In Parshat Bereishit, we read the haunting words spoken to Adam: “By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread until you return to the ground” (Bereishit 3:19).
After Adam and Chavah ate from the Eitz HaDa’at, the world descended into a shadow. Death entered creation, and toil and pain became the human condition. In that moment, when everything seemed shattered beyond repair, Adam did something extraordinary.
He turned to his wife, the very partner in his downfall, and named her Chavah, “The mother of all life.” It’s astonishing. If ever there was a moment for anger or despair, this was it. If ever there was a reason to condemn or to withdraw, this was the time. And yet, Adam chose otherwise. He chose to see not failure, but potential; not darkness, but the spark of light still flickering within it.
The Alter of Kelm teaches that in this moment, Adam was imitating the ways of the Creator Himself. For even after the sin, Hashem performed the first recorded act of chesed in history: He made garments for Adam and Chavah and clothed them. He granted them compassion, even as He exiled them. The Torah begins with chesed and ends with chesed: it begins with Hashem clothing the fallen and ends with Hashem Himself burying Moshe Rabbeinu.
The message is timeless. True greatness is not measured by how we treat the perfect, but by how we treat the broken. Adam looked at Chavah, the woman through whom death entered the world, and still called her “the mother of all life.” He refused to define her by a single mistake. He saw the fullness of who she was, the goodness she had already brought into the world, and the promise that still lived within her.
That is chesed. Chesed is not hosting a gadol for Shabbos; that’s an honor. Chesed is when a noisy, awkward meshulach knocks on your door and you welcome him warmly. It’s when you choose to see another person not through the lens of the moment, but through the arc of a lifetime.
If we want our relationships with spouses, children, and friends to flourish, we must learn to see others as Hashem saw Adam and Chavah: not as a snapshot of a failure, but as a portrait of potential. If Adam could look at Chavah and still call her Eim Kol Chai, surely we can look at those around us and see the goodness still pulsing within them. When we choose to see with compassion instead of criticism, we participate in the very first chesed of creation.
There was once a Rav who lived this truth not only in words but in action: Rav Yitzchak Vaknin, a talmid chacham in Morocco who founded a girls’ seminary. He made a quiet promise to himself that no Jewish girl would ever be turned away. Not one. He knew that every neshamah is a world, and that sometimes, a single breath of kindness can awaken a spark that has long lain dormant.
One day, a broken father appeared at his door. His voice trembled as he said, “Rabbi, I have a daughter who has been expelled from every school. Wherever she goes, there is chaos. But she’s my child. Please, I’m begging you, take her.” Rav Vaknin didn’t ask for background, guarantees, or reports. He simply said, “If she is a daughter of Am Yisrael, she belongs here.”
From the very first day, it was hard. The girl mocked teachers, broke rules, and sowed unrest. Within two days, the staff was ready to give up. But Rav Vaknin, calm and gentle, said, “Don’t send her away. Try one more day.” On the third day, she vanished. And for years, Rav Vaknin carried that pain, wondering if perhaps this was the one soul he could not reach.
Decades later, after making aliyah to Eretz Yisrael, a call came from London. The dayanim on a beit din asked, “Rav Vaknin, a woman here claims to be Jewish. She’s married to a non-Jew but wants a brit milah for her son. She says you were her rabbi in Morocco.” In a flash, he remembered her; the face, the eyes, those two turbulent days. “Yes,” he said, “she is Jewish. Without question.”
After the brit, the woman approached the beit din, tears streaming down her face. “I made mistakes,” she said. “Many mistakes. But when I was seventeen, I spent two days in a seminary in Morocco. Two days, and I saw what a Jew looks like, what a Rav looks like. And I promised myself that if I ever have a child, he will be a Jew.”
And at that moment, Rav Vaknin understood. There is no such thing as a lost act of chesed. No word of kindness vanishes. No spark of love fails to kindle another soul. Sometimes it takes years, even generations, for that light to emerge, but it always does.
To see life where the world sees dust, that is Bereishit. That is the opening note of the Torah, and the eternal melody of Am Yisrael. Hashem clothed Adam and Chavah. He saw beyond the sin to the divine spark still glowing within them. That compassion became our national DNA. Rav Vaknin didn’t see a rebellious girl; he saw a neshamah waiting to come home. And because he did, a Jewish child entered the covenant of Avraham Avinu, and the chain of eternity remained unbroken.
Bereishit is the courage to look at imperfection and say, “There is life here yet.” Every time we forgive, every time we look past a flaw to find the goodness still living inside another, we are reliving the first act of creation, transforming darkness into light.
We remind Heaven that the children of Adam still believe in Chavah.
