As Tishra rocked her young son, it was all she could do to hold back her tears. She thought back to her earliest memory of God. As a young girl she heard the rabbi read the story of creation from the holy scroll. She learned that, in the very beginning, God made all the world and the world that God made was good. As a child, Tishra experienced a world that had indeed seemed good to her. It was a secure world. She prayed daily with her family and each week they observed the Sabbath. The world into which her son had been born was different. It was not the same secure world of Tishra's youth.

Now, as an adult, Tishra was very conscious of another story -- the one that followed the story of the creation of a good world. It was the story of the first sin and the "fall" of the good world. Sin cha…