Genesis Cycle Five Noach

 Noach

Beyond the Flood

 Here’s a scene:

You’re going to the store.  On the surface, nothing is new. But this is what you pass on the way there:  A homeless man with a fresh- stolen bottle of wine, a few Ecstasy-ravaged teens barely staying between the lanes, a truck pouring fountains of exhaust into the air, two smiling kids on bikes racing away from their abusive father, two successful women on a bus in mid-gossip, a  man going to yoga who just had sex with another man’s wife, a rich man who once again avoided heavy taxes, a landlady who just kicked out her tenants, a veteran with one arm,  people struggling, faking ease of mind, ease of soul, people in full-blown fear, those who can only dream of health insurance, people giggling and talking dirt and more dirt.

Then while you’re in the store this big flood comes and everyone is dead.

Of course in this situation you would be dead as well. 

Does this scenario seem absurd? Of course it does. It feels prehistoric,  a B rated movie if that.  The world is evil and therefore it’s going down.

This is what we experience in the parasha Noach. Not surprisingly the Talmudic rabbis struggle over it.  It seems a wee bit harsh. For after all, there isn’t one being in the above paragraph who can’t be redeemed. Here’s more: There isn’t one of us no matter the era, the country, the generation who can claim that such human nonsense and cruelty does not exist. If these people at the time of Noah were really bad…and they are certainly schachat (how many times is that word repeated in the parashah….seven, eight?) what may I ask were they doing that’s so bad? Is it worse than the annihilation of millions of native Americans? Than the genocide of the Armenians? The Holocaust? For after all, their world is decimated and ours isn’t. So, according to this Job-like analysis…you are bad so bad things happen…our modern society would really be biting the bullet now. But since we are still alive and going strong, in this analysis, they are more evil than we are.  Our actions are redeemable. Theirs aren’t. Then, what is God’s last straw? What would we need to do to pull the flood over our heads as well? What would be the Ultimate Magnetic Activity for apocalyptic scenarios that could purify us for good? What could be worse than what we’ve already done?

Well, it’s not incest. Take for example, the actions of Lot’s daughters. They get their father drunk and then know him.  It’s not idolatry. Think of the gilded calf. It’s not lashon harah or blasphemy or ignoring Shabbat. Specific people may be butchered in response to any of that. But not the whole community. In other words all of these actions happen in Torah but the Israelites push on.

 Of course,  there could be plenty of incest in Noah  pre-flood (maybe it just isn’t written down).  The whole pre-flood world could be thriving in a sort of sci fi poverty drug scenario like we see in films like Bladerunner. It still though doesn’t excuse and support almost- complete destruction. Not if we are still alive and kicking given everything we’ve done.

So then, let’s really use our imaginations. Maybe in Noah’s generation there’s  child sacrifice, orgies and mass cover ups of fraud and lies unheard of in our present time.  Maybe there are children being stolen and sold on a white slave trade market, other children being bull-dozed by education-costs to then be sold into financial institutions to become a worthwhile family investment.  No, of course, we never take part in these activities.

So then what’s up? How come Noah’s schachat world gets blasted and ours doesn’t?  And forget ours. How come the world of Moses doesn’t get blasted? Granted, Moses has to convince God more than once that the Israelites are worthwhile. And Abraham tries to convince God in dealing with the people of Sodom. And now we have a hint. At least Abraham tries. Noah doesn’t even take one step forward in that direction. He just goes along with God’s plans..

Here’s more. Noah walks in Gods ways. And Abraham walks before God. So Abraham doesn’t pick up some of the negative influences that might be in holy memory.  Tucked within God (we all know) is everything we can possibly imagine, all the trash as well as the champagne. If Abraham walks before God he is walking in the vision, the heart-light-radiance being emitted by the Holiness.   The man who walks before God sits at the pinnacle of God’s transmission, really gets the finest gold dust at the top of the cool stream. However, Enock, like Noah, walks with God and he’s so righteous he doesn’t even die like a human. Like Elijah, he gets to rise right into the arms of holy radiance without experiencing human death. His consciousness is that fine-tuned.

Absolute consciousness no doubt has to include an embracing of all, the evil as well as the good. Abraham doesn’t get this beyond-death opportunity. Just go to the Cave of Makhpelah and see for yourself. Abraham is too righteous for that ultimate path.

And while the creation of the ark is so reminiscent of the forming of the mishkan..the close attention to detail and measurements, types of wood, etc… we are clearly looking at two different paradigms. 

The mishkan is the Israelite shelter in forward-movement. The ark is the shelter of the almost-Israelite in huge restraint and retreat-mode. 

The kabbalists could easily relate the whole flood event therefore to a final push of tsimtsum, of pulling-back on the part of God, to a constricted place where the lowest worlds just can’t survive anymore.  The kabbalists also say that the genmatria…letter count…for Amalek (the evil that needs to be destroyed) is the same as the Hebrew word for doubt.

Ah, now we can understand something.  It isn’t the outer degradation of the people that brings about this necessity of tsimstum on the part of God. It isn’t what they were doing or how they were acting. It was the pervasive, poisonous, haunting, choking presence of doubt.

Even Noah had so much doubt he couldn’t even speak up for his people. That’s why he is only righteous for his generation.  Whatever, he probably thinks as God gives him the directions.  He clearly gives up before God even enters the scene (just check out the end of Bereshith).

What keeps us alive and presently flood-less therefore isn’t some need to cling to the upper worlds at the expense of the lower.  It isn’t the Baal Teshuvah who is so busy studying Torah on a Shabbat eve that he forgets to visit his mother in the hospital.  It isn’t the saint who meditates night and day. Nor is it the oh so holy prayer leader incapable of saying Shalom to his friend during the reciting of the Amidah. Nor is it those who brandish their blood-stained swords of morality, or their blood-stained words of judgment during dinner time conversation.

Nor is the flood caused by people who need to completely deny any existence of the upper world. It isn’t caused by the murderer or the liar or even the adulterer. It isn’t caused even….and this is a stretch…by those who humiliate others. 

 The whole archaic prehistoric scene happens because Doubt has created a sledge hammer and is slicing the two worlds apart.  In this parashah, Evil and Good, such a by-gone childish paradigm, is sticking its ugly head up in the form of seeming rational consequences, and showing itself to be the master of destruction. The question is who and what might bring both words together so that they can merge and survive as one. So that there can be understanding, compassion, hope and dry land. That…if we look at Enoch and Elijah…is the holiest job of all. 

And as Buber says such an action necessitates humility: Humility is neither a virtue or a practiced value….One with humility is limitless and God is able to pour God’s glory into that person. The person who has true humility realizes that all souls are one.