Genesis Cycle 7 Noach Revisited

Noach Cycle 7 Revisited

What do we do with a blank page? This is a question posed by the Mesopotamians in the epic Gilgamesh, by the B’Hai Faith, by the Muslims, by the Qumran sect, by the Jude-Christian faith, by our Talmudic rabbis  concerning this week’s parasha Noach. What do we do with the sweat, determination, disgust, physicality, desire, apathy, headache and hope it takes to make the page blank? For after all, how can a page be blank if in the struggle to craft it we shachat the same earth and heart we think we are cleansing?

Yes, after staying on top of it all, yes way high on the crest, after being slammed about for forty days and forty nights, after doing all that could help manifest the divine will of absolute newness, a new world, a new life, a new  coast, a new state, a new earth... you realize that the very action of riding on the crest of the wave (even with all of those animals two by two) has made newness impossible, what do you do?

Note: We don't lose hope.

Note: This isn’t about them as compared to us. It’s not about Noach as other. It’s not about all others destroyed to make room for a new paradigm.  It’s about us. That world in the parsha Noach is our world. That war is our war. That murder is our murder. That dirt is our dirt. That disgust is our disgust. That pretense is our pretense. That behavioral sink in the name of God is our behavioral sink. That twisting of soul is our soul. That flood is our flood, the one we call in our hearts when all else fails, when the only alternative is the clean slate.

The paradoxical clean slate that can’t (by very definition) be a clean slate.

We are as Rabbi Schneur Zalman describes… the nefesh bahama as well as the holy nefesh Noach. As much as we yearn to erase our mistakes, our silly words, our outrageous behavior, our self righteousness, our judgment, our cruelty, the blood on our hands, there isn’t any erasing.  Yes, we can try the vacations, the saunas, the yoga, the religions, the drugs, the alcohol, the self help books, the music, the sources, the scholarly manifestos, the money, the status and reputation… but none of this can rush through our veins and drown out the tiny little memories of our same very tiny hurtful actions. Or if it does, it grabs the beauty along with it.  

Well then after the whole fiasco….after a state of almost-destruction….and now the sun comes out and shines right on us…and we are in the spotlight…what do we do?

Note: We face it, face ourselves.

And if Rabbi Nehemiah of Talmud is correct in Genesis Rabbah 30:9…then we have to look real deep.  Noach, he says, is a tightly shut vial of perfume in a graveyard.  If this is Noach, then what are we?

Trying to figure that out is the work of a lifetime.

It is the work of acceptance. Of love, not destruction. We forgive ourselves, our neighbors, our God, with hands open wide. We realize that a flood of study, of words, of music, of meditation, of water, of partying, of praying...a flood of anything to blot out a past reality.... is not the answer. Nothing created can ever be lost, the evil along with the good. As with Amalek, we remember to wipe him off the metaphorical slate. We are not to forget.  We therefore embrace all.  We walk in God’s ways and offer a rainbow, a b’rit to those who have hurt us most, the dead in their graves and the living in their graves. We know after all that (as it says in Samhedrin 56) God established a covenant with all of humanity through Noach. We also remember the beautiful teaching of Sotah 14a where Rabbi Simlai  teaches that Torah begins and ends with acts of chesed.

We therefore  walk over the hill and see with grace and gratitude the beauty that does remain before us, even on that dirty slate. We give ourselves in full sacrifice like sparks of light flying heartily into the heavens. We don't give up. We grow strong.  Strong enough to manifest divine behavior. Strong enough to walk beyond past weakness. Strong enough to submit, give in, and share those sparks with all people, all friends, eyes open.

As Walt Whitman says, we embrace a blade of grass.

As Dylan Thomas says, we hear the pebbles chiming in the holy streams.

As Alan Ginsberg says, (we see those) who wandered around and around at midnight in a railroad yard wondering where to go and went, leaving no broken hearts.

As William Blake asks, (we question) what immortal hand or eye could frame our fearful symmetry?

As Isaiah says in 54:10….For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My chesed or loving kindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken.

 Many mystics and rabbis and teachers of Talmud have expressed this in so many different tongues and languages.  This teaching of tolerance is the language (beyond any Tower of Babel) that connects us all.