The Great Make-Over: Noach 5785

The opening parshiyot of the Torah portray a rather dismal picture of the human race and of our world generally.  Everything noble and worthwhile seems to have spun away in a flood of vice, avarice, and murder. And this type of human behavior seems to have filtered down to the other forms of life on the planet as well.

The great flood described in this week’s parsha can therefore be seen, so to speak, as God’s make-over of the Creation. We know the feeling that comes upon us when, after working on a project for a period of time, we become convinced of the project’s failure and of the need to start over again from the beginning, discarding everything in which we had invested our energy.

But, as the parsha indicates, there is little to choose between the living world before the flood and the one that emerged in its wake. So the Lord adopts, as it were, a different tack. This is because, though God is disappointed by human behavior, He never irrevocably despairs of humans, individually or collectively. Now God will wait patiently until humans on their own, through their inner sense, seriously begin to search and find meaning and purpose in life.  This search will inexorably lead to the Creator and a moral code of behavior. Noach, as great a person as he was, was unable to transmit to his descendants the necessary sense of personal morality and that inner drive for self-improvement and righteousness which he himself possessed. Without that inner urge to search for the Creator, no outside revelation or cataclysmic event, no flood or war or Holocaust, can achieve an improved moral climate in human society.

The parsha records God’s commitment not to bring another flood upon humankind. Outside pressures and historic events, no matter how impressive and intense they may be, are not the ways to inspire and improve human behavior. A change of the human heart, a rethinking of life’s meaning and mission, a yearning for spirit and eternity—these are the proven methods for achieving a more just and noble society.

The lesson of this week’s parsha, and indeed the fundamental lesson of the Torah, is that the path to knowledge and service of God runs through one’s own inner feelings, attitudes, ideals and commitments. The task of Jewish parenting and education is to impart this basic truism of life to the next generation. And as the Torah itself testifies, this ability to do so was what set Avraham apart from Noach, and the Jewish people at their very origin from the nations of the world.

Shabat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein