes of these twin themes. This kind of pairing is a frequently used biblical technique that points to wholeness. Cain’s self-interested, transactional orientation leads to his personal survival. Abel, who dies in the short term, contributes to long term human preservation in the symbolism of the story by serving and gaining merit with the God who created humanity. But the choice the story points to isn’t one or the other — it’s both, held in balance within one individual or one social network.

I began my current journey in biblical studies six years ago on a walk with my violence-averse husband. A dead and partially mutilated rabbit ended our stroll around the neighborhood with his exclamation of dismay. I asked why “these kinds of things,” which include National Geographic specials that involve one animal hunting and killing another, disturb him so much, glibly announcing, “It’s just the plan of nature.” He responded, “It’s a stupid plan.”

My husband’s comment surprised me, but then I started thinking. In a universe of infinite possibilities, why couldn’t things be different? What if living life didn’t require taking life?  Going a step further, what if there were, in fact, no death?

I’m not the first to wonder, what if? That thought long ago occurred to others. This is the world imagined into being in the first three chapters of Genesis. All animals, human and non-human, were vegan, and there was no death.

Recently on another walk as I was spinning out my newest thought process for my patient husband, I reminded him that this all began from his comment six years ago. This time he added, ”Yes, I wonder why all animals couldn’t have just grazed?” Which caused me to speculate that then there would have been no population control. P’ru u’r’vu (be fruitful and multiply), a command given to all living beings, would have become a planetary death sentence.

So Genesis 1-3 imagines the beautiful world, a world of unrestrained creativity, abundance and no death, a world that crashes into another story of human drives in a world of limited resources and death, the remaining 184 chapters of Torah.

This collision should cause us to sit up and take notice. As Joseph Campbell once said, “Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives lives on the death of something else. Your own body will be food for something else. Anyone who denies this, anyone who holds back, is out of order. Death is an act of giving.”

Isn’t this Economy of Being the problem that Thanos, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy), set out to solve? Too much stress on limited resources? And like the God of the Bible, Thanos sets in motion a plan to randomly reduce the population. Unlike God’s plan in the Bible, Thanos’ plan applies only to humanity (or at least the story deals only with humanity) — and was applied directly, not through the workings of nature. But the initiating challenge and its resolution were effectively the same. “Be fruitful and multiply“ requires a counterbalancing mechanism.

In the Marvel Comics universe, Thanos was not a completely unsympathetic character. He suffered when he saw the results among humans of unrestrained evolutionary success. He thought he had a plan to “fix” that. Randomly eliminating half the population would allow the other half to live comfortably, without suffering. A painful job, but someone had to do it.

Of course, it was satisfying when Thanos was finally vanquished, and those who had been eliminated were returned to life — but this ending begged the question: what provides the counterbalance to the creative urge, the urge of a species to expand to the point of wiping out other planetary resources? Where is the Economy of Being?

The “good guys,” those who vanquished Thanos and brought back the missing half of humanity, didn’t answer that question. So who were the good guys? Thanos, who took responsibility and acted even if we don’t like the action? Or the Guardians, who did something we like better but didn’t address the problem?

Both stories, one from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one from the Torah, address the same issue. Living beings drive toward their own evolutionary success. But unrestrained success is ultimately destructive. Both stories recognize the need for a counterbalancing force, a limiting factor, and in both stories that limiting factor involves death. Both stories have an issue of justice in their background as one randomizes death (Marvel), and the other universalizes it (Torah). In neither case do living beings live or die based on merit.

Only one of the stories places the responsibility for the problem and its solution on living beings themselves: the Torah story. Human beings and a fellow creature, a serpent, interact destructively in a way that brings death to the world. Forced to recognize their responsibility, they are also required to participate in a solution. Consider the power of this story that over the millennia has insisted on engaging living beings, primarily humans, in maintaining an Economy of Being. We have often fulfilled that responsibility poorly if at all.

The Torah story with its nuance leaves us at the heart of the dilemma. It doesn’t give us a single answer. There is more than one “creation” story, more than one attempt to create a world without violence and suffering. Finally multiple voices and stories are woven together, acting as a vehicle of acculturation. A subset of humanity, the Israelites, receives a body of laws, hopefully producing better outcomes for all life on the planet than when human animals simply follow their unrestrained evolutionary urges. And the story continues.

“Us-Themism”

I imagine some of us would call the creative urge, the drive to “be fruitful and multiply” in all its variations, a ”good” impulse — and those things that limit that drive, including a predatory impulse, “bad.” And yet, in evolutionary terms, both are necessary and therefore, objectively speaking, neither good nor bad.

In Jewish tradition, these drives and impulses are recognized as yetzer ha tov and yetzer ha-ra, the good inclination and the evil inclination. The good inclination isn’t good in and of itself, nor is the evil inclination evil. We might think of the good inclination as an altruistic impulse which, when taken to an extreme, results in the death of an organism. Similarly the evil inclination is responsible for creating, building, developing, but in the extreme, results in greed, predation, suffering and even death to others.

This makes things more complicated for us. How do we know when to give and when to take, when to cooperate and when to compete? When to focus on “us” and when to be wary of “them?” The answers are rarely clear-cut, and those stories sustain us best that are nuanced enough to replicate the complexity of our lives.

Torah stories like the Flood story teach that since these drives are in the makeup of the human animal, our goal should not be to repress or sublimate these urges, to “cure” ourselves of them, but to keep them in balance. In this way, Jewish law is also a story, a means to acculturate us to become the best human beings we can be.

Like many in my generation, I imagine, I grew up disdaining the tribal mentality, an Us/Them worldview. After all, we are all human. And beyond that, we are all creatures animated by the breath of God — or at least are in the same boat on this planet and will either float together or die together.

But now we know, as Jewish traditions intuited, this Us/Them mentality that expresses itself so consistently throughout history is a necessary evolutionary trait, one of those variations on the drive that limits the suffering and evil that would result from unrestrained p’ru u’r’vu, fruitfulness and multiplication.

Science tells us that “the core of Us/Them-ing is emotional and automatic . . . from massive barbarity to pinpricks of microaggression, Us versus Them has produced oceans of pain. Yet, I don’t think our goal should be to “cure” us of all Us/Them dichotomizing (separate of it being impossible, unless you have no amygdala).”

So according to science, Us/Them-ing is an evolutionary trait with a specific purpose, perhaps even multiple purposes. One that stands out is that when resources are limited, an “Us” group is more likely to succeed when “They” are minimized, utilized, or eliminated. Returning a nonhuman animal to the wild that has lived with humans makes clear the danger in modifying the instinct to be wary of “Them.” So we need to respect that instinct in ourselves and other living beings.

But are we doomed to forever look with suspicion on the Other or to minimize their being in relation to our own? Even to commit violence against them? The world’s religions have all said “no.” And here is the role of the powerful story, the story that acculturates us, shapes a worldview, that drives us with greater force than our evolutionary instincts.

It is our stories that give us the capability of modifying our relationships with others. Yuval Noah Harari tells us that the distinctive trait of Sapiens that pushed us to the top of the food chain is our ability to create fictions and persuade others to believe them. This ability, in turn, allows us to cooperate flexibly in large groups. Harari names as fictions religions, corporations, banks and nations among others — basically anything that shapes our world. I like to call these fictions stories. Our stories are not only our downfall but our potential salvation.

Finding Our Story

Just when we need a good story, we live in times when the stories we knew are crumbling, are no longer effective. This applies to our religious stories as well as our cultural and national stories. Millennials are leaving institutional religious life in droves. Dictatorships are replacing democracies. The institutions and value systems we shared and loved, that grew out of our stories, are shredded before us.

Discovering meaning in old stories or finding and creating new stories, though, is even more difficult when we disdain everything that isn’t “fact” or “science.” I have some sympathy with Kellyanne Conway’s comment about alternate facts. I think what she might have meant, or at least should have said, was “alternate stories“ — because it is our stories that give meaning to facts. Myth gives meaning to history, to human experience.

Here’s how one writer says it: “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story. Our traditional story of the universe sustained us for a long period of time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purposes, and energized action. It consecrated suffering and integrated knowledge. We awoke in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there. It did not necessarily make people good, nor did it take away the pains and stupidities of life or make for unfailing warmth in human association. It did provide a context in which life could function in a meaningful manner.” ~ The Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry (Sierra Club Books, 1988, p. 123 )

When we minimize the power of our stories, when we fail to find and choose a story in which to stand, we leave the field open to others who appreciate the power of stories and use them to their advantage, planting their stories, which then have a chance to put down roots and flourish. We leave the field to those whose stories rationalize building massive vertical chicken farms or to industrial animal agriculture operations, to those whose stories center around financial success as the greatest value, to those whose stories feature victimization and blame, to Nazis and white supremacists, to ISIS.

If stories give facts their meaning, if stories are the one thing more powerful than evolutionary drives like our natural instinct to be wary of “the other,” even to devalue, minimize, commercialize, or prey on the other, then presenting unadorned facts to a person driven by a powerful story with which we disagree is unlikely to have any effect at all. It’s like speaking in completely different languages.

In When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, authors Jeffrey Masson and Susan McCarthy point out that until very recently, scientists have refused to speak in terms of animal emotions for fear of being accused of anthropomorphizing and consequently discredited. In this way, a story was generated that supports a giant and brutal animal agriculture industry and contradicts what is obvious to any casual observer.

The story that animals don’t experience emotions and intelligence like humans, also contradicts what we once knew before we placed ourselves so solidly in the story of science, a one-sided science that minimizes the value of, or even rejects, the information brought to us through the humanities.

A course from Yale University, offered through Coursera, Journey of the Universe, says it this way: “The Journey course . . . is based on a new integration that is emerging from the dialogue of the sciences and humanities. Journey tells the story of evolution as an epic narrative, rather than as a series of facts separated by scientific disciplines.”

A parallel process of reshaping the scientific narrative is happening with regard to animals and animal studies. When Elephants Weep is just one of a large number of studies and books coming out in recent years. These scientists and observers are looking more closely at what we share with our fellow living beings on the planet. They are presenting an alternative to the story of minimization.

This new scientific story and this new narrative of the human-nonhuman animal relationship parallels the Torah story, which describes both human and nonhuman animals as flesh animated by the breath of God.

Like their human animal counterparts, nonhuman animals are intelligent, can strategize, have feelings and are held morally accountable. Human animals, like their nonhuman animal counterparts, are driven by evolutionary instincts including cooperation — but also “Us-Themism.”

It occurs to me that humans‘ unique characteristic, that which differentiates us from nonhuman animals, is our ability, as Harari points out, to create stories. Potentially those stories could help us overcome or at least redirect our tendency to violence. Not always, perhaps not even often, but it might. This is God’s theory after the Flood when God permits meat-eating.

Our stories shape our lives and give them meaning. The Torah provides a story for those who would eat our fellow creatures . . . but also a story for those who would not. It provides a story in which animal sacrifice is at the center of an Economy of Being — and Jewish history and experience provides another that replaces sacrifice with prayer.

Our society provides a story for those who breed and fatten billions of living beings each year for slaughter. We are in a process of rediscovering the story of our interconnection, even interbeing, and conscious choice. It is a long, slow and difficult journey of rediscovery, but it is imperative. To save ourselves, we need to find and choose and share that story that is stronger than our evolutionary drives.

“Imagine Peace” by johnmaschak is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

The idea of the universe as an interconnected whole is not new; for millennia it’s been one of the core assumptions of Eastern philosophies. What is new is that Western science is slowly beginning to realize that some elements of that ancient lore might be correct. – Dean Radin, in “Entangled Minds”

It’s All About Our Interconnected Whole

Our interconnection isn’t only an assumption of Eastern philosophies. It is embedded in the Torah story that emerged from the Middle East and shaped the western world through its interpreters.

The Garden of Eden story in Genesis represents interconnection and interdependence through the themes of responsibility and consequence that accompany an idea of moral agency. But moral agency, responsibility, and consequence extend beyond the human realm to nonhuman animals and even the earth itself. In this extension of themes, the Torah speaks to Charles Eisenstein’s idea of “interbeing.”

Human and nonhuman animals are both created on the sixth day. The serpent demonstrates they can be similar not only in physical appearance, that is, relative nakedness or hairlessness, but in cognitive abilities, like reasoning and strategizing. And all creation suffers the disastrous consequence of the combined activity of a nonhuman animal and two humans.

That consequences come to all for the actions of a few is a way of expressing the idea of the interdependence of all creation: what one does affects all. It also represents the idea of interbeing — what impacts my fellow creatures impacts me because I am them and they are me. A Hasidic idea points to this understanding of things: Bitul Hayesh, total self-abnegation, creating space to experience that ultimate reality is One, Yichud.

Imagine if we could approach our created world from this space of our profound connection to it, even unity with it — with all living creatures, even with the land itself, the water, the stars. What different decisions might we make about our environment, about our fellow creatures on the planet, about what and how we eat and how we live? This is a door to possibility that the “animals’ story” in the Torah opens for us.

These stories of freedom, responsibility, guilt and consequence highlight the overarching aspirational theme of the Torah story. The nature of creation is individuation, God and God’s creation separate but one, unfolding creativity generating separate forms and structures, land and water, birds and fish, human and non-human animals, each differentiated from the other but coming from and participating in the One.

How close this is to a contemporary vision of the creative process that brought about the universe and everything in it!

The aspirational task for human beings is to fulfill their potential as unique beings while maintaining a profound awareness that they are part of the whole — and the whole is in them. As part of the whole, the smallest action of an individual has consequences for all of creation, even God’s self. This is a complex and powerful theme in the Torah story, a theme the Jewish mystics of a later time draw upon with stories of their own, stories in which each action of an individual affects the balance of God Him/Herself.

It is a weighty idea, that each action we perform as part of a greater whole impacts and brings consequences to all creation. Yet this is a key theme of the first story in the Torah, the Creation story. A nonhuman animal persuades a human counterpart that it’s ok to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden. The humans decide to take action on that persuasive argument. The result is a catastrophic consequence for all of creation, not only those who are guilty but those who are merely responsible and even those who are seemingly innocent. The actions of one or a few have consequences for all.

The Flood Story & The Path of Moderation

As in the Creation Story, in the Flood Story nonhuman animals along with humans are held accountable — not as individuals but as a whole, the innocent with the guilty. Indeed, all of creation is held accountable: “. . . all flesh under the sky in which there is breath of life; everything on earth shall perish.” (Gen. 6:17) Even the land drowns under the flood waters, the land which swallowed up the blood of Abel, the first homicide.

The Flood Story brings us to the endpoint of God’s first creation — but creative activity is unstoppable, and a new world emerges from the remnants of the old. Like the first, this world has violence in its DNA. There is some hope that in this new world, violence can be restrained, that people can learn — but God accepts the nature of things when God makes a promise not to destroy everything again.

The story of violence in creation begins with Cain, son of Adam and father of violence toward a brother. It continues in his line through seven generations from Cain to Tubal-Cain (Gen. 4:17-24). The fifth generation introduces the first Lamech, like Cain a murderer, perhaps even of a boy. Lamech declares to his wives that if Cain will be avenged seven-fold, he, Lamech, will be avenged seventy-and-seven-fold.

The proliferation of the number seven in this genealogy points to the creation theme in which the world was created in seven days. This is what creation has become, a world of scarcity and violence. It must change, or it will destroy itself. The number seven points not only backward, to the first creation, but forward, to a new creation.

Then begins a separate line of seven generations from Seth to a second Lamech, the father of Noah (Gen. 5:3-28). Adam’s son, Seth, is the child whom Eve, always transactional in her thoughts about her children, views as a replacement for her son, Abel, whom Cain murdered:

וַיֵּ֨דַע אָדָ֥ם עוֹד֙ אֶת־אִשְׁתּ֔וֹ וַתֵּ֣לֶד בֵּ֔ן וַתִּקְרָ֥א אֶת־שְׁמ֖וֹ שֵׁ֑ת כִּ֣י שָֽׁת־לִ֤י אֱלֹהִים֙ זֶ֣רַע אַחֵ֔ר תַּ֣חַת הֶ֔בֶל כִּ֥י הֲרָג֖וֹ קָֽיִן׃ 

Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, meaning, “God has provided me with another offspring in place of Abel,” for Cain had killed him. (Gen. 4:25)

In this way, the second seven generation genealogy connects to the story of the victim, Abel. And the figure of Lamech provides a link between the two genealogies and a transition to the Flood story.

From Seth’s genealogical line comes Noah, a “man righteous in his generation.” Noah stands in contrast to his generation in this sense. And he contrasts with his generation in other ways: as the child of moderation, comfort and substantiality, he continues that tradition.

In the creation do-over that is the Flood, Seth is then the progenitor of the humanity that survives it. Portrayed as neither predator nor prey, Seth is the child of moderation.

Like his brother, Cain, Seth surely carries the genes — or better, has the evolutionary capability — for violence. In the Torah story tho, Seth, unlike his brother Cain, doesn’t act on that impulse. And yet Seth is not an insubstantial “breath” as Abel’s name suggests he was. Seth doesn’t become prey but instead begets sons and daughters and dies at the ripe old age of 912 years, representing the fulness and evolutionary success of moderation.

A play on words in the text tells us Noah’s name means “comfort” even though that cannot be its derivation:  although the name appears to derive from the stem n-w-h, “to rest,” the “explanation given in the narrative rests on similarity of sound, not on etymology, since Noah cannot derive from n-h-m, “to comfort, give relief.” (JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis, Nahum Sarna, p. 44). Sarna tells us the etymology may be a reference to Noah as a culture hero, inventor of the plow and thereby of true agriculture as well as viticulture — saving time and energy and easing the production of food, providing relief and comfort to his generation and easing the curse on the soil though Adam’s sin. (Rashbam). It seems at the very least, though, the narrator wants us to envision Noah as a moderate, comfortable man.

When Extremists Clash: Here Comes the Flood

Noah lives in a time when the world is filled with wickedness “all the time”:

וַיַּ֣רְא יְהוָ֔ה כִּ֥י רַבָּ֛ה רָעַ֥ת הָאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וְכָל־יֵ֙צֶר֙ מַחְשְׁבֹ֣ת לִבּ֔וֹ רַ֥ק רַ֖ע כָּל־הַיּֽוֹם׃ 

The LORD saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time. (Gen. 6:5)

There is a contrast between Noah, whose ancestry and life represent moderation and substantiality, and the world in which he lives, a world of extremes, filled with wickedness in which “every” plan is “nothing but” evil “all” the time. Indeed, the refrain “all,” a word representing the extreme, associated with violence, repeats in the leadup to the Flood.

God communicates both God’s basic plan and the rationale for it in one brief phrase, pairing extreme behaviors with an extreme consequence. The totality of wickedness and violence on earth is met with the consequence of total destruction, a rollback of creation:

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֜ים לְנֹ֗חַ קֵ֤ץ כָּל־בָּשָׂר֙ בָּ֣א לְפָנַ֔י כִּֽי־מָלְאָ֥ה הָאָ֛רֶץ חָמָ֖ס מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם וְהִנְנִ֥י מַשְׁחִיתָ֖ם אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ 

God said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth. (Gen. 6:13)

Nahum Sarna in the JPS Torah Commentary on Bereishit says, “The universal corruption is . . . defined as hamas. This term parallels ‘no justice’ in Job 19:7 and is elsewhere the synonym of ‘falsehood,’ ‘deceit,’ or ‘bloodshed.’ It means, in general, the flagrant subversion of the ordered processes of law.” Also according to Sarna, the key Hebrew stem sh-h-t, “corrupt,” appears seven times in the Flood narrative, a refrain of sorts.

Violence, חָמָ֔ס (hamas) is the reason for the Flood. And the utter devastation of the Flood is comprehensive in its consequences. Six times the refrain “all…” is repeated, emphasizing the point:

וַיִּגְוַ֞ע כָּל־בָּשָׂ֣ר ׀ הָרֹמֵ֣שׂ עַל־הָאָ֗רֶץ בָּע֤וֹף וּבַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּבַ֣חַיָּ֔ה וּבְכָל־הַשֶּׁ֖רֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵ֣ץ עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ וְכֹ֖ל הָאָדָֽם׃ 

And all flesh that stirred on earth perished—birds, cattle, beasts, and all the things that swarmed upon the earth, and all mankind. 

כֹּ֡ל אֲשֶׁר֩ נִשְׁמַת־ר֨וּחַ חַיִּ֜ים בְּאַפָּ֗יו מִכֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר בֶּחָֽרָבָ֖ה מֵֽתוּ׃ 

All in whose nostrils was the merest breath of life, all that was on dry land, died. 

וַיִּ֜מַח אֶֽת־כָּל־הַיְק֣וּם ׀ אֲשֶׁ֣ר ׀ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֲדָמָ֗ה מֵאָדָ֤ם עַד־בְּהֵמָה֙ עַד־רֶ֙מֶשׂ֙ וְעַד־ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וַיִּמָּח֖וּ מִן־הָאָ֑רֶץ וַיִשָּׁ֧אֶר אַךְ־נֹ֛חַ וַֽאֲשֶׁ֥ר אִתּ֖וֹ בַּתֵּבָֽה׃ 

All existence on earth was blotted out—man, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky; they are blotted out from the earth. Only Noah Is left, and those with him in the ark. (Gen. 21-23)

So Noah, “righteous in his generation,” a moderate and substantial man, lives in a world of extremes. This extremism works counter to the moral imperative to extend and enrich creation. This extreme violence in creation is met with an extreme consequence from the Creator. It seems both violence and consequence are counter to creation, converging to destroy it. Noah alone, the man of moderation and substantiality, and those who accompany him on the ark, survive the devastation. Moderation, not extremism, not perfection, carries creation forward.

But just imagine for a moment the pathos of Noah’s situation even as he survives. He floats in a (relatively) tiny ark on a vast ocean of water, everything he knew gone. All existence on earth was blotted out—man, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky; they were blotted out from the earth. Noah’s status is captured in the simple words, “Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.” (Gen. 7:23)

וַיִּ֜מַח אֶֽת־כָּל־הַיְק֣וּם ׀ אֲשֶׁ֣ר ׀ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֲדָמָ֗ה מֵאָדָ֤ם עַד־בְּהֵמָה֙ עַד־רֶ֙מֶשׂ֙ וְעַד־ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וַיִּמָּח֖וּ מִן־הָאָ֑רֶץ וַיִשָּׁ֧אֶר אַךְ־נֹ֛חַ וַֽאֲשֶׁ֥ר אִתּ֖וֹ בַּתֵּבָֽה׃ 

So although still living, Noah hardly escapes consequences. He and those with him are alone, everything else engulfed by extreme forces in creation — and God’s extreme reaction, for which even God repents:

וַיָּ֣רַח יְהוָה֮ אֶת־רֵ֣יחַ הַנִּיחֹחַ֒ וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהוָ֜ה אֶל־לִבּ֗וֹ לֹֽא־אֹ֠סִף לְקַלֵּ֨ל ע֤וֹד אֶת־הָֽאֲדָמָה֙ בַּעֲב֣וּר הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֠י יֵ֣צֶר לֵ֧ב הָאָדָ֛ם רַ֖ע מִנְּעֻרָ֑יו וְלֹֽא־אֹסִ֥ף ע֛וֹד לְהַכּ֥וֹת אֶת־כָּל־חַ֖י כַּֽאֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשִֽׂיתִי׃ 

The LORD smelled the pleasing odor, and the LORD said to Himself: “Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done. (Gen. 8:21)

Belatedly God expresses God’s own intent to moderate responses in the future. He accepts the realities of human and nonhuman animal nature. I can’t help but feel, though, for the isolation of Noah and those trapped with him on the ark, remembering a lost world teeming with life and unable to see their future.

Worse, their condition was brought on not only by the extremity of their fellow creatures but the extremity of their Creator. Where is the path to Interbeing in this watery world? Only among those in the fragile ark floating on the water that submerged everything, only among those human and non-human animals who share their crowded, tiny habitat.

But What Did the Animals Do?

In the pre-Flood Torah world, כָּל-הַחַיָּה (“all living beings” – kol ha-hayyah) became lawless and corrupt. All, therefore, suffer the consequence of their moral failure. Creation rolls back to watery emptiness and void but for the remnant who still have God’s breath of life in them, floating on the vast, dark water in their ark.

The text specifically says, כָּל-הַחַיָּה “all living beings.” But what did “all” living beings do that brought on this catastrophe? Because this refrain makes a point similar to the Garden of Eden story, that moral failure occurs among nonhuman animals as well, and the consequences extend to all of creation. Several clues lead us to understand the role of nonhuman animals and even the earth itself in this story of devastation.

We know that the vision of the first three chapters of Genesis is of a world without death, a vegan world of plenty where each animal receives appropriate food. What we don’t notice when we dismiss the story as folklore is that there is an equality of being, that all, human and nonhuman animals, sit at the spiritual round table. Even the earth participates in this drama. It gives birth to Adam and Eve and takes in the blood of Abel. As a result of the latter, it is twice cursed. In other parts of the Torah, God calls upon the earth to witness, along with the heavens, or upon the earth to deliver consequences to those who are dependent on it.

The world of Gen. 1-3 is one in which all of creation is animated, human and nonhuman animals, the earth, the “lights” in the firmament. Everything lives through the breath of God. Everything is interconnected, and there is an equality of being as in the Flood story. Both the Creation and the Flood story refer to this equality of being through the prism of consequence, and nonhuman animals and even the earth itself pay consequences equally with humans.

At the same time, there are differences between the Flood and Creation stories — but even these differences highlight the equality of being behind the specifics of the stories.

In both stories, skillful and repeated use of “flesh,“ בָּשָׂר – basar, and נֶפֶשׁ – nefesh, “living being,” points to the idea that all creatures, not only humans, depend on God for life, and their life is the breath of God. In the Creation story, the emphasis is on nefesh, the life that is from God.

The Flood story emphasizes the material aspect of creation, כָּל־בָּשָׂ֣ר – kol basar, “all flesh.” In Gen. 7:23: “All existence (כָּל-הַיְקוּם – kol ha-y’kum) on earth was blotted out — man, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky; they were blotted out from the earth.” Another way to translate ”all existence” is “all substance,” also a reference to the material aspect of all creatures on earth, human and nonhuman.

So pre-flood, the emphasis is on the material aspect of all being, בָּשָׂ֣ר (flesh). The other aspect of being, so prominent in the creation story, נֶפֶשׁ (life, the breath of God), is minimized. The vocabulary suggests that those who die in the flood are already dead, mere carcasses. The breath of God that animates all being has left them.

And finally, those who leave the ark are all “living things of all flesh” (כָּל-הַחַיָּה… מִכָּל-בָּשָׂר – kol hayyah … mi-kol basar) – Gen. 8:17. These are the living, those who remain ”of all flesh,“ human animals along with nonhuman animals, a remnant of the swarming multitudes from the time before the flood.

The Flood story reverses the imagery of the Creation story in Gen. 1 and is rich with allusions to that narrative as creation recedes. But it is the reference to corruption in the Flood story that makes me wonder what, exactly, brought on this roll back to pre-creation darkness and emptiness. Significant differences between the first creation and the new one that follows the flood suggest an answer, helping us understand the nature of the lawlessness and corruption permeating all of creation that brought on the flood.

A comparison of Gen. 1:29-30, quoted above, and Gen. 9:2-5 tells that story, once again including non-human creatures with humanity in both moral failure and consequence. Gen. 1:29-30 provides “every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit” to human beings for food and “all the green plants for food” to every kind of creature. In other words, both humans and animals are offered a vegan diet. Everything changes in the post-flood world:

Gen. 9:2-5: “The fear and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky—everything with which the earth is astir—and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these. You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it. But for your own life-blood I will require a reckoning: I will require it of every beast; of man, too, will I require a reckoning for human life, of every man for that of his fellow man (brother).”

The new creation of Gen. 9:2-5 differs profoundly from the creation of Gen. 1-3 that it mirrors. G-d specifically allows meat-eating to humans, generating fear throughout the animal kingdom. Immediately this reluctant permission is ringed with prohibition: not to eat flesh with its life-blood in it. Further, human beings are not to kill their “brothers,” their fellow humans, an allusion to the story of Cain and Abel, suggesting that every homicide is fratricide.

The passage also, however, pre-supposes meat-eating among animals and cautions they will now be held accountable if their prey is human. Both animals and humans, in taking life that was not permitted to them in the original order of creation, acted lawlessly and corruptly. For both animals and humans, there were consequences for moral failures tied to unjustly taking life that resulted in a return to profound darkness and emptiness.

In the new creation, God warns that both human and nonhuman animals will be held accountable for unlawful killing. At the same time, God recognizes human nature as it is when God gives humans permission to eat meat, although restrictions surround the practice. And consider, for a moment, the possibility that the division of nonhuman animals into those who are “clean” and those who are “unclean” is more recognition of and respect for their nature than judgment or a negative valuation.

Humans killed their own family, and animals killed humans for food in the pre-Flood world. This is the lawlessness and corruption that subverted G-d’s plan and brought down the first creation. In the brave new world post-flood, God recognizes and accepts the reality of human and animal natures and recluctantly, and I imagine sadly, allows meat-eating with restrictions to humans and to animal species according to their individual natures.

Reasserting Interdependence & Equality of Being

Immediately after granting permission to humans to eat animals, God restricts them from eating the flesh with the “life-blood in it.” Then God seems to prioritize human life by requiring “a reckoning for human life” from any living being that kills a human — but at the same time, this theoretical prioritization confirms moral responsibility in nonhuman animals: “I will require it of every beast.”

Finally, augmenting the theme of interdependence and equality of being in this story of moral agency, responsibility and consequence is the promise that is also given to “all flesh,” nonhuman along with human animals:

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶל־נֹ֑חַ זֹ֤את אֽוֹת־הַבְּרִית֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הֲקִמֹ֔תִי בֵּינִ֕י וּבֵ֥ין כָּל־בָּשָׂ֖ר אֲשֶׁ֥ר עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ (פ) 

That,” God said to Noah, “shall be the sign of the covenant that I have established between Me and all flesh that is on earth.” Gen. 9:16)

In this reprise of the first creation account but with variations, God once again commands all animals, human and nonhuman, to “be fertile . . . and increase; abound on the earth and increase on it.” Immediately following this command, God makes a covenant, not only with humans but with every living thing including every living beast (referring not only to domesticated but to wild animals). Indeed in Gen. 9:7-14, the Hebrew כָּל (“every” or “all”) occurs 12 times. God’s covenant is emphatically all-inclusive. It is sealed for all ages not just between God and human animals but between God and nonhuman animals, all living beings.

Postscript

In the Flood story as in the Creation story, the theme of Interbeing, our profound interconnection to all being, is demonstrated in the consequences that come to all being, human and nonhuman animals, guilty and innocent alike. Far from relieving the individual of responsibility or implying the uselessness of any individual action, this idea places on each of us a very specific obligation to interact with the world “according to our kind.” As the Jewish mystics insist, each action we take individuals, each word we speak, affects the balance of everything, even God.

In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “In a free society, some are guilty. All are responsible.” As much as some voices in the Torah attempt to demonstrate a direct relationship between behavior and consequence, other voices present a different idea. In the Garden story as in the Flood story, those who are guilty and those who are responsible suffer consequences equally along with the innocent. Heschel’s words don’t speak of consequence — but they do speak of the impact of the individual on the whole, the interrelated network of being. And in this world of interconnection, all being suffers the consequence of our individual actions.

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens comments that the unique capability of humans is to create fictions and persuade others to believe them. This capability allows flexible cooperation in large groups. This suggests to me that our unique human responsibility is to tell our stories, those stories that inspire the kind of cooperation that will extend and enrich creation in accord with the first commandment in the Torah, פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ (p’ru u’r’vu), be fertile and increase.

And to the extent that we dominate creation, that is, that we enjoy a certain freedom while other beings, human and nonhuman, are enslaved under our rule, we bear the entire weight of responsibility for what happens in our world. In this interconnected world, those who rule must ensure the well-being of all, humans as well as nonhuman animals, the waters and the earth itself. If we fail in our responsibility, the consequences will fall equally on all being.

My purpose in writing The Animals’ Story in the Torah is to discover a story the text tells that varies from the single one so many of us learned or heard about “what the Bible says.” The story I want to focus on in my writing is the one that reminds us that as humans, we are part of all creation, most closely related to nonhuman animals. We share our habitat and the spiritual round table with other beings, as Yuval Noah Harari says of hunter-gatherers in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humanity. It is a state of being we too often forget today.

Acculturation

I grew up in a world in which a majority of people in the United States didn’t live on farms. Meat eating was taken for granted. In the consciousness of most of us, the meat on our plates wasn’t connected to the living, breathing fellow creature whose flesh it was. There was a growing disconnect between the food we eat, any kind of food, and its source. Increasingly a prayer before or after eating was perfunctory at best or non-existent.

This disconnect in the minds of many of us between what we eat and its source is more than a function of living in a secular world. It is also more than our alienation from the natural world, a place where, as Yuval Noah Harari suggests, humans and non-human animals once “communicated with one another directly and negotiated the rules governing <our> shared habitat.”

There is yet another backdrop to our casual approach to eating a fellow creature: centuries of acculturation to a worldview in which human beings are the crown of creation, living beings superior to all others. Many of us learned and insist that the Bible asserts that human superiority. Adam is created on the sixth day, just before God rests on the Sabbath. Alone among living beings, humans are created “in the image” of God and set to rule over the rest of creation.

If we only know this “single story,” we miss other possibilities. We miss that nonhuman animals are also created on the sixth day, just like their human fellow travelers in creation. And we miss numerous textual clues that serve as reminders to human beings that they, too, are animals, their position in creation is conditional, and non-human animals like their human counterparts, are moral beings.

Yes, there is a statement that human beings are set to “rule over” nonhuman animals. But there is also the story of the repeated failure of human beings in general, and the Israelites in particular, to become the rulers God appointed them to be. Swarming about the earth, they are as ungovernable as all other beings. As God, finally, cannot rule human beings who “swarm” about the earth, human beings cannot rule nonhuman animals, the wild beasts and those that swarm.

Human rule is conditional. Almost as soon as humans are appointed to rule, they are demoted, eating food assigned to nonhuman land animals and wearing skins, emblems of their animal nature. Parallel to the human demotion, the snake, once so similar to the humans in its hairlessness and strategic powers, is also demoted. In this way, the Torah tells us that both human and nonhuman animals are intelligent, moral beings, who are therefore morally responsible and accountable for their actions.

As for morality, God extends moral responsibility to nonhuman animals, even to the earth itself in the Garden of Eden story and the story of Cain and Abel. In this way, the Torah casts doubt on this idea that humans are unique because they are moral beings.

So perhaps the argument for human superiority in creation isn’t that humans are “in the image” of God and set to rule over creation — and isn’t that they are unique in creation as moral beings. And even if we were to agree that the Torah tells us humans are unique in their capacity for moral reasoning, uniqueness cannot be a claim to superiority since each species has its unique characteristics. God appreciates this when God assigns food to the different species according to their needs.

If each species is unique in creation, then instead of superiority in creation, we need rather to consider the responsibility associated with unique characteristics. Each species is responsible to use its unique characteristics to extend creation . . . פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ – p’ru u’r’vu u’milu et ha-Aretz, to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (or the seas),” as God commands all living creatures, in the waters, in the heavens and on land.

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens comments that the unique capability of humans is to create fictions and persuade others to believe them. This capability allows flexible cooperation in large groups. Perhaps, then, our unique human responsibility is to tell our stories, those stories that inspire the kind of cooperation that will extend and enrich creation. What better example have we than the Torah story that in one way or another has persuaded so many to create and nurture life.

The Torah’s story of a God who ordains that human beings, “in the image” of God, should “rule” creation, isn’t the only story — nor is the story of human moral consciousness. In exploring another story, an alternate story in the Torah, we discover our profound kinship with our fellow beings on the planet. While we as well as other species have unique characteristics, we share the fundamentals of our being. We are all body and soul, animated by the breath of God, and we are all engaged in the ongoing work of creation, each לְמִינֵ֔הוּ – l’minehu, “according to its kind.”

What science says . . .

Like the Torah, modern science casts doubt on the idea that human uniqueness centers on moral consciousness. In a series of experiments with primates and other mammals, Frans de Waal demonstrates that non-human animals share with us the foundation of morality like a sense of fairness, reciprocity, empathy, cooperation and caring about the well-being of others. Other researchers demonstrate that non-human animals may, like humans, be “scolded” or ostracized by their community if their actions are outside norms of communal behavior. What do these behaviors indicate other than systems of morality that sometimes extend beyond the boundaries of community?

We could say that these observable representations of moral judgment are motivated by an evolutionary drive, namely survival of a species, but we could as well say that of humans. There is no objective proof that human morality has a different source or motivation than nonhuman morality.

And so science, like the Torah, tells us that all living beings are body and soul, animated by the breath that makes us one. While our roles in creation may differ based on our unique characteristics, “each according to its kind,” we share not only our aggressive behaviors and a desire to live. In our time, science finally echoes ancient wisdom as it points to nonhuman animal intelligence, moral consciousness, empathy, a sense of fairness, and compassion.

There is a story of hierarchy in the Torah. But there is another story, and that is the story of what Charles Eisenstein, in The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, calls “Interbeing.” The presence of both these stories in the Torah and in life presents us with moral dilemmas, with the necessity and complexities of making choices. Insisting on a single story, a hierarchical story, relieves us of some of that complexity and responsibility — but it also deprives us of a profound and beautiful experience of connection and meaning.

I grew up with both the story of hierarchy and the story of Interbeing. Somewhere along the way, the story of Interbeing receded for me as it does in the modern world for most of us, I suspect. My priorities were defined for me, and choices were easier. If there is no question that human life is more valuable than other life, it is easier to first rationalize meat-eating, then altogether disconnect the food on one’s plate from its source as part of a living, breathing, fellow being. Modern “animal agriculture” and our food delivery system makes that even easier. No moral dilemmas when one sits to eat a meal.

Exploring veganism during these past few years reawakened me to the story of Interbeing and the moral complexities that accompany it in the “real” world, not just in the human – nonhuman animal relationship but in every area of life. At the same time, my journey also revives my sense of connection and meaningfulness.

I haven’t written as much on the Torah portions after two years of working pretty steadily at them. With my focus on the relationship between human beings and other animals, it was inevitable that I would have to struggle with the “meaning” of animal sacrifice.

What was sacrifice supposed to accomplish? How did people feel as they prepared an animal for sacrifice? As they experienced sacrifice as a non-priest? Saw the sight of a terrified animal slaughtered, dissected and burned? There is no way to construe a sacrifice as anything other than a violent act — yet it is presented as drawing close to G-d.” How can I reconcile these things?

Some source-critical examination (a technique I don’t usually favor) helped me some with this problem but in the process caused me even greater difficulty. So did an article I read recently about Passover and the Levites, which inspired a post I have not yet finished.

But I have also turned to looking at the problem through a different lens, the lens of evolutionary biology, and amazingly, it is beginning to give me a new appreciation for the insights of the Torah and rabbinic tradition. I will write a post about this eventually too.

For now, I just want to mention some books that have been very important to me in this journey: Richard Wrangham’s Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Barbara King’s Personalities on our Plate, and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and Homo Deus.

Most recently I’m reading Not So Different: Finding Human Nature In Animals, by Nathan H. Lents. Just to give you a sense of the topics covered, the chapter headings are: Why do we play? Animal systems of justice, Moral animals, Sexual politics, Do animals fall in love?, The agony of grief, Jealous beasts: the darker side of love, Darker still (envy, greed and power), Afraid of the dark, The richness of animal communication.

This isn’t an esoteric pursuit for me. I don’t believe we evolve beyond our basic evolutionary and biological realities. I don’t believe we are “saved” from who we are through faith except to the extent that it encourages a constant practice rooted in balancing these evolutionary drives. And although I read and appreciated Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, I don’t think it deals (or to be fair, intended to deal) with the reality of who we are as human beings and the sustainability of a culture that sets as its highest value the harmonious well-being of all life. Yes, we may have a lower rate of violence progressively through history, at least superficially and temporarily, we may be more educated and have a lower rate of poverty. All indicators may, statistically speaking, be better, but I think I could make an argument it’s not as a result of human nature evolving, and therefore I don’t trust its sustainability.

Human nature is what it is — and every religious culture and many non-religious cultures seek and present us with ways to deal with the reality of human nature and guide us toward something more than the cycle of prey and predator, something more than acting mindlessly or on instinct. These considerations seem particularly relevant today when the world is gripped — in mythic terms — by the darker side of our nature.

Every culture, every ideology, every religion demonstrates that in particular conditions, groups will arise that generate “other” hatred and violence and display and encourage an utter lack of empathy. I believe that attachment to one’s group and what goes along with that — asserting superiority over other groups, feeling and acting dismissively toward the needs of other groups, and ultimately violence toward other groups, including non-human animals — is rooted in our evolution and biology. But so is cooperation and empathy — among both humans and non-human animals. Not So Different helped connect me to the science behind what I perceive and gives me a new appreciation for the insights of the Torah.

I hope I have time in my life to study how each religion offers opportunities to work with the reality of who we are as human beings and shapes and educates us to maintain a world-sustaining balance. The chances are good, though, that I will only have time to explore this issue in the kind of depth I would like in the framework of my chosen religion, Judaism. I may not even get past the Bible with that. In fact, I may not even get past the first five books, the Torah.

But no matter how far I’m able to follow this line of study, one thing is clear to me: the darkness that many of us feel in the world today with right wing populism ascendant is the result of giving precedence and unfettered freedom to a biological drive toward greed and an us-them mentality. It is the failure to balance that survival-centered drive with other biological realities like group cooperation and empathy that ultimately leads to violence. This is not a problem of the “right” or the “left,” though, or of any particular religion or culture. It is an imbalance that can occur within any human being and within any society or religion or ideology.

The antidote to violence and hatred in the world is cooperation and empathy, taught and nurtured through daily experience and practice. And what my religion teaches me is a mindful practice that takes us on a path between the extremes, between the drive for self-preservation and the drive toward cooperation and empathy. There is a way we can strive not toward perfection but toward a balance based on realities of human nature the Torah intuited and science now proves.

Many evenings, Andy and I just prefer to snack for dinner. Hummus is always a sure hit. This time I tried it with my Instant Pot. The only cooked part is the dried chickpeas, but my Instant Pot makes Hummus-making a great spur-of-the-moment dinner-snack.

I also tried out a new technique for super smooth hummus like the restaurants make. It worked great! This hummus was amazing. Read on for the hint . . .

Ingredients

• Dried chickpeas, 1 lb.
• Garlic, 2 tsp. or 2 lg. cloves
• Tahina, 1 cup
• Lemons, 1/2 cup juice, about 2 lg. lemons
• Extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 cup
• Bean liquid, 1- 2 cups, depending on how much water beans absorbed during cooking (dilute bean liquid with water if too strong)
• Sea salt, 2 scant tsp
• Cumin, 2 tsp.
• Szeged hot paprika, 1 tsp.

Directions

1. Rinse the chickpeas, and place in a wire mesh insert in the Instant Pot. If you don’t have a wire mesh insert, just place them directly into the pot. Add three quarts of water, close the lid and vent and Pressure for one hour.
2. Perform a Quick Release . . . or release the pressure naturally. Either way is fine. These beans can’t really get too soft.
3. Remove the wire mesh basket with the chickpeas from the Instant Pot, drain, and place in a bowl in the sink. Reserve the bean cooking liquid that remains in the Instant Pot.
4. Hint for beautiful, smooth hummus: Run cold water into the chickpea bowl and rub the chickpeas between your hands as the bowl fills and the water continues to run slowly. The chickpeas should remain at the bottom of the bowl, and the “skins” will float to the top where you can scoop them up and remove them. You might have to help this process along a little, but you should be able to remove most of the skins. It’s worth it!!
5. Drain the chickpeas again and place in the food processor.
6. Reserve the bean cooking liquid that remains in the Instant Pot.
7. Add all other ingredients except reserved bean liquid to the food processor bowl (garlic, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, tahina, seasonings).
8. Pulse and blend briefly.
9. Measure two cups of the reserved bean liquid.
10. Begin adding bean liquid as the processor is running, , through the feed tube. Keep an eye on the consistency. It will thicken as it cools, but it’s easier to add liquid later than to add too much now and have liquidy hummus.
11. When desired consistency is reached, let processor run for 2-5 minutes more to make the hummus as smooth as possible.
12. Remove hummus from processor, put on a plate, garnish with olive oil, parsley, paprika, sumac, za’atar or additional chickpeas as desired.

I was in the mood for homemade bread with my hummus and happened to have my Spelt Ciabatta rising on the counter for a couple of days. I forgot that I meant to use more liquid this time in relation to the flours, but it was good anyway, with a nice sourdough kind of aroma and flavor. The bread is so incredibly easy that it occurred to me I should just keep one going so I can pop some into my Dutch Oven a couple of times a week to enjoy with whatever we’re eating. Rolling it in a mix of seeds would also make an interesting variation.

Oh, and one more tip — that leftover chickpea cooking liquid you have? Try making Aquafaba. Whip the chickpea juice until it makes white peaks, just like whipped egg whites. And then let your imagination go to work on ways you can use it for desserts, matzah balls, whatever.

I have more time at home these days with Covid-19 floating around. I kind of like not having to go out, not having deadlines, just enjoying the people who share our home with me. I’m walking more, cooking more, and I’m contemplating reading a book. A print book. I’m also looking forward to more time researching and writing the book I’m working on.

For now, I’m going to share something I made last evening. I wanted to try out a new product I just got in my Imperfect Foods box this week, Forager Project Organic Dairy-free Cashewmilk Yogurt. But first, before the recipe, I want to recommend two things.

Imperfect Foods. Awesome company. They have added quite a few products beyond fresh produce to their line since I started with them, and I now get almost everything we eat from them at a lower price than in the stores. Doorstep deliveries with single-use disposable gloves are especially nice right now when we aren’t going into public spaces.

Forager Project. Awesome product, their yogurt. I’m really picky about these things, and the yogurt tasted just like the dairy version. Better in fact. And it has the same healthy profile with live active cultures. And unlike most commercial yogurts, no distressing additives. They have a sour cream, which I’ll try — and I just emailed them to ask if they might consider developing Labne, a thick, spreadable Middle Eastern yogurt that I miss terribly.

Creamy (Vegan) Mushroom Soup

I used my Instant Pot for part of this soup, but it’s not essential. Just speeds things up a little if that’s desirable. This recipe made about a quart and a half of soup, just right for Andy and me to polish off last evening.

Ingredients

• Mushrooms, 8 oz. (mine were fresh, but dried mushrooms would work very well)
• Celery, four stalks
• Onion, large, one half
• Spinach, one very large handful
• Extra virgin olive oil, 3 TB*
• Flour, 2 TB*
• Water, 6 cups
• Salt, 1-2 tsp.
• Forager Project Cashewmilk Yogurt, 1 cup

Instructions

Wash all the veggies. Dice the celery by cutting lengthwise 2-3 times on each stalk, then across the strands at 1/4” intervals. Petite dice or mince the onion. Chop the spinach. Slice the mushrooms.

Sauté the mushrooms in 1 TB olive oil at medium-high heat until they start to brown slightly. Remove them from the pan, and deglaze the pan, reserving the mushroom liquid.

Sauté the onion and celery in the Instant Pot briefly, add 1 tsp. of the salt and 5 cups of the water. Cancel Sauté on the Instant Pot, close the lid and vent, and turn it on Pressure for about 10 minutes. Do a quick release. Cancel Pressure.

Remove the mushroom deglazing liquid from the pan into a measuring cup and add more water to reach one cup. Set aside. Add the remaining 2 TB olive oil to the pan and 2 TB of flour for a roux. Stir continually as you add the cup of liquid from the measuring cup, and whisk if needed. Whisk the roux into the soup in the Instant Pot. *

Add the chopped spinach to the soup, stir, and adjust the seasoning, adding as much as another teaspoon of salt if needed.

Place a cup of the Cashewmilk Yogurt in a bowl, and slowly whisk in some of the hot soup, at least 1-2 cups. This process prevents separation. Stir this mixture back into the soup.

Check the seasoning again, stir in some of the mushrooms and sprinkle some over the top of the bowl. Serve and enjoy!

* Next time I make this soup, instead of a roux, I’ll skip that step and leave out those 2 TB extra virgin olive oil. I’ll use that cup of water to pressure a peeled diced potato in the Instant Pot for ten minutes, mash the potato — then remove the thickened liquid and set it aside. I’ll add it back into the soup after I sauté the onion and celery and pressure them with the five cups of water. This should thicken the soup nicely.

Instant Pot Israeli White Bean Soup is another of my old favorites, reworked for my Instant Pot. Although I already halved the recipe from what I made in the Cafe, I had to halve it again to fit my pot. It should make about a gallon. If you’re serving a crowd, have a bigger pot, and want the larger amount, check out the original recipe.

Israeli White Bean Soup for the Instant Pot

Ingredients 

• Olive Oil, 2 TB – 1/4 cup
• Garlic, 2 large cloves, minced
• Spanish onion, 1/2 lg, petite diced
• Celery, 1 (lg) or 2 regular stalks, bias cut
• Carrots, 1 (lg) or 2 regular, bias cut
• Potatoes, 3 size “A” potatoes, 1″ dice, skin on
• Cumin, 1/2 TB
• Tomato, 4 lg plum tomatoes, petite diced, or one  19 oz. can petite diced tomatoes
• Tomato Paste,  2 level TB or to desired thickness
• Salt, 2 tsp or to taste
• Szeged hot paprika, 1/4-1/2 tsp
• Cilantro, 1/2 bunch, chopped
• White beans (Navy Pea Beans or Canellini or Small White Beans), 1 lb. dried
• Water, 2 quarts to start

Directions

1. Rinse beans well, and put into Instant Pot with 2 quarts water. Close the lid and vent, and Pressure the beans for 15 minutes.
2. At the end of the cooking time, hit Cancel, and do a Quick Release. Remove the beans with their water to a bowl and set aside.
3. While the beans are cooking, mince the garlic, petite dice or chop the onion, slice the celery and carrots on the bias, and cut the potato into 1” chunks. If using fresh tomatoes, petite dice the tomatoes.
4. When the veggies are ready and the beans with their liquid removed from the Instant Pot, add olive oil to the pot.
5. Set Instant Pot to Sauté and add the minced garlic. Stir briefly.
6. Next, add the onions, and saute until soft, then the carrots and celery. Sauté, stirring, for a moment or two longer.
7. Then add the potatoes to the pot along with the petite diced tomatoes and reserved beans and cooking liquid, and 2 TB of the tomato paste. Leave the Instant Pot on Sauté to bring the mixture to a simmer.
8. While waiting for the mixture to come to a simmer, add the seasonings: cumin, salt, hot paprika.
9. Cancel Sauté. Put the lid on the IP and close the vent. Set to Pressure for 15 minutes.
10. At the end of the cooking time, hit Cancel, and do a Quick Release.
11. Check the consistency of the soup. When finished, the soup should be thick with veggies and beans but with enough broth to be soup. Add remaining TB of tomato paste if desired, more water if desired, and adjust the seasoning.
12. Check the consistency of the potatoes and beans, which should be tender (usually Cannellini beans cook fairly quickly).
    • If needed, set the pot to Sauté, cover and select either Sauté to continue cooking at a more rapid rate or…
    • Keep Warm to continue at a slower rate.
    • I like to cover it with my glass Instant Pot lid at this point so I can see what’s happening.
13. When the soup is ready, either Cancel or Keep Warm (if you’re not eating immediately).
14. Add chopped cilantro — and serve and enjoy.

Adjustments

P.S. If you need to thin the soup, then just add water at the end of cooking (or when you reheat after storage) until it reaches the consistency you like. You will probably need to adjust the salt as well. The soup keeps well, so as soon as it cools, you can pack up some for the freezer. Enjoy!

I’m interested these days in the relationship between human beings and other animals, how we fit into the fabric of nature, how we managed to get from a mediocre position in the food chain to top spot, and what we have done with that position.

Today I was thinking about two traits that seem to me distinctively human and wondered if I could disprove that theory or if they are indeed defining traits: greed and wastefulness. I found this very interesting article on wolverines that suggests greed, at least, is not limited to human beings: “Wolverines Give Insight Into The Evolution of Greed.”

I can find nothing about wastefulness among other animals, although there’s plenty about the appalling 30-40% waste in the human world. I imagine this either means that no one has researched this particular issue — or that there’s nothing to research, that is, animals don’t typically waste. If anyone finds an article or a report on some research, I’d appreciate knowing about it. You can email me at leslie@vegetatingwithleslie.org or share to my Facebook page. 

On the theme of more desirable traits, Sierra Club featured this beautiful article in their March / April 2019 issue: “Does A Bear Think In The Woods?”

A side note: in the past five years, there have been more than 190,000 publications about various aspects of animal intelligence.

At least once a day I comment how much I love my Instant Pot . . . every time I open it up to throw in some beautiful organic whole food items and anticipate something yummy in a few minutes. And it’s so easy to clean!

So I used this technique once when I had a bunch of summer squash and peppers I needed to use up. This time I just had peppers — the pretty little multi-colored mini-peppers. Since the dish was a hit at my house the first time, I decided to make it again with just peppers. And it was good again — but I don’t have exact measurements, just a picture.

Quinoa & Veggies Teriyaki – Instant Pot

Ingredients

• Extra virgin olive oil, 2 TB
• Garlic, 2 large cloves
• Onion, one large
• Mini-peppers, 1 lb. bag
• Quinoa, one cup dried
• Water, 2-1/2 cups
• Salt, 2-3 tsp.
• Teriyaki sauce, 1/4-1/2 cup

Instructions

1. Prepare the veggies: mince the garlic, slice the onion into pie-shaped wedges and break apart or petite dice, remove stems from peppers and cut in half.
2. Add the quinoa, 2 cups of water (the additional half cup or so is for making the sauce the veggies cook in) and 2 tsp. salt to the Instant Pot, set to Pressure, close the lid and vent, and Pressure for 15 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally.
3. Spoon the quinoa into a serving bowl.
4. Cancel Pressure. Set the IP on Saute for a few minutes. Add the olive oil to the pot along with the minced garlic and onion. Saute for a couple of minutes, then add the peppers and continue to saute for a minute or two  more.
5. Add 1/2 cup water to the veggies in the IP with 1/4-1/2 cup teriyaki sauce. Put the lid on (I used a see-through IP lid for this part) and Steam for a couple of minutes until the veggies reach the degree of softness you prefer.
6. Be sure the veggies are plenty saucy. If you need to, add more water and teriyaki sauce as they cook.
7. When done, adjust the seasoning with a little more salt if needed.
8. Spoon the veggies and sauce over the waiting quinoa.

Although we like the veggie and quinoa fresh out of the Instant Pot, this dish is fine cold as well.