GEN503 Know where you come from … Pirkei Avot III:1  At any given time a person exists in a certain situation with specific conditions and possibilities.  In your specific circumstances, with your specific background and temperament, you have a number of possibilities for decision and action.  You will be judged, will be held responsible not merely for your deeds, but also for your “appointments:” what you could well have achieved in your situation, given your chances and abilities.  You will have to give an accounting as to whether you fulfilled the entire potential for good in every situation. True, we have given to charity; but perhaps it was possible to give much more and to raise much more.  True, we support our Yeshivoth, but perhaps with a bit more effort we could have created many, many more Yeshivoth.  Have we fully developed our “appointments”? A doctor may save many lives; but there may have been one telephone call which he neglected, and a child died as a result. There is din, the overall account, but there is also heshbon, a reckoning of unfulfilled possibilities.  And once again we begin to consider the full range of ultimate possibilities, the vast stretches of the infinite future must be included.  When Cain slew Abel, the Almighty told him: “The voice of your brother’s bloods cry to me from the ground.” [this verse]. The “bloods cry”: the Hebrew is in the plural, to denote, according to the Midrash, that Cain was condemned not for the death of Abel alone, but for the untold generations that would never come to life. Midrash Tanhuma, B’reshit 9; Avoth d’Rabbi Nathan, A31 What a great lesson lies in this Midrash: Consequences may spread out from our action or failure to act; and like ripples spreading from a pebble dropped into a pond, the consequences may accelerate in speed and increase in strength and pressure as they move outward. SINAI1 225-6