Parshat Noah

AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY THE WATERS OF THE FLOOD CAME UPON THE EARTH. IN THE SIXTH HUNDREDTH YEAR OF NOAH'S LIFE, IN THE SECOND MONTH, ON THE SEVENTEENTH DAY OF THE MONTH, ON THAT DAY, ALL THE FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP BURST APART, AND THE FLOODGATES OF THE SKY BROKE OPEN. THE RAIN FELL ON THE EARTH FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS.

(Bereishit 7:10-12)

 

BY THESE THINGS HE CONTROLS PEOPLES; HE GIVES FOOD IN ABUNDANCE.

(Job 36:31)

 

 

The Quality of Rain is Determined by the Behavior of Human Society

The rain fell on the earth - and [only] later it says the flood persisted (7:17). When He brought down the rain, He brought it down out of compassion: if they had repented, it would have been a beneficent rain, but when they did not, it became a flood.

(Rashi 7:12)

 

By these things - Water that came from the heavenly treasury where He made judgment against the generation of the Flood - in those very days that very water also brought abundant food. Two opposite effects were created through a single cause; once He sent it to destroy the world, another time it became a rain more beneficent than any natural precipitation.

(Metzudat David on Job 36:31)

 

They said: Even years like those in which Elijah lived, when the rains fell on Sabbath eves - that is a cursed omen. When, then, is [the blessing] I will grant your rains in their season (VaYikra 26:4) fulfilled? (When it rains on) Wednesday nights [i.e., the night which constitutes the beginning of Wednesday]. It happened in the days of Herod that it would rain at night, and in the morning the winds would blow and the sun shined, so that the workers could go off to their toils knowing that they acted for the sake of heaven.

I will grant your rains in their season - On Sabbath nights. They said: It happened in the days of Shimon ben Shetah that it would rain every Sabbath night, until wheat grains grew to the size of kidneys, barley the size of olive pits, and lentils the size of gold dinars. The sages collected and saved some of them as evidence for later generations of sin's great influence.

(Yalkut Shimoni B'Hukoti 671)

 

 

Man's Heart is Always Inclined to Evil

God's Post-Traumatic Reaction

Joop Meijers

 

Everything seemed promising at first. The experiment succeeded beyond expectations. In less than a week, the entire world had been created. True, there was no committee of peers to judge the quality and significance of the results. Also true, as the comics would later point out - the experiment was not written up in a prestigious journal. None the less, the evaluation proclaimed by the Experimenter Himself elicited universal assent; that which had been created was very good. The experiment's crowning achievement was granted the epithet the image of God. There were great hopes for man.

The experiment's shortcomings quickly came to light: lies, trickery, murder, violence, fornication, rape - these were but a few of its dangerous by products. As often is the case, the immediate results fulfilled expectations, but the follow-up study uncovered serious problems. When the experiment's results began working against the goals set by the Experimenter, He decided to terminate the entire project.

The Lord saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time. And the Lord regretted that He had made man on earth, and His heart was saddened. The Lord said, I will blot out from the earth the men whom I created - them together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them. (Bereishit 6:5-7)

It looks as if the experiment failed. Man - the image of God - ends up a bitter disappointment.

As someone faced with loss, God is saddened. It is not that man is naturally evil. After all, God created him good and in the image of God - that is to say, possessing absolute free will, just like God who does as He pleases. Man was created very good - that is to say, with the ability to be very good, and with, as a consequence, the ability to be very bad.

God gives him the choice. The experiment is designed to see how he will behave. If God knew the results ahead of time, the experiment would be pointless. But the creation turned against his Creator, and uses the plan devised by his mind (which, according to Rabbi S. R. Hirsch refers to ideals=ideios=his guiding concepts) in order to cause unadulterated evil.

Great was man's wickedness on earth shapes the present, and as for the future, man aspires to nothing but evil. The conclusions: humanity's annihilation (sparing Noah, who pleased God). Noah saves man's honor. When, after the flood, he brings a thanksgiving offering, a reversal occurs in how the Divine experiment is understood:

The Lord smelled the pleasing odor, and the Lord said to Himself: "Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done... " (Bereishit 8:21)

This reversal is most surprising and raises many questions. How could it be that the reason given for annihilating humanity in chapter 6 - every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time - becomes, in chapter 8 - the devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth - the reason for not destroying humanity again?

This reversal was interpreted in various ways across the generations, but a large number of explanations all share a salient common element: Despite the dangers of anthropomorphism, most of the commentators dare to suggest that God really did change His mind, or more precisely, His viewpoint. Would it be too scanalous to propose that God was "in shock" from what had happened? Only after He had personally experienced the holocaust that He Himself had caused, seeing the destruction with His own "eyes," does God gain the motivation and psychological readiness to think differently about man - man whose nature did not and would not change. The commentators explain that then, and only then, did God try to exonerate man. That change of perspective allowed Him to swear not to destroy the world again. As the RaMBaN writes:

Since the devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth - He ascribes merit to men because by their very creation they have an evil nature in their youthful days but not in their mature years. If so, ...it is not proper to smite every living thing. The reason for the prefix mem [which signifies from] in the word min'urav [from his youth] is to indicate that the evil imagination is with men from the very beginning of their youth, just as the Rabbis have said: "From the moment he awakes to go forth from his mother's womb the evil impulse is placed in him" (Bereishit Rabbah 34:12). It is possible that the verse is saying that it is from youth - meaning, on account of youth - that the evil inclination is in man, for youth causes him to sin. (RaMBaN on Bereishit 8:21, Chavel translation)

God is prepared to take responsibility for having created man "evil" - as Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, would clan many years after RaMBaN - that evil is a part of human biology. Or: there is no permanent and stable evil in humans - we are not born evil. Rather, evil is a function of "youth," of what happens to people at some stage or another of life. Evil is a product of culture, education, and various learning processes (as the behaviorists would claim). In either case, there remains room to judge people leniently.

If God can change His mind (renounce the evil) then it must be that man, who was created in God's image, can change his perspective as well. God started out with a plan, He checked it through trial and error, and when He became aware of the plan's destructive outcome, He was willing to reconsider and changes His mind regarding an unchanging reality. And when God changes His mind regarding reality, His relation to reality also changes, and, as a result, reality itself changes!

God changes His perspective, and so He calls upon us to be flexible and reconsider deep-rooted assumptions of all kinds. Even if reality does not change, we can change our perception of reality.

Even if we agree that God changed his perception of the evil in man, one might still ask how we are to understand God's explanation for promising not to destroy the world again. How is a defense of man mounted on the basis of the devisings of his mind being evil? What is being said here? That God will never again curse the earth..., since the devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth?

We have seen that RaMBaN interprets the word ki (since) as relating to the fact that man is evil - there is no point complaining about man, he just does what comes naturally, biologically. Or, there is no point complaining about him, since he has been trained from early youth to do evil.

It is difficult to accept this deterministic doctrine. It contradicts the notion that man is responsible for his deeds, and stripped of responsibility and the freedom to choose between good and evil, man loses his distinctiveness, his "divine image."

Rabbi S.R. Hirsch is conspicuous for taking a unique approach to these issues. In contrast to the RaMBaN, Hirsch views the fact that the devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth as a cause for hope.

Before the flood, God bases His decision to obliterate humanity on the fact that man's heart was nothing but evil all the time. Now He is saying that man is evil from his youth. Hirsch makes a connection between ne'urav (his youth) and the verb lena'er, "to cast off from oneself" (see, for instance, Shoftim 16:2). Simlarly, ne'oret means "the waste product of linen."

...young human beings really want to grow out of themselves. Neither good nor bad impressions cling very fast to them... they still regard self-control and obedience to duty as an irksome yoke which their natures, striving up to independence, "shake of." (Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Bereishit 8: 21, Levy translation)

Continuing his lengthy comments, Hirsch explains that evil is only apparently evil. The independence that youth gain in their youth at the developmental stage in which they cast off the yoke of conformity to the adult world is the best guarantee that they will stand firm in their independent judgment, that they will possess the "stiff-neckedness" that allows a person to withstand external influences which are foreign to himself. Superficially, "youth," the period of rebellion, looks bad. The truth is that the "evil" of youth, the rebelliousness, and the casting off of the yoke, all ensure perseverance and the ability to stand up for one's beliefs in later life.

As in Rabbi Hirsch's day, we too see around us youths who appear to have rejected our most sacred values. In his commentary, Rabbi Hirsch defends these youths: what seems to be evil includes good within, good which will find its expression in a later stage of life. One should not condemn youths for rejecting the violence, corruption, and disregard for basic social values, which sometimes characterize the adult world. Hope for the future lies precisely with those youths who dare to reject the current order in order to forge new identities for themselves. God was right this time, after the flood - and in contrast to the past - when He decided to give the new generation a second chance, even though the devisings of that generation's mind appear to be evil from its youth, and perhaps precisely on account of that.

Joop Meijers is Head of the Department of Child-Clinical Psychology at the Hebrew University and a member of Kehillat Yedidyah.

 

 

A Tower with its Head in the Heavens as a Project that Ignores Human Beings

There were seven steps to the tower from the east, and seven from the west. The bricks were brought up on one side, and [the workers] descended on the other.

If a man fell and died, no one paid attention to him, but if a single brick fell, they would sit down and weep, saying, "Woe unto us! When will another one be brought up in its stead?"

(Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, 24)

 

Tribal Morality Contradicts Absolute Morality

If they complete the tower, they will come to think that they must forcibly prevent people who disagree with this opinion, and that involves murder, robbery which will completely corrupt society. The fact that they are currently in agreement will not help. Thus the Prophet Jeremiah cried out, how skillfully you plan your way to seek out love... on your garments is found the lifeblood of the innocent poor - you did not catch them breaking in (2:33-4), which means that they were unified in his day and would boast that they enjoyed love and peace more than any other people, but the prophet disagreed, for on their garments was found the blood of innocents - not because they had committed any theft or such, but because they did not belong to their group. So the groups came to murder, and there is no boast of peace in that, rather only if they had been careful to do evil against those not in their group.

(Ha-Amek Davar and Harhev Davar, Bereishit 11:6)

 

The Same Language, the Same Words

...when they said this [let us make for ourselves a name (Bereishit 11:4)], God understood their real intentions and that the consequences would end up to be the opposite of what they had wanted. There is a people which is dispersed and separated, in which no one has anything to do with his fellow, but that makes them one people. But if you were to gather them all together in order to escape the wars between nations, then they would find themselves trapped in a much greater war - the internal war of man against his neighbor, since "the gathering together of the wicked is bad for them" (Mishnah Sanhedrin 8:5). They also said they wanted to make for ourselves a name, but that means that each of them will try to lord over the next and be of higher status - that is what commonly happens among factions that direct all of their deeds towards personal glorification. That is why it was preferable to disperse them and keep them from building.

(Kli Yakar Bereishit 11:1)

 

...it seems to me that this decree (of the dispersal of those in Babel) was not a punishment, but rather a great correction for the sake of humanity. The main message of the story of the tower of Babel does not involve he actual attempt to erect the tower, but rather what God said before hand: that all the land - humanity reborn after the flood - spoke the same language and the same words. After the failure to build the tower, different languages and different words arose. I believe that the fundamental mistake or sin of that generation was not the building of the city and the tower, but rather the desire to maintain the same language and the same words through artificial means of centralization. In modern parlance, we call this totalitarianism.

(Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, z"l, He'arot le'Parshiyot Ha'Shavua, pp. 14-15)

 

 

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