Grover Cleveland has the distinction of being the only American president to serve two non-consecutive terms in office and is remembered as a courageous and pugnaciously honest statesman. But behind that facade lies a deeper, more revealing truth. Cleveland was an evil man who raped a 38-year-old woman and got her pregnant. Eventually, he had the child forcibly removed from his mother and placed in the Buffalo Orphan Asylum, while the poor woman, Maria Halpin, was thrown into the Providence Lunatic Asylum.
Lucky for Mr. Cleveland, cell phones, television, movies, radio and social media weren’t around, so with all that he made his way toward the White House. To make matters worse, when word came out about his illegitimate son, he doubled down enacting a horrible smear campaign against the woman he raped.
I recently read about a well-known and beloved actor/comedian who abused women, yet it was only revealed posthumously when he died at age 90.
Adding to this, roughly 50 percent of all violent crimes go unsolved, meaning that half of all criminals go free while their victims’ lives are ruined forever.
I can’t help but sometimes wonder how many innocent victims go through life without ever seeing justice. Tragically, the Holocaust gave us six million injustices to grapple with, but that never stops the questions from coming. And so every time I hear about another criminal who gets away with it, I want justice. I remember the day the O.J. Simpson verdict came out. Not a happy day.
Hashem, knowing all too well of life’s injustices, gave us a lesson for the ages about how He exacts reward and punishment. The Torah narrative tells us that Cain kills Abel in the field, even after being warned by Hashem to take a chill. Yet what happens next is staggering. After the first murder in history, all eyes are watching. Yet unlike the previous sin where G-d exacts immediate punishment, G-d does something completely unexpected.
Nothing.
In fact, Hashem does more than nothing. He places a physical sign on Cain, the world’s first murderer, warning everyone that he is not to be touched. Generations pass and nothing happens to this guilty murderer. I’m sure there was some legitimate head-scratching, and with good reason.
The killing of Cain represents a shift in our relationship with Hashem. Previously, there were no barriers between man and G-d and His judgment was immediate. Adam and Chava sinned and were banished immediately. But now the objective meaning of right and wrong was now replaced by a more subjective reality: good and bad. As such, G-d could no longer punish man immediately as He had done in the previous world of Eden, where life’s breakdown was objectively right and wrong. In this new world, G-d would exact punishment in a completely different way. It would not be immediate. Because the world was now obscured, G-d too would hide and appear to be M.I.A., when in fact, He was always there. And because free choice must be preserved in this new world, G-d cannot intervene and immediately punish man, as all doubt of G-d’s existence would be removed.
And with that, a topical reading of the story ends there. Lesson learned: life isn’t fair and we cannot always expect justice in this world.
Or can we?
A deeper reading reveals an interesting event, as the Tanchuma in Bereishis explains: “One day, [Tuval Kayin] cried out to his father: “I see something like an animal over there.” Lemech pulled back on his bow and shot. … The child peered from afar at the body… and said to Lemech: “What we killed bears the figure of a man, but it has a horn protruding from its forehead.” Lemech then exclaimed in anguish: “Woe unto me! It is my ancestor, Cain!”
Well, well, well. It seems that justice has finally made its way into Cain’s life. And the irony is hardly lost on the fact that Cain was killed by his own descendant. G-d teaches mankind a crucial lesson about Him and His ways.
G-d’s timetable for meting out justice is not ours. Some people sin for a lifetime and get away with it (in this world), while others (think Bernie Madoff) eventually get caught.
I think what Cain teaches us, aside from how to be a horrible brother, is that nothing goes unpunished. When Hashem decided that his time was up, again, for only reasons Hashem knows, then his life ended abruptly in the strangest of scenarios.
Eichmann , yimach shemo, got caught and was hanged in 1962, while Mengele, yimach shemo, was a free man until his death in 1978. Only Hashem can determine a cheshbon for each of these sub-humans. The main takeaway is that no deed goes unnoticed, and G-d will wait many years if necessary for when He chooses to carry out justice.
I once heard of a very dishonest man who lived many years in Israel, yet he had one known mitzvah: he supported a poor widow and her daughter for years. One day, he stopped taking care of them and was killed soon thereafter. We cannot see what G-d sees.
In Ani Ma’amin, we read “I believe wholeheartedly that G-d knows all of man’s deeds and thoughts.” If DNA and fingerprints can solve crimes decades later, what’s to be said of the Creator who fashioned and imprinted these elements within the universe in the first place? Even more telling is that DNA was always there since the beginning. Rather, it is our limited scope that prevents our understanding of G-d’s master plan.
Why Grover Cleveland eluded prosecution, let alone become president of the United States for not one, but two terms, is still beyond me. But it isn’t beyond Hashem who knows all.
So the next time you see another injustice left unpunished, think again and remind yourself that nothing misses the watchful eye of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, as we read every day in Yigdal, “He analyzes and knows even our innermost secrets. He is aware of the end of a matter at its very beginning.”
