Recalling Shabbat While "Painting"

I love meals where Torah flows comfortably. I never heard before today that Adam and Chavah seem childlike in The Garden, adolescent like when they eat the forbidden fruit and get called on it, and adult like after their expulsion. That type of talk tends to (as it did at lunch) open up the topic of what G-d's plan for humans really was. There was great back and forth at lunch. One bright person noted that Adam and Chavah's response after sinning seems primitive; they try to hide from G-d. This was posed as a challenge to another wise person's case for Adam and Eve as being on a sophisticated, high spiritual level. Another member of the assembly asked, "Haven't you ever seen a sophisticated person revert to a primitive reaction in an extreme, traumatic situation?" Touche!

I had never heard before last night that the Ramban says that Kayin's sign was a watch dog to protect him. The person who shared this piece of information gained it by being in an online group in which everyone shares a different commentary on one verse. I think that's a great idea.

I davened on the other side of the neighborhood and was later told that I was missed at a simcha kiddush on this side. Oops.

Rabbi Meir Goldvicht spoke this morning in the Shul I davened in and said:

Shabbat Breishit is one of that Shabboses with a special name, like Shabbat HaGadol. People think that its name is on account of us reading from Parshat Bereishit. If that was what gave it its name then perhaps every Shabbos should be called by the name of its parshah, but we don't have a Shabbat Noach or a Shabbat Lech Lechah. Rather what makes it special is that it's the first Shabbat following the chagim, and is the Shabbat that is truly the start of the normal cycle of our year, into which we take the influence of the holidays. Chazal say that Shabbat Breishit sets the stage for every Shabbat of the year.