Fruit for fruit

Genesis 4:3

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

Why motivated Cain to bring an offering of the fruit of his land to God?

Many answers could be given, but in the dozens of Bibliodramas I have done with this story, one intriguing suggestion pops up quite frequently: Cain had heard all about the wonderful Garden of Eden in which his parents started their lives, standing in stark contrast with the laborious, demanding life they were now living. He wished to get back to that Garden; he wished to get back into God's graces. 

So he reasoned: God became upset when my mother took a fruit. I will give back fruit. 

This has logic. Yet he is not successful - God ends up accepting Abel's offering and rejecting that of Cain. Again, many explanations for this may be offered. But perhaps one message emerging from this is that you cannot fix things simply by reversing them. If you have hurt someone with offensive words, you cannot simply say to them the opposite or "I didn't mean it" or "I was joking". Rather, a process of apology and genuine conciliation, and a true process of repentance, must take place.

This was Cain's mistake. He ought to have tried to rectify the root cause of his parents' sin inside himself. Instead, he thought a technical action would do the trick.

Abel, on the other hand, brought the choicest of his flock. In this he was putting God above his own desires; and this, perhaps, was a (partway?) rectification of Eve's sin in priveleging her desires above God. Hence, his was accepted.

Teshuvah, Time Travel and Alternative Universes

Rambam (Maimonides) in Hilchot Teshuvah Chapter 2 says something a little odd:

Who has reached complete Teshuvah? A person who confronts the same situation of sin, and is able to commit the sin again, but nevertheless abstains due to Teshuvah alone, not due to fear or failure of strength.
For example, a man engaged in illicit sexual relations with a woman. Afterwards, they met in privacy, in the same country, while his love for her and physical power still persisted, and nevertheless he abstained and did not transgress - this is a person who has done complete Teshuvah

Can we ever be in the exact same situation again? The day cannot be exactly the same, the country cannot be exactly the same, the person we are interacting with is not the same* and our physical condition cannot be exactly the same. We ourselves are not the same person - we have had new experiences, we have new skin cells. It is never identical.

A few sentences further on, Rambam enumerates amongst the paths of repentance that the penitent "change his name, as if to say 'I am a different person and not the same one who sinned.'" This again seems to require an extreme - for the person to be entirely different, while everything else remains exactly the same. Neither option seems very likely. We rarely become entirely different; things rarely (actually, never!) remain exactly the same.

True - except in one, science-fictiony type scenario: alternative or parallel universes. In a parallel universe scenario, one travels down a different timeline where everything can remain exactly the same except for one thing. This is the archetypal "Sliding Doors" moment.

Teshuvah is a weird and illogical notion. Apparently we can go backwards, and wipe the slate clean of deeds concretely done. That should be impossible. It becomes much more logical if we view it as a form of time travel. If we make ourselves into a different person, then that new me gets to travel down a different time trajectory, where everything remains exactly the same (and, really, this is the only logical scenario in which everything remains 100 percent identical!), except me. I am a different person, and therefore I will act differently this time. Viewed this way, what we are asking when we do teshuvah and pray about it, is for G-d, who is beyond Time, to send us down a different timeline, one where that deed never actually occurred...

* * *

As a thought-provoking post-script, however, we can wonder how the change in action will affect the new timeline.There might be changes further down. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Teshuvah is a wonderful tool to erase damage to ourselves; yet, the things we do out of sin are also a part of us in a way. Can we become an entirely different person, a "good" person, without excising our vitality and what makes us human? Some Modern Western thought might suggest "no", ranging from the Clockwork Orange where Alex's treatment changes him from a violent but empowered human, to a helpless wreck who no longer enjoys classical music; to Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode "Tapestry", where Captain Picard goes back in time to prevent himself from engaging in a brawl and being stabbed in the heart, only to find himself in a new timeline where he is no longer the Captain because he is not a "risk-taker"!

Therefore, the challenge is to become that new person who did not sin, yet nonetheless retain the beating core of who we are, not surrendering what makes us interesting in this world, our unique strong self.
This is not an easy challenge! good luck

* The fact that the woman in this situation of illicit relations is deemed to be the same is an offense against the women's humanity, for how could she be the identical person as last time? In general she appears here as a passive object in the scene, which is a shame... if the man really has done teshuvah, will this not affect the woman too - we can imagine an entire scenario playing itself out, if we read this bibliodramatically.