Dvar Torah on Parshat Noach

Noach is a depressing person, and his parsha is a depressing parsha. Think about it - everybody killed in a world-wide flood, absolutely everyone. Only you, your family, and some animals survive. Depressing. The whole feel of the portion is negative, and that's how the Rabbis traditionally saw it. It's not just the the general lawlessness and immorality described in the Torah, or God's cataclysmic anger at that lawlessness, or Noach's embarassing end - he gets drunk, and has some sort of negative sexual interaction with his son Ham, for which Ham is cursed - that is so depressing. Even the experience of Noach being saved, in the ark, is seen as difficult. The seemingly positive verse, "...and there remained only Noach and those who were with him in the ark", is understood by the Rabbis in a negative way: the word for "only" in Hebrew is  אך (pronounced "ach") which is understood to be the cry of Noach as he got bitten by the lion in the ark, indicating that the weeks spent there were no picnic; Noach's survival came at a high personal and public price, indeed.  

Part of the reason for the negativity is Noach's utter failure to get the message across to others and save anybody. The Rabbis compare him, unfavorably, to Avraham (there is a dissenting opinion, but we'll skip that for today). While Avraham spread the word of ethical monotheism, even at great personal risk, Noach, though the Rabbis tell us he tried, for many years, as he built the ark, could not get even one person to join him and be saved. It is this loneliness, the lack of connection to anyone outside his immediate family, before, during, and after the flood (after leaving the ark, Noach drinks alone - he is shamed, while drunk, by his son Ham, "in his tent") which is so striking about Noach. What are we to make of Noach's solitude?

One way to understand it is as a response to the really awful world around him. If the Bible is to be taken at its word, "the world was corrupt" and "full of lawlessness". Perhaps the response of shutting oneself off makes perfect sense in such a world. After all, if Noach did try to explain the evil of their ways to them, and warn them of God's anger and the impending punishment, and they all refused to listen, why not withdraw to the safety of your family, and your faith in God? Why not enter the ark, and leave the rest of humanity behind?

Reading this, one is forced to think about the world we are living in, with its long list of actual and impending corruption and lawlessness - global climate change, Putin, radical, imperialist Islam on the march, anti-Semitism rearing its stupid, uninformed, ugly head all over the place, and Israel caught in the middle of a crumbling and insanely violent middle east - and start contemplating building an ark. Maybe, in such a crazy, wicked world, building a nice, warm, hermetically sealed space for ourselves, like Noach's ark,  is the best we can do.

And, come to think of it,  that is what many of us are doing. Like Noach, who could not successfully change his world, and could only seal himself off from it, we are trying desperately to not face up to the problems around us. Top of the list has to be climate change. It's hard to know if the deniers are stupid, crazy, under contract to the oil companies, or so caught up in the left/right culture wars that even our very existence is just grist for their political mill, but, whatever it is,  they just keep on denying what is right before our eyes. What's happening in the middle east - and beyond - is next. It is surely not racism or "Islamophobia" to point out that we have a problem with Islam and it's got to be addressed, before we are truly embroiled in World War III. And yet, as much energy seems to be expended on telling us "it is not Islam" and "only a small percentage of Muslims are involved in terror" (which is true, but SO WHAT?) as is spent on fighting the barbaric, lunatic, jihadists who are undeniably out there. Then there is the growing wealth gap, the many, many failed states in Africa, the middle east, and elsewhere, and stop me before I get to Ebola. 

We need to be like Avraham, not Noach. In their discussion of the end of Parshat Noach, the Rabbis tell us that Avraham challenged the pagan status quo of his culture. By doing so, Avraham was making a politcal as well as a theological statement. In championing ethical monotheism, Avraham was not only talking religion; he was talking freedom, equality, and the rule of law. He was willing to fight for these ideals, standing up to the king, Nimrod, when he commanded Avraham to bow to the pagan gods, and the pagan system, or face death in the fiery furnace. Avraham debated with Nimrod, arguing for a faith in God that freed man from the cowardly, deeply hierarchal worship of the blind forces of nature - the worship of power - which Nimrod espoused, thereby laying the foundations for the concepts of humanism, freedom of speech, and equality. Noach's retreat into himself, on the other hand,  may have saved him and his family, but left a world in ruins. The fact that he ends up a solitary, in some way sexually problematic, drunk, speaks volumes about a culture of luxury, hedonism, materialism, and selfishness, which encourages us, like Noach, to seal the door of the ark, kick back, have a drink, and close our eyes to the real problems out there. If we want to save the world, we ghave to stop doing that.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix