A few nights ago, I was at an event and happened to be sitting next to Rabbi Gedaliah Zlotowitz. He is the head of ArtScroll, so we have a relationship. They're writing a book for my father. We have a relationship. He says to me, “Rabbi Haber, I have to share with you: I don't know who had said it over, a Maharal.” It was a very powerful, unique Maharal. The Maharal was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago and gives us sort of the perspective on Judaism. And the Maharal is, I don't know, an epic, historic sefer on Jewish thought and philosophy.
The Maharal has a great question on last week's parasha. He says, “Why is it that Hevel got killed?” Cain brought a sacrifice; it wasn't accepted. Hevel brought a sacrifice, and it was accepted. And somehow Hashem allowed Cain to kill Hevel. A man just did a mitzvah (commandment). Shouldn't the mitzvah protect him? He just brought a korban (offering) to Hashem. It was accepted by Hashem. Don't you think that should protect him? The Maharal says—and I never heard this before—that Hevel's mitzvah was not that great. You know why Hevel's mitzvah was not that great? Because the only reason he did it is because he saw Kayin do it. His mitzvah was just an imitation of his brother's mitzvah. It wasn't his own. It wasn't his own creation, like the pasuk (verse) says, “Hevel hevi gam hu.” Hevel, he also brought a korban. What does it mean, “gam hu”? He only did it as an imitation of somebody else. And when he brings his imitation to somebody else, there's no greatness in that mitzvah. And it's a lesson we have to learn. When people are just doing something because they knocked it off of something else, or they got it from something else, or they just re-read it from something else, or saw a picture of it from somewhere else, or it was AI, or one of these AIs developed something that they could just use, you're not going to get a ton of credit for that.
That's why. What is Hevel's name? Hevel. What does Hevel mean? Nonsense. Nothingness. “Hem mishtachavim lahevel va-rik.” They bow down to nothing. Hevel was nothing on his own. And because he was nothing on his own, his korban didn't have the same potency it would have had if it came from inside of him. But a lot of people, when they produce, they just produce Hevel products. They just produce things that they knocked off from somebody else, that they imitated from somebody else. They're not producing fruit from inside of them. And that's Rashi's second answer: the toldot, the children, the product of a tzaddik (righteous person) is his good actions. Because the product of a tzaddik is his actions that are developed from inside of him.
We're trying to raise tzaddikim. We're trying to raise righteous people. We're trying to build a next holy generation. The next generation is not going to become holy if they have Hevel korbanot. If they have Hevel gemarot. If they have Hevel chumashim (five books of Torah). God forbid, if they have things that are just taken and imitated and gotten from somewhere else, they will not be developed. They will not be changed. They will not be improved. They will not reach the Adam Be'Adam. They won't reach the potential inside of them. But if instead we train them, there are times when these things are used as tools. No problem. You want to make a little video? You don't have to sit there and spend five hours. An AI could do it in 20 minutes. No problem. That doesn't need the toil. But where it needs the toil, you need to put in the toil. Like Noach. Noach stood alone and produced the great actions from within him.