There are moments when the fissure becomes visible.

Not the superficial fractures that occupy headlines for a day and disappear, but the deeper rupture – the one that reveals not only what has been done, but what we are. These fissures do not announce themselves as philosophical problems. They emerge in flesh, in time, in the unbearable clarity of lived experience. They breathe. And when they breathe, they expose the fragile architecture upon which human dignity rests.

We are accustomed to thinking of continuity as the natural condition of existence. We speak of progress, of development, of healing. Yet the biblical and anthropological consciousness preserved in Jewish and Christian traditions suggests otherwise. Creation itself begins not with continuity, but with separation: light from darkness, waters from waters, earth from sea. The human being enters history not as an unbroken whole, but as one already marked by an opening. The side of Adam is opened in sleep, and from that fissure emerges relation, vulnerability, and the possibility of love and birthing.

Sleep, in this primordial narrative, is not merely biological rest. It is exposure. It is the suspension of mastery. Adam does not act; he receives. Life itself enters through an opening he does not command. The first blessing of existence arrives through a fissure.

This ancient memory still speaks. It speaks whenever human beings are confronted with the reality that consciousness is not sovereign, that beneath the structures we construct lies an unprotected core. In recent months, the public proceedings of the Pelicot trial have forced such a confrontation, in France and throughout the world, in many cultures. Much has been said, and much more will be said, about the criminal acts themselves. Yet beyond the legal categories and the inevitable commentary, something quieter and more enduring has emerged: the presence of a human being who, having passed through the rupture, did not disappear into silence.

What was revealed was not theatrical defiance, nor ideological posture, but composure. A gravity that did not deny the wound, but neither allowed the wound to dictate the totality of her being. She did not present herself as an abstraction, but as a person – one who endured the slow awakening from a sleep that had been violated, and who, in the aftermath, did not dissolve into vengeance or spectacle. She remained present. She chose to speak. She chose to look, even toward the one and those who had betrayed her, not to erase the crime, but to preserve the possibility that truth itself would not be buried beneath denial.

This presence did not resolve the fissure. It made it visible. It prevented it from being absorbed into the anonymity of statistics or forgotten beneath the restless movement of news cycles. Indeed, it stood, quietly, as a form of decency.

In Jewish morning prayer, a blessing is recited that has long puzzled commentators: “Blessed are You/ Who gives the rooster understanding to distinguish between day and night.” The rooster does not create light. It does not abolish darkness. It marks the threshold. It announces distinction. Yet the rooster remains outside the human condition. It distinguishes without bearing responsibility.

We, however, live within the fissure. We do not simply observe the passage from darkness to light. We inhabit it. We believe we know, we believe we see, and yet history repeatedly reveals how fragile our discernment is. Entire societies can remain enclosed within structures of darkness while imagining themselves enlightened. The plague of darkness described in Exodus did not merely obscure vision. It immobilized. Those enveloped by it could not rise.

This fissure does not belong to one place alone. It traverses the entire horizon of our time. For four years now, the land of Ukraine has remained a field where brother has risen against brother, and where the earth itself receives the bodies of those who shared language, memory, and ancestry. Elsewhere, the Rohingya wander without ground beneath their feet, their very existence rendered provisional.

The seas rise, the climates shift, and entire regions begin to experience the slow violence of displacement, as if creation itself were reminding humanity that stability was never guaranteed. We speak easily of folly, of blindness at the summit of power, of the incompetence of those who govern. Yet wisdom itself remains elusive.

Who among us stands without fissure? Who sees without distortion? The temptation of every age is to replace the patient work of conscience with the intoxication of creeds – political, technological, or hedonistic – that promise unity while deepening exclusion. Even the great councils of the past, convened to safeguard unity, could not prevent estrangement. Seventeen centuries after Nicaea, the human family remains divided, not only in doctrine, but in its capacity to recognize itself in the other. The fissure persists, not as failure, but as the space in which truth must still be chosen.

This is why the liturgical cycle that precedes Great Lent in the Christian Orthodox tradition begins not with triumph, but with exile. On the Sunday of Forgiveness [22.02.2026], the expulsion of Adam from Paradise is recalled. The first human being stands outside the garden, aware now of nakedness, of separation, of mortality. Paradise is not destroyed. It is withdrawn. What begins is not annihilation, but consciousness.

To be human is to live after this expulsion.

The fissure – the shpalt/שפאלט, the ris/ריס, the peleq/פלק – is not an accident of history. It is the condition of existence. The Hebrew word peleq/פלק signifies division, but also portion, relation, and destiny. The opening in Adam’s side is not an act of destruction. It is the origin of encounter. From that opening emerges the possibility of companionship, responsibility, and love. The vulnerability of the opening becomes the foundation of human existence.

Yet this same openness renders the human being susceptible to betrayal, to violation, to destruction. The fissure is not inherently benevolent. It is the space where freedom operates, and freedom carries within it the possibility of harm.

What, then, does it mean to forgive?

The question cannot be reduced to sentiment. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness. It is not the denial of justice. The words attributed to Christ – that one must forgive “seventy times seven” – do not describe an arithmetic obligation. They describe a condition of existence in which the human being refuses to allow the fissure to become absolute separation. Forgiveness does not erase the wound. It prevents the wound from becoming the final definition of reality.

There remains, however, a boundary. Tradition speaks of a refusal so profound that it closes itself to reconciliation. Forgiveness cannot be imposed upon a reality that denies truth itself. And yet, across millennia, human existence has unfolded within a paradox sustained by memory and hope. The promise that life can continue after catastrophe, that covenant can survive destruction, that preservation remains possible even when innocence has vanished.

When Noah emerged from the ark, he did not enter an untouched world. He entered a preserved world. The then-established covenant is described in biblical language as a covenant of salt. Salt does not heal wounds. It preserves what remains from corruption. It stings. It burns. But without salt, decay sets in. Without preservation, memory dissolves, and with it the possibility of meaning.

We stand now, once again, on the threshold of forgiveness. Not as abstraction, but as necessity. The fissures that traverse our personal lives and our collective existence cannot be erased. They breathe. They remain. The question is not whether they exist, but whether they will be preserved in truth or abandoned to corruption.

The Gates of Decency do not eliminate the fissure. They allow passage. They allow human beings to cross from one condition to another without ceasing to bear the image entrusted to them. Decency does not heal the wound, nor does it deny its existence. It preserves the possibility that the wound will not have the final word.

The rooster announces the dawn. But it is the human being who must rise. And to rise is not to escape the fissure, but to dwell in the Living Presence, beside it, without surrendering to its darkness – salted by memory, sustained by covenant, and still capable of opening the gate.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)