Shalom. I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg of Skokie, Illinois. This Tovar(ph) Torah is about the second portion of the Bible Noah, this is the flood’s story. First thing to know is that every culture has flood stories, there are a hundreds of flood stories and some of them has similar ideas like the Gilgamesh epic from Babylonia. The essence of the message is totally different, but the idea of a savior and a flood and a boat and animals is common to many cultures.
The Torah begins by saying, “Noah ish sadek tamim hayaba doral kaf(ph).” Noah was a righteous man, wholehearted and pure in his generation. The rabbis debated that verse. What does mean in his generation, he could have just said was a tsadiq(ph), a righteous man. Does the fact that it adds in his generation mean that he was just a normal guy but his generation was so awful that he stood out as a spiritual giant because the rest of his neighbors were terrible or does it mean that his generation was just a regular generation, a terrible generation maybe.
But he was such a tsadiq(ph), such a great man but even in his generation, he was not still coming to the terrible atmosphere around then and he was a giant, an extra giant, because of his tsadiqness(ph), his righteousness in that generation. In any case, God tells him to build his boat and if want to look up a hilarious thing with Bill Cosby, God calling Noah to build the boat, you can that online. Just check Bill Cosby and Noah, it is really funny.
God tells Noah to build his enormous boat and there are a lot of documentaries and studies about the boat and it turns out to the requirements listed for this boat are basically good boating requirements and had been calculating to about how big this ark it had to be. It could have how to all the animals and how would you feed them and what would you do with all that manure and all that.
Any case, Noah spent a long time building this boat and the question for the sake was why did Noah spent all his time building the boat. Why did God tell him to do it for so fort so long. The answer was that God wanted to give the neighbors who were behaving abominably and abysmally time to repent, but alas, they did not do so.
Now, the Orthodox Jews believe that this is a united story, non-Orthodox Bible scholars understand that there is several layers of the story here told and over by different authors. They were combined in some later time.Evidence of that is the fact that in one place in the story, it says to take two one pair of animals of each kind. The other places just take seven pairs. In addition, there is different birds and if you read the story, ravens and doves. But in any case, back there or for Orthodox Jews, Moses and God unified the story and try to weave it together to make a single story.
And so, we have the story of Moses being in the boat with his family and animals being there and there are lots of questions like where am I going to fish and could all this have really happened.
From my point of view, it is not necessary to view the story as literally true, it does not change anything. To add, it just makes some more complicated to say that this is an actual historical event.
We know there were floods. In fact, our consciousness is raised by the fact that if we do not do something immediately, maybe it is even too late, there is going to be a huge flooding in big parts of the world and hundreds of millions of people are going to be displaced because of the melting glaciers and the global warming.
Well the earth has gone to cycles like this before and there were huge floods. You could find dead starfish around the Saharah(ph), and the middle of the desert in Israel. And so, the fact that there were floods and the cultures developed stories about it is not anything unusual. The question for us is what does our story of the flood.
Teach us and the world about our perspective, of God’s perspective. The answer is that God want the world of righteousness, that is why we emphasized that Noah was a tsadiq. It is not about appeasing to God. It is not about many of the things that other flood stories teach it is simply about God wanting and demanding that the world be a just place.
Now, one of the interesting things that happen at the end of the story is that a rainbow appears. And God says that this cachet, Hebrew for rainbow is a sign that I will never again destroy the world in this way. And so, the Jews actually have a blessing. When we see a rainbow, we are supposed to say, “Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha-olam(ph).” The short version is Akhair habbrit(ph) , that God remembers God’s coming(ph) with us, not to destroy the world. But Noah always will stand as a hero in this world of trying to teach the world of the importance of justice and righteousness. The Bible tries to teach that in so many ways. And the flood story of Noah is perhaps, one of the most dramatic ways in which that is done. Noah was not a Jewish. This is before Abraham, before Judaism started, but it is a huge and wonderful tale that the Torah tries to give us about the importance of righteousness.
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