Why does an all-knowing G-d need to call out looking for Adam? The truth is that this is not a question addressed to Adam but to all Adams, all people? Where are you? Meaning: what have you achieved thus far in your life? Where are you up to in your individual quest to make the world a better place?

Notes:
•A puzzling episode in this week’s reading of the first Parsha of the Bible, Bereishit, is when G-d calls out to Adam “Where are you?” – as if an all seeing, all-knowing G-d lost Adam below the Divine radar screen.
•In fact, during the incarceration of the Alter Rebbe in Czarist prison of Peter and Paul, in St. Petersburg, this was one of the cynical questions put to him by one of his interrogators. How come your all-powerful G-d can’t see Adam?
•The Alter Rebbe responded that the Torah is not just a narrative of history but rather a manual for life’s teachings and wisdoms. This seemingly rhetorical question by G-d is addressed to all of us at all times: Where are you? Where are you up to in your short life of 120 years? What have you achieved? When will you start being the true you?
•On this Shabbat, the first Shabbat of the year, commit to making your unique contribution to the world and family that you were created for. If not now, when?