by LEIBY BURNHAM | October 9, 2026 5:38 pm
In early 2025, a twenty-four-year-old Italian man named Deepak Singh bought a rather unusual Rolex. This was not the kind of Rolex you pick up at the mall because you had a good month and decided your wrist deserved a promotion. It was a Rolex GMT “Saru,” an extraordinarily rare Rolex, ringed with sapphires, rubies and diamonds. Singh paid a guy he met online, named only Matteo, about €55,000 in cash, and gave up a Cartier bracelet worth about €5,000 for it, roughly $70,000 in total. This sounds like a lot to spend on a watch, unless you’re a Rolex aficionado. Because anyone who knows their Rolexes, knows that even a used GMT Saru goes for well over $100,000.
But like anyone who gets a “steal of a deal,” you start wondering if you’re the one being stolen from. Especially because all he knew was the guy’s name, and there are about a million Matteos in Italy, and many of them would be happy to sell all sorts of things for lots of cash and a Cartier bracelet. So, Deepak brought it to be evaluated by a professional watch appraiser.
And while the watch looked pretty good on most metrics, the appraiser noticed one problem. The serial number appeared to have been re-engraved or altered, something that can be a huge red flag, warning of a counterfeit. With a pit in his stomach, Singh became convinced that the Matteo who sold him the watch had cheated him.
At this point, Deepak had several options. He could confront the seller, but he’d probably have trouble finding Mr. Matteo. He could have Rolex authenticate the watch, but if it was counterfeit, they might contact the authorities who might accuse him of counterfeiting. He could contact the police, but they might have questions about where he got €55,000 in cash in the first place! And he could also just chalk it up to a really expensive lesson in doing more homework before handing about $70,000 worth of cash and Cartier to a Matteo.
Deepak selected option number five: find someone else to pass the lesson on to. In November of 2025, he flew to Singapore and brought the watch to a luxury-watch dealer. The dealer examined it and believed it was authentic. Deepak negotiated an exchange in which he walked away with three other genuine Rolex watches worth roughly $74,000. For identification, he supplied the store with a digital copy of his passport. Unfortunately, even the passport was dishonest; the photograph had been altered using AI. Deepak left the store feeling relief, he had successfully transferred his problem to somebody else.
Then the dealer began having exactly the same doubts Deepak had. The store contacted him and asked him to reverse the transaction. Deepak agreed to return the next day, but instead booked a late-night flight out of Singapore. By then the police had been called, and officers easily found him at Changi Airport, waiting to board his flight. The three Rolexes were recovered, Deepak was arrested, and the watch he had brought into the store was entered into evidence at the center of the attempted fraud.
There was just one problem, The Rolex wasn’t fake. When the Singapore police brought the watch to the Rolex Service Centre, to prepare the evidence for trial, a Rolex technician examined it carefully and confirmed that every part was genuine and original!
This of course raises a fascinating legal question, what exactly had Deepak done wrong?
Singapore law has an answer for that. It recognizes what lawyers call an “impossible attempt.” The fact that circumstances unknown to Singh made the crime impossible did not erase the fact that he had deliberately attempted it. Singh pleaded guilty to attempted cheating and, in April of this year, was sentenced to seven months in prison. His Rolex was innocent, he wasn’t.
This week we begin the Torah again with Parshas Bereishis, and among the enormous ideas introduced in its opening chapters is something humanity unfortunately learns remarkably quickly: sin. Adam and Chava are given one prohibition. They violate it, and human history changes forever. Their case is straightforward in one important sense: they understood what Hashem had prohibited, chose to do it anyway, and actually committed the forbidden act.
But because Bereishis is where the Torah first introduces us to the concept of sin, it is worth asking a more basic question: what exactly makes a sin a sin? Is sin something that causes a forbidden result? We know that people were supposed to bring sin offerings for transgressions they committed without realizing they were committing a transgression, like violating Shabbos when they thought it was Thursday. So does sin only mean “something bad happened through me?”
Or is there something morally significant about the moment a human being decides, “I believe this is wrong, and I am going to do it anyway,” regardless of whether they actually do something wrong?
The Talmud (Nazir 23a and Kiddushin 81b) asks almost exactly that question. The case involves a woman who had taken a Nazirite vow, which prohibited her from drinking wine. Her husband subsequently annulled the vow, something he was entitled to do under the Torah’s laws of vows, but she didn’t know he had done it. She still believed herself completely bound by her vow, and then she spent the day drinking wine.
From a strictly legal standpoint, she had not violated a vow, because there was no vow anymore. The wine in front of her was completely permitted, but she didn’t know that. As far as she was concerned, she was deliberately doing exactly what she believed Hashem had forbidden her to do.
The Mishnah says that she does not receive the Torah’s punishment for violating the vow, because objectively no violation occurred. But the Gemara then quotes the Torah’s words regarding such a case: “וַה׳ יִסְלַח לָהּ — and Hashem will forgive her.” The Gemara explains that even though the vow had already been annulled, “היא צריכה כפרה וסליחה — she requires atonement and forgiveness.” Because she did what she thought was wrong. Evidently sin is not only about the outcome.
The Talmud continues by saying that the great Rabbi Akiva would cry when he reached this verse. He said: imagine somebody intending to pick up pork and eat it, but accidentally picking up lamb instead. He intended to sin, but didn’t, and yet the Torah says he still needs forgiveness. How much more severe must it be when someone intends to eat pork and actually does!
Because the lamb may have been innocent, something inside the person was not.
That does not mean that Judaism treats thoughts exactly the same as action. Quite the opposite. The Talmud elsewhere (Kiddushin 40a) teaches, “Hashem does not combine an evil thought with a deed.” Merely thinking about doing something wrong is generally not treated as though you actually did it. If I’m furious at someone for making fun of me and spend seven minutes planning elaborate revenges, and then go home and carry on as usual, Hashem does not count that as a sin.
So there is a major difference between planning to do evil and doing evil. That is why the Nazirite case is different, she didn’t merely think about drinking the wine, she picked up the glass and drank it. She physically carried out her thoughts; she did an action intending to do wrong. She flew around the world and tried to sell a counterfeit watch to a dealer in Singapore.
The physical world says: permitted wine, but the human heart said: I know this is forbidden, and I choose it anyway.
There is another remarkable Talmudic story in which a great sage believed he had committed a serious transgression in the area of personal holiness, only to discover afterward that, unbeknownst to him, what had happened had not actually been forbidden. His response was essentially: that may change the objective facts, but it does not change what I intended to do. The Gemara records that he spent the remainder of his days in fasting and prayer atoning for his action.
This is uncomfortable because we generally prefer to judge ourselves by the scoreboard.
Did anybody get hurt? Did anything bad actually happen? Did I get caught? Did that fraudulent deal go through anyway? Was it actually Shabbos?
If the answer comes back in our favor, we breathe a sigh of relief. “Phew! I’m clean! Look Mama, No Sin.”
And in a legal sense, that may be correct. A Jewish court cannot punish somebody for eating pork when the meat was actually lamb. Courts deal with actions, evidence and things that happened in the real world. But Hashem has access to evidence no human courthouse can subpoena.
King David told his son Shlomo, “Serve Him with a whole heart and a willing soul, for Hashem searches all hearts and understands the inclination of every thought.” (Chronicles I, 28:9.) Humans see the Rolex, Hashem sees Deepak’s heart. Sin is much more complicated than scoreboards and tally charts. This is what caused Rabbi Akiva so much pain, it’s not just the results that G-d is looking at, it’s the process inside of us that He wants to examine. He wants us to be pure of action and pure of intention. He wants us to be thoroughly consistent, the same way you would want your spouse to be thoroughly consistent, the same way you hope and pray your child grows up to be thoroughly consistent.
But wait! There’s more.
The very same Gemara that tells us Hashem does not ordinarily count an evil thought without any action as a bad deed, also tells us something completely different about a good thought:
“Hashem combines a good thought with the deed.” Rav Asi explains: “if a person intended to perform a mitzvah but circumstances beyond his control prevented him from doing it, Scripture credits him as though he had done it.” (Kiddushin 40a.) It seems Hashem is bending the world in our favor.
You thought about doing something wrong but stopped yourself before acting? Hashem does not generally write the imaginary crime onto your record. But you genuinely intended to do a good deed, and circumstances prevented you from doing any action? Hashem counts that for you, puts it away in His treasure house of sacrifice and struggle done for goodness.
And how much more so when you actually act on those intentions and still see no result. This matters because so much of life does not turn out the way we planned. A family is stranded at your airport and you spend hours making them dinner and driving it over, but the big fella from TSA does not allow you to bring it to them. You spend months organizing a fundraising event, and twelve people show up, most of them only for the free food. You drive across town in rush hour traffic to visit somebody in the hospital and discover they were discharged an hour earlier.
You make an introduction because you sincerely think two people can help each other, and somehow they both end up annoyed with you. You prepare an elaborate Shabbos meal for the new family on the block, and Friday afternoon they call to say three children are throwing up, and is it ok if we just take a rain check?
You try to repair a damaged relationship, you apologize sincerely, you reach out, you write letters, but the other person isn’t ready. And sometimes the most painful part isn’t even the inconvenience. It’s the feeling:
What was the point of all that? What a waste! I can’t even do one good thing! Nothing happened!
But something did. Good deeds are much more complex than scoreboards and tally cards. “For Hashem searches all hearts and understands the inclination of every thought.”
We live in a world obsessed with results. Companies measure sales. Schools measure grades. Sports measure points. Social media measures likes. Even when we try to do good, we instinctively want to know what changed because of us.
Hashem has a different metric, He measures what you were trying to do. Outcomes don’t tell the spiritual story.
Sometimes the result says failure while Heaven says mitzvah. Sometimes the result says Rolex while Heaven says you have something to work on.
We are not merely the sum of the things that happened because of us, we are much more so the sum of the things we choose.
Parsha Dvar Torah
This Parsha is the most fundamental of all Parshios. Just as every physical trait a person has is coded in his DNA at the moment of conception, so too, the summation of the human experience is coded in this week’s Parsha, Bereishit. One could spend an entire year studying this Parsha and its copious commentary, and still not finish even a fraction of what it contains. In it we find; Creation, the first man and woman, the first sin, the first Repentance, the first murder, the first degeneration of society as a whole, and much more. But perhaps the most perplexing aspect of this Parsha is the first sin.
G-d put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and gave them everything they could possibly need (it was always spring weather, food grew ready to be eaten on trees, there was no sickness…). G-d spoke to them (an incredible experience in its own right), and requested only one thing of them: Don’t eat from the fruit of one tree. Yet, before their first day was over, they disobeyed G-d! How can we understand this original error which impacted the world more fundamentally than any other single action in history?
One way to understand Adam’s mistake is to realize that he thought he knew a better way to serve G-d, even though G-d indicated otherwise. Adam felt that to serve G-d simply by not eating a single species of fruit, in a place where G-d’s presence was palpable, was not the most he could do. He was capable of sacrificing so much more for G-d! He was willing and able to serve G-d in a world shrouded in darkness, where it would be much more difficult to see G-d and appreciate the importance of serving Him. Adam knew that if he ate from the fruit of the tree, it would be like turning off a celestial light switch, and G-d’s presence in the world would become much more hidden as a result of sin which had entered the universe. Certain that he could still serve G-d in such a difficult world, and confident that it would result in a far greater glorification of G-d, Adam ate the forbidden fruit.
But this was a colossal error, one that until today continues to challenge us! The truth is that when a person thinks like that, he is using his ego and believing that he know better than G-d. G-d said serve me by doing X, but I say that I can serve you better by doing Y. The truth is that there can be no greater service of G-d than doing exactly what He asks from us!
Today, we find this idea particularly difficult. We try to tell ourselves that G-d didn’t really mean that we should do everything he asked of us in the Torah, or that if He would see the modern world, He would certainly cancel a number of the “outdated” mitzvot. We feel like we can decipher what He really wants of us. The truth is that if we want to serve G-d, and not ourselves, we have to lower our ego, trust that He knows best, and realize that the best way to serve Him is to follow what He asks, not what we think He should have asked! If we do that, we will be able to reverse the effects of the primordial sin and bring the world back to the utopia it was before sin arrived on the scene!
Parsha Summary
Breishit starts off with the Creation of the Universe and all that is in it. G-d completed all His work in six days (this was way before zoning laws and building codes). Here is a quick rundown on the daily creating schedule for those first six days. On the first day He created light and darkness. On the second He created the heavens and separated the lower waters (oceans, which at that time covered the globe), from the upper waters i.e. the water found in the atmosphere.
On the third day G-d pulled the waters back to reveal dry land and created all vegetation (yup, Tuesday is when cauliflower, sprouts, and lima beans appeared on Mother Earth). On the fourth day G-d created all the celestial bodies, including the sun, moon, and all the stars. On day five G-d created all the flying creatures and water-based creatures. He even blessed them that they should multiply and be fruitful.
The sixth day of creation is special because not only did G-d create all animals of the land on that day, He also created mankind in His image. This special gift gives us an infinite amount of abilities that are unique to man, such as the ability to create, to give to strangers (generally, animals only take care of their own), and the power of speech. On the seventh day G-d ceased from all the work that He had done, and in order to emulate G-d we also rest on the Shabbos, and spend that time evaluating our week and seeing how we can grow in the coming one.
G-d obviously didn’t need the rest, He didn’t feel worn out from a week of creation, but rather for us he ceased to work to help us understand the concept that there are two distinct modalities, working toward a goal, and experiencing the goal. Shabbos is a time where we experience the arrival at the spiritual locus of our week, and we can experience it fully, while still engaged in the creative process.
When G-d created Adam (the first human being), He gave him everything he needed and only asked one thing of him – that he not eat from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man gave names to all the beasts and found no mate. After this experience, which taught man that without women he is totally lost, G-d created Eve (the first woman) out of one of Adam’s ribs. G-d didn’t create woman out of Adam’s head, lest she feel she could dominate him, nor out of his feet, lest he feel he could trample her. Instead, He created her out of his rib, right next to his heart, so that he would protect her, love her, and treat her with equality.
While still enjoying their honeymoon, Adam and Eve were led into sin by the serpent, which was the external representation of evil at that time. Through a manipulation technique still used by sleazy salesmen today, the snake enticed both Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. G-d punished them by making humans mortal, by giving women birthing pains and by forcing men to work for their sustenance (prior to that fully prepared pastries would grow on trees! Weight Watchers would have had a real crisis!)
Adam and Eve gave birth to two children, Cain and Abel. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. They both decided to give gifts to G-d but, while Cain gave inferior fruit, Abel gave the best of his flocks. G-d accepted only Abel’s gift. (Quick lesson: G-d wants you to mean it when you give to Him, so save your week-old pancakes for your brother, and give to G-d with all your heart. He doesn’t need a lot, but He wants to see you putting up your best effort!).
Cain got angry and jealous, and quickly became the world’s first murderer by killing his brother. Back then there were no good trial lawyers, and Cain had to deal directly with G-d, who didn’t take his excuses but rather told him that there are two paths one can take after sin – repent and be forgiven or don’t improve yourself and sin will constantly hound you.
The Torah then goes on to mention the ten generations of mankind from Adam until Noah. After that description, the Torah tells us how human beings lost all morality, and people did whatever they pleased. It got so bad that soon only Noah was righteous from his whole generation. Next week, will tell us more about where the world went (hint: think underwater) and more about Noah (hint: think above water), but before we stop, one last tidbit about Noah: he invented the plow, thus saving mankind billions of man-hours in the field planting by hand!
Quote of the Week: Now and then, it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ~ Guillaume Apollinaire
Random Fact of the Week: A typical puffy cumulus cloud weighs over 500 tons.
Funny line of the week: My conscience is squeaky clean, I’ve never used it!
Have a Restful Shabbos,
R’ Leiby Burnham
Source URL: https://partnersjewishlife.org/guilty-of-trying/
Copyright ©2026 Education Hub - Partners Detroit unless otherwise noted.