This week’s Torah portion tells the story of the great flood. The world had become corrupt, immoral and incorrigible. Even God’s infinite patience could not handle that generation. Noah had been building his ark for 120 years and telling people they were heading for doomsday if they wouldn’t change their ways, but to no avail. In the end, only Noah and his immediate family survived in their floating ark; everyone else was wiped away by the devastating floodwaters.
After a full solar calendar year on board the ark, Noah was told by God to leave the shelter. He could have been forgiven for not wanting to emerge from that safe space, a shelter and miklat of note. The ark was the only safe place on earth. What would he find upon leaving it amid the total obliteration of the entire world?
But God told him to leave the ark, and so he did. Indeed, he witnessed the absolute desolation of what was once a bustling world. What did he do? Did he sit down and cry? Perhaps, but certainly, not for long. Did he put up a memorial plaque, “Here lies the world and all humanity?” Not at all. He set out to do exactly as God had told him: to rebuild the world.
The rabbis famously debate how great a saint was Noah. The Torah itself calls him a tzaddik, a righteous man. But was he righteous compared to his corrupt generation, or was he an objective tzaddik who would have held his own in any generation?
But for me, the bottom line is that Noah got the job done. We are all here today thanks to Noah. He rebuilt the world. I’m not so concerned about the degree of his righteousness. More important is that he fulfilled God’s mission and restored the world to its numbers and its purpose. Thanks to Noah, we were given another opportunity to partner with God in His creation and make the world a better, more divine place.
What a powerful message for all of us. At one time or another in our lives, we may experience tragedy and loss. Do we say, “I’m down and out,” or do we say, “I may be down, but I’m not out”? Noah teaches us never to throw in the towel, no matter how bleak the world may appear.
We’ve seen too many suicides among survivors and members of the Israel Defense Forces as a result of the events of Oct. 7, 2023. Clearly, the trauma of what they experienced besieged their rational minds and led them to do what they did. We cannot judge them. But we do need to know that there are other solutions and that there is help for people in desperate situations. In our community in Johannesburg, the Jewish social services operate an emergency helpline 24/7. I’m sure similar support systems are available in most every other community.
I can think of individuals who lost their businesses. At the time, it was nothing less than tragic for them and their families. But some of them began new businesses and are doing better than ever today.
Noah reminds us that we can rebuild our shattered worlds, even after total devastation.
Look at our nation. We suffered the most horrific Holocaust 80 years ago. Hitler’s floodwaters swamped most of European Jewry and a third of our nation. We lost proud Jewish communities, the most glorious Jewish academies of learning—rabbis, roshei yeshivah (heads of Jewish learning centers), Chassidim, synagogues and schools were wiped off the face of the earth.
What was the response of those who survived? Memorials? Museums? Yes, we have Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Musem in Washington, D.C., and others like it around the world. But the most important thing the survivors did was rebuild their own families. My own father, of blessed memory, was the sole survivor of his entire family in Poland. But when he died, he left more than 100 great-grandchildren! And how proud he was that Hitler did not have the last word.
Spiritual leaders rebuilt their schools and yeshivahs. The Mir Yeshivah is no longer in Lithuania, but it boasts the largest number of enrollees of any yeshivah in its Jerusalem campus, with no less than 9,000 students.
Telshe Yeshiva is no longer in Lithuania, but it has established a thriving yeshivah in Cleveland and in Telshe Stone near Jerusalem. The Gerer Chassidim were dominant in Poland before World War II. Today, they have a flourishing center and yeshivah in Jerusalem. Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel once pointed out that Lubavitch was a tiny village in Belarus. But today, Chabad-Lubavitch is present in virtually every Jewish community the world over, including Ukraine, Siberia, Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
Is Yad Vashem important? Of course. Are Holocaust museums necessary to educate the wider world? Undoubtedly. Was the film “Schindler’s List” a good idea? For sure. But at the end of the day, no museum and no movie rebuilt our shattered Jewish world. It was individuals and leaders who refused to give up and were determined to rebuild from the ashes.
Indeed, the whole of Israel is one gigantic, positive response marking the restoration of our people in our ancient homeland and stubbornly refusing to roll over and die.
So, whether Noah was a perfect tzaddik or a flawed saint is really not my major concern. His most important legacy to us is that when disaster strikes, we should not despair and surrender to hopelessness. Instead, we should rebuild our world and our situation, step by positive step.
