What
Was the First Thing That Noah Did After the Flood?
Or
Hope After Destruction
November 4, 2005
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Richmond, Virginia
Tomorrow's Torah portion of Noah
is well known to adult and child, though in its transformation
as a children's story it loses all of its meaning. Its themes include
the question of the co-existence of good and evil; the consequences
of unbridled evil; who shall survive and who shall die; absolute
righteousness regardless of the cost verses relative righteousness;
uncontrolled violence; and, faith in God. All of these themes are crucial
to our perception of life and our responses to life's challenges.
I rhetorically ask the following question:
What was the first thing that Noah
did when he got out of the ark?
Having asked it let me set it aside and ask this question first: What did
Noah see when he opened up the ark?
He saw a devastated planet. He saw life, as he had known it totally gone.
All humanity was dead. All the animal kingdom was dead. The entire agricultural
world was dead. Silence for as far as the eye could see. Imagine the worst
picture you have ever seen of a battlefield, bombed out city, a Nagasaki,
a New Orleans, and multiply it by the nth degree. That is how I imagine
the scene that confronted Noah when he opened up the ark after forty
days and nights of pounding rain and then another one hundred and fifty
days while the water level descended. It is beyond my comprehension,
except that I recognize the words of the English language. The reality
of the words is totally beyond my experience. It is not like the coloring
books and children's fables, with birds flying about and little plants
springing up, a beautiful rainbow sweeping the sky. The Torah depicts
absolute devastation. That is what Noah experienced in the first moments
upon opening the ark and stepping outside.
Another question: How did he feel in those moments after he gazed upon
the world? The Torah is silent itself on this matter. The classical commentators
do not ask this question, but I do. Did his voice ring out in triumphalistic
cry to those who died, "Beat ya!" Did he say anything at all? Did
he cry? Did he mourn for all the dead of human, animal and plant? Did he cry
out to the world that was gone: "Why didn't you listen to me and get on
the ark?" Or did he cry: "Why were you so bad that you deserved
this punishment?" Did he speculate: "What will become of me and my
family?" Or: "What will this world be like?" Or: "If I
don't walk the straight-and-narrow will God do this again?" Surely one
response that Noah did not have, was one of joy. There could only be
sorrow. The question for Noah was:
Would that sorrow, that despondency that despair control Noah, or would
Noah control it?
Would he have a feeling of hopelessness that would lead to helplessness
or would he triumph over catastrophe?
This returns me to my original question which I am now prepared to answer:
What was the first thing that Noah did when he got out of the ark?
The answer is: He built an altar and offered sacrifices to God.
"Noah then built an altar in honor of the Eternal; taking some pure beasts
and some pure birds, he offered up whole burnt offerings on the altar. (8:20)
It would have been easy to succumb to despair, to find the idea of rebuilding
human civilization too daunting. Noah was entitled to be totally discouraged
and disheartened. Yet he did not yield to that natural and normal human
impulse. Instead, he did an act of affirmation of his existence. He did
something that was positive and constructive. He moved forward - Noah had
to build the altar and not just offer it on a rock or bare earth - instead
of being frozen in place or retreating into the ark. Most importantly,
the first thing that Noah did was to affirm his faith in God. God had not
abandoned him. God still loved him. God would always be with him. After total destruction
and devastation, Noah asserted his faith, and did not desert it. This lesson
is so very necessary for us to realize ourselves and how it plays out in
our lives and that of our people.
I do not know why so many crucial historical events occur in this month
of the calendar, but they all reflect this particular lesson from Noah.
On November 14th, 1935 the legal schema that would be used as a judicial
schimira for the persecution of the Jews of Germany, namely, the Nuremberg
Laws were enacted. These laws completed the dissolution of the Jews of Germany
from the rest of society, which had been begun by the Law for the Protection
of German Blood and Honor, and later the Reich Citizenship Law. The Jews were
now totally isolated and ostracized. It laid the "legal" foundation
for their murder.
In November 1938, the Jews who had left Poland, mostly for Germany, were
on the verge of being declared by Poland to be stateless. Their visas
and passports would be null and void. Therefore, five days before the
Polish law would take effect; Germany evicted approximately 20,000 Polish
Jews. They were dumped in no-man's land on the Polish-German border,
with the troops of both countries not allowing them to move. Ultimately,
many would come to Warsaw and its ghetto and die there. The son of one
of these Polish Jews, Hershel Grynspan, in revenge for what as done to
his parents, killed the third secretary in the German consulate in Paris.
This gave the Nazis the pretext for starting Krystallnacht. The Holocaust
had now really begun.
While my own eyes did not see the European Jewish landscape in April
1945, we have all seen the pictures and have learned the details that
need no repetition. But who could expected, who could have dreamt, that
thirteen years after Nuremberg, why that is the number I leave to your
contemplation, and ten years after Krystallnacht to the very month, the
United Nations would vote for the existence of Medinat Yisrael? With
the ashes at their feet, could it have been possible, within the realm
of wildest imagination that there would be an independent Jewish state
to defend the existence of our people? Would it not have made sense to
succumb to despair? Like Noah who could not go back into the ark, the
Jews of Europe could not go back to their homes. And like Noah, who built
his altar, they built their individual and collective altars to reaffirm
their lives, the existence of Am Yisrael, and to aver their faith in
our God. We say daily in the Tachanun prayers that God is the Shomer
Sharit Yisrael; God is guardian of the remnant of Israel. No matter how
their world looked, God had not deserted us, enabled us to survive, and
like Noah, affirm ourselves, our people, our God through building, personal
lives, our people and our State.
That relates to another event:
Tonight, ten years ago, in Tel Aviv, Yitzchak Rabin was murdered. As
Prime Minister of Israel, taking audacious steps on the White House Lawn,
he shook Yasir Arafat's hand. I remember the look in his eyes and his
body posture. He did something so difficult because he saw a different
global threat to Israel's safety, the despicable threats that we heard
last week from the tyrannical, despotic evil president of Iran. Here
were so many intertwined feelings: the hero of the Six Day War; the first
assassination by a Jew of a Jewish leader of the State; a Jew murdering
in the name of Judaism; the people torn between the known of Arab hatred
and the unknown of the risks for peace. There was ample reason for despair.
That same dynamic could be envisioned now after the pullout of Gaza.
But like Noah who built and reaffirmed his vision and faith in God, Israel
did not give up its soul, neither in 1995 nor now. Instead, they continue
to build, for those who need new homes and those who are making aliyah
to Israel from all over the world, Uganda, Russia, Argentina and India.
Our partnership area Emek Hefer is creating a home in their section called
Yad Hannah for those who were moved from Homesh in northern Samaria.
Israel builds and keeps the flame of faith alive.
Let me conclude:
It would have been easy for Noah to give in and give up. There was every
reason to be discouraged. He was caught in the worst existential crisis
that a human being can have. It was worthy of total despair. Yet he did
not. Instead, he built an altar. He made a statement of affirmation of
his own existence, of his faith in God, and of the destiny of his family.
That lesson is an eternal lesson, for each individual personally and
for the Jewish people collectively. It has implemented in the rebirth
and continuing miracle of the existence of Medinat Yisrael. May the faith
and the courage of Noah never desert us.
Shabbat Shalom.
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