Parashat Noah: Can Humanity Be Redeemed

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

0:04  
All right, welcome, everyone. I'm wrapping a tallit around me. Feel free to do the same, or just to take a moment to close your eyes and feel yourself enveloped by the desire to connect to Jewish tradition, to a morning gratitude practice, to your ancestors, to this community. Settle into your seat or your bed, or wherever it is that you are listening. Take a few breaths of just arriving in presence.

Baruch Hatta, Adonai, Sharky, chana, lahita, teith, but seat, seats.

Ah, right before we turned on the right before we turned on the recording. We were talking about the power of going outside. And so usually, usually on mornings when I'm leaving minion, I haven't gone outside because I, you know, wake up, get my kids ready to get out the door, and I push them out the door. But this morning, I actually walked them to the car, and then as I was walking back into the house, I looked up at the leaves, you know, and some of them are still green, up on the trees lining the streets. Some of them are yellow. Some of them are red. Some of them are on the trees. Many of them are on the ground. And just had, you know, one of those moments of being outdoors, feeling myself, part of the cycle of nature, feeling myself, you know, a day more yellow or a day more red than yesterday, so to speak, in the cycle of life, still very much on the tree, you know, but just noticing how everything has its time, and then saying moda nila, fanacha, like reaching up, reaching out, just sort of stretching out like a tree, and saying the words of gratitude of waking up in the morning, breathing another breath, living another day. So feel free to drop into the chat of all kinds of trees, like, what kind of tree do you feel like this morning? Or where do you feel like you're in the life cycle of a tree?

3:01  
Oh, Da. Moda.

3:14  
Ni

3:21  
moda

3:41  
mod Shala

4:26  
i

4:49  
i just gonna read out some of these beautiful things. Just before dawn this morning, the tiny sliver of a waning crescent was looking lovely in the eastern sky. And. Oh. Lexi, what did you just post? Is it a picture of the moon, or is it a picture? Lexi, I think before you jumped on I told people about the mush. Oh, there it is beautiful, sliver of the sun. Lexi, I told people about our mushroom Education Day, and we had a whole conversation about why I slept well, and I think it's because I spent all day outdoors. Big, big revelation, bamboo bending but not breaking. Beautiful Emmett Aiden says You're definitely a red maple. I'm going to be put on display before I toss in the towel, feeling Willow moving with the wind. Sunrise, love, love, love, love. So this week, we enter the second part of the Torah. And man, I had a, I had a, I wouldn't say it was a debate, but a conversation with a couple Rabbi's earlier this week about whether the Torah is fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic about humanity. And I know people think I'm very sunny, but I think fundamentally the Torah you say realistic? Susanna, yeah, maybe, maybe that's a better way to say it. So in last week's Torah portion, Bre sheet, in the beginning, God this, you know, magnificent artist, you know, sort of creating out of the molecules and atoms, you know, out of the chaos that exists. Because God doesn't create from nothing. The Torah is actually quite clear. God takes the substance that exists, which is Tohu, vohu, chaos, and begins to separate and shape, you know, separating light from darkness, separating land from water, you know, then the lower waters from the upper waters. And then the creating the lights in the sky, and then the creating of animal life. And then finally, like the crowning achievement, the creating of the human being. And at first, this human being just has all the potential, you know, of all the genders and all the expressions of humanity. And then it becomes clear, like, just because this person is magnificent, they're still alone. They're lonely. And so God, you know, shapes a second person. Depends on which story you read, whether you know God shaped a second person, whatever the point is. Then there too. And then the second person talks to the snake, right? And the snake says, I know you were told not to touch that one tree, but you know what? You really think it's going to be that bad. God. Told you you die. You really think you're going to die. And the woman goes out, you're, you know, you're probably right, and goes ahead and, you know, eats the fruit. She doesn't die. As it turns out, shares with her partner, Adam. They both realize they're naked. You know, it's sort of like the the lifting of the lifting of the scales, right? And the realizing that there's something called shame. Suddenly they went from feeling no shame, from existing in the world, you know, kind of joyfully and completely in sync and in harmony with all living creatures and with the natural created world, and suddenly feeling shame, God exiles them from the garden, and within one generation, their children are killing each other, you know, like they have these children, Keith and Havel. And within just one generation, homicide has been invented, homicide and fratricide, you know, it doesn't, and it's not clear, like, exactly what happened out in the field, but God realizes, okay, I don't think, I don't think it's, I don't think he meant to do at something as terrible as what just happened, you know, like, I don't it like, this was the first time murder had ever happened. Maybe, kind didn't realize when he hit his brother in the head with a huge rock, it would kill him and he would never wake up again. Maybe he didn't know it. So God said, you know, he doesn't. God doesn't punish. You know, this, this murder or Life for life he you know, basically you're gonna, you're going to wander you like you need a time out. Well, humanity reconstitutes itself, and you know, the Adam and Eve have more children, the world gets populated with people. And by the end of Parashat, barishit, the first parsha in the Torah, humanity has become so corrupt, so irreparably evil, it seems that God has decided to scrap this project of humanity and start again, right? Basically, to send a flood and, well, let's just, let's just read it. Let's just read it together, because it's really powerful and literally. Makes me cry every single time I read it. I don't, I don't know why. I mean, I maybe I do know why, but I just let's read this together here. Can you see Safari here? Okay, oh, God, Truly, this is a I gave a sermon that included this line a couple years ago, and even as I, as I spoke the words from the Parsha in the sermon, I was in tears. So here we go, vayar and I ki rabbi at damba arts. Ki call yet sir Marsh vote libo rack ra call haYom and the ever present one saw how great was human wickedness on the earth. And you can just see these words, Rabbi at Adam, the abundance of evil of the human being, how every plan devised by the human mind was nothing but bad all the time. And what was this bad? I mean, so Okay, here's the the Hebrew definition, a definition of the word Ra, bad, evil, unpleasant, disagreeable, displeasing, sad, unhappy, evil, distress, misery, injury, calamity. You know this. This is what filled the human mind. Now the question of what this evil was exactly is also a matter of debate, because, one, because, like, one version of it says The Midrash is, you know, the human being, like people would go to the market and they would just steal, like a bean, you know, or like, a penny's worth of gum drops, whatever it was like, little enough that nobody would notice or prosecute them, but enough that if everybody did it, it completely undermines the, you know, the the whole system and everybody just thought, If only I do this, nobody will notice. But if everybody lives that way, that was what brought down the whole thing. So the chem Adonai, Ki ASA, eta Adam, the arts, vaitsev, elibo and the ever present one regretted having created humankind on Earth with a sorrowful heart. God said, I will blot out from the earth humankind, whom I have created, humans, together with beasts, creeping things in the birds of the sky. For I regret having made them, But Noah found favor with God, and that is where last week's parsha ends, and this week's parsha begins. Any comments or observations before we go on?

Do we know what Noah did to find favor? Great question, great question, let's, let's click on this and see. So let's look. Let's let, Oh, does Rashi not have anything on this? All commentary, let's see. There's got to be a Rashi on this. Come on. But Noah found favor with God. Come on.

13:28  
I'm shocked.

13:30  
Okay, okay. Ibn Ezra just wants to tell us what favor is. Then, great, fine. I am. I'm literally, I'm very surprised. Seems like the kind of thing that the rabbi's would want to let us know what Noah did to find favor

13:55  
I there is the

13:56  
fact that the commentary is there on verse nine, not verse eight,

14:02  
yeah. I was just gonna say here, right? Exactly here. It says he was a righteous man. He was blameless in his age. Noah walked with God. So there, yeah, there. The question is like, Well, what did that mean to be righteous? And what did that mean that he was blameless in his age? That's something that the bar mitzvah kid that we, that we had on Friday night or on Saturday night, mused on, like, right? Because what, what does blameless in his age mean? Does it mean he was just better than all the other schmucks at the time, or was he like, actually a righteous person, no matter what age he might have lived in? So this is, let's see. This is Rashi do,

14:43  
does chat GPT count

14:47  
before we talk to chat GPT we should? You know, at

14:50  
least holding space here, pulled it up. Let me know.

14:54  
Well, D, what did you find?

14:56  
Well, here,

14:58  
wait, hang on there, but let me. I'm going to read out what says here area told Noah, Noah east, Sadiq, Noah was a righteous man. These are the progeny of Noah, the generation since the text mentions him. It sings his praise in accordance with what is said, the mention of the righteous shall be for a blessing. So even you know, just even talking about a righteous person, brings blessing. Another explanation is since, after starting quote EY told dot Noah, these are the generations or the progeny of Noah, it does not, at once mention the names of his children, but declares that he was a righteous man. Do you see that Eli told dot Noah? Here is the line of Noah colon, Noah ish Sadiq. Noah was a righteous man. So scripture thereby teaches you that the real progeny of the righteous are their good deeds. And that's a really good one, especially for anybody who does not have children or doesn't want to have children. You know the idea that, like your legacy in this world is actually your deeds, not your children. That's, that's kind of cool. First nine there in his generation. Okay, here's Rashi. Some of our Rabbi's explained this word badura tab to his credit, he was righteous even in his generation, because, like, he was surrounded by bad people, but that he didn't follow. He didn't follow their example. It follows that he had lived in a generation. If he had lived in a generation of righteous people, he would have been even more righteous owing to the force of good example. Okay, however others explain it to his discredit. In comparison with his own generation, he was accounted as righteous, but had he lived in the generation of Abraham, he would have been accounted as of no importance. And then finally, this is all part of verse nine here, eta Elohim, he talach, Noah. Noah walked with God. In the case of Abraham, Scripture said God before whom I walked, Noah needed God's support to hold him up in righteousness. Abraham drew his moral support from himself and walked in righteousness by his own effort. All right, all right. Barbara, do you have anything from the artificial Internet Intelligence to contribute? No only to say

17:17  
that it it speaks to this, most importantly, righteousness, blamelessness, walk with God, obedience, faith, and then explained what it meant, and it obviously jives with you. Mm, but what I thought was super interesting, yes, was under righteousness he described as a righteous man, meaning he lived according to God's will, striving to do what was morally right in a world filled with wickedness and corruption. Amen.

17:51  
So thank you. If you jump down to verse 11, so when it says the Tisha, Keith, arts, lifne, Elohim, the Tim, alejat, Chamas, the earth became corrupt before God, the earth was filled with lawlessness. So what exactly was this lawlessness? Rashi says robbery, violence, or that violence, rather, is defined as robbery. But here he also says corruption means just like lewdness, idolatry, corruption, you know, basically a perversion of values. You know, putting the wrong things at the top of the priority list of values. And so God sees the earth is corrupt. Look at this. Oh my gosh, all flesh had corrupted even the cattle, the beasts and the fowl at this point, I think he says, Did not consort with their own species. But I hear this as human beings had so corrupted the natural order that even animals could not, kind of continue along their instinctual animal paths like they, you know, we'd messed it all up. And so Noah says, God says to No, I'm going to try again. I'm going to put an end to all flesh. The earth is filled with lawlessness because of them. It's not just like this is, you know, when people say at climate change, you know, it's like, it's part of the natural cycles of, you know, all the different time periods in natural geological history. What we're seeing right now has nothing to do with human beings, or at least we don't know that it has to do with human beings. And so the Torah is being really clear. This is not just an accident of nature. This is because of what human beings have done. God says I'm about to destroy them with the earth and so now we're going to tell this part of the story in song form. But the reason why this song then feels so crazy out of sort of like out of. Of what's the word I'm looking for, not tone deaf, exactly. But what you realize the story of Noah's ark that is taught to children is a banana story to teach children. You know, this whole idea that God gives up on humanity and decides to find one guy who can re constitute humanity and the animal kingdom and the, you know, that's, that's what, that's what God wants to do. And this song that I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull up the words for, because it's actually kind of a fun one. But, my God, it's quite it's quite dark. So here we go.

And I like, I'm curious, what like? What do we do? What do we do with this, both the both the darkness of the story and the fact that, because it's about animals and because it's about a boat, it's clearly also, you know, it's sort of like the way that companies market cereal, you know, like with pretty pictures on the front to get kids to buy. Like this is also obviously a story designed to get kids interested too, so curious to know what you make of all of this.

21:25  
The Lord said to Noah, there's gonna be a floody floody. Lord said to Noah, there's gonna be a floody flood he get those animals out of the muddy, muddy children of the Lord, so Rise and shine and give God your glory, glory, rise and shine and give God your glory. Glory, rise and shine and give God your glory. Glory, children of the Lord, the Lord. The Lord said to Noah, build you an arky arky. Lord said to Noah, to build him an arky, arky. Make it out of go for barky. Barky children of the Lord, the animals they came in, they came in by twosies, twosies, animals they came in. They came in by twosies. Twosies, ELO fins and kangaroosies, Rosies, children of a lord in a rain and pour for 40 daisies. Daisies, rain and pour for 40 daisies. Daisies drove those camels, nearly crazy, crazy children of the Lord the sun came out and dried up. The Landy sun, it came out and dried up the Landy Landy everything was fine and dandy, dandy children. So Rise and shine and give God your glory, glory, rise and shine and give God your glory, glory, rise and shine in Give God your glory, glory children.

23:35  
And what do y'all have to say about that? Ah, all right, I'm just gonna read this out loud. Yes, it's a terror. It's a horribly scary story. Not cute at all to a certain extent. I think its familiarity makes it feel more sanitized, yes, but when you look at the story, it's a pretty ubiquitous myth. I can't think of an ancient civilization in Eurasia that does not feature a flood story, complete with an ark in animals and Emma responding, I've seen a theory that it has to do with the formation of the Mediterranean. Interesting that would have been pretty traumatic, very interesting and account for why the text of say the Enuma Elish are so similar to that of Noah. And then all right, says, I'm wondering, with all that is happening in the world today, will God give up on us again? You know what I think about that question is, like, give up on us? Like God was really clear. And in fact, let's go back. Let's go back and look at what happens when humanity comes out? You know, when we come out of the ark, when Noah comes back out, because God is actually clear about God's intentions for what they will do if we blow it again. Okay, which is, God will not send another flood. All right. So here's we're seeing God tell Noah, go into the ark with all the animals. Do to do, to do. All right. Eventually, the floodgates of the sky were stopped, and the water came to a rest. After 40 days, Noah opened the window, sent out a raven. It didn't come back, or it did come back, but then the dove found a place to sit. All right, here we go. God tells him come out of the ark, bring with you all the animals. Here we go. So God smelled the pleasing odor of the sacrifice Noah had made on an altar to God, and God resolved, Never again will I doom the earth because of humankind, since the devisings of the human mind are Evil, from youth, keithser, Lev ha Adam ra meanru, tavelo, osif ODE, human beings are incorrigible. I guess God says, I design them that way. What do you want? What do I want? I design them this way. This is who they are. But Never again will I destroy human beings as I have done. So long as Earth endures seed, time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. This is where I am pretty sure James Baldwin gets the line The Fire Next Time, right, because God says, I will not send another flood to wipe out the earth. And so James Baldwin says, like, yeah, God won't send a flood The Fire Next Time. Like it this. This isn't saying, you know, we therefore will, will live happily ever after, no matter how we act. It's just saying there'll be other consequences, like, God's not going to send a flood, maybe a Fire Next Time. But you know, if there's, if there is to be a flood. Now, it's not that God is sending in, you know, we, we went ahead and created the consequences, the natural consequences, of our own, you know, of our own route, of our own badness. Not that anybody, like any of us born into this world, you know, could make, could make significantly different choices. So much of this has to do with the collective, you know, with like we as a big collective, just looking here on the side, Lexi, I hear this as a restoration of balance, that the magnitude of God's response is proportionate to how far we've gotten out of whack in the context of climate change. How big a response do we need to wake up? Yeah? So Susanna, looking at, looking at God's sort of analysis of humanity, not a bug a feature. Yeah? Ah, friends, so, so this is the question is, you know, is, is the torah fundamentally optimistic about human beings or not so much? I'm going to go to the end of the Parsha here. This is the end of this week's parsha.

And we get to all right now here, it's like the world being repopulated with all of the different, all of the different descendants of all of Noah's children, creating all of the different tribes, you know, referred to throughout the Torah that take up their residence all over the ancient Near East. You can see that scrolling, scrolling, okay. And finally, here's, here's where we end. Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words, which already the, you know, commentators want to know what does that mean? And they migrated from the east, and they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, Come, Let us make bricks and burn them. Hard bricks serve them as stone, bitumen, as mortar. And they said, Let us build a city with a tower with its top in the sky to make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered all over the world. And God came down to look at the city and the tower that humanity had built. And God said, If as one people with one language for all this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they propose to do will be out of their reach. Come then let us. Which is also interesting, because God frequently refers to God's self as an us. Who is the US up there? Is it? Is it one God? Is it all of God's personalities? Is it God and the angels let us go down and confound their speech so that they will not understand one another. Thus, God scattered them from over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building that city. That is why it is called Babel. Babel because God miv. While babbled, mixed up their speech all over the whole earth and scattered them all over the whole earth. And that's basically where the Parsha comes to a close. And then we Well, a couple generations later, we meet Tara, who is the father of Avram, and so far, we don't know that much about them, just that he has a grandson named lot and a daughter in law named Sarai, who becomes who is avraham's wife, and they settle in the land of Canaan. That's all we know. But next week, of course, is Parasha, where we get to know Abraham. So much happens in the first two partial of this torah. It's really bananas. Okay, on the heels of this study, a I want to make sure we do We dedicate this learning for the sake of healing, for a Fauci Ma, for our world and for all of you, and for anybody you're thinking of inside of it. Um, now, Alexi, I'm just reading what you're writing here. The Torah seems to hold humans to have great capacity for both causing harm and redemption. Olam habah is possible, but asks us to cultivate our highest nature. Rabbi Lexi, yeah, whoever edited this manuscript, has an odd sense of pacing. Agree. Agree, hard. Agree. Um, yeah, alright, so I'm going to just sing a rafush Lema prayer for healing. So anybody who wants to share the name of or just drop into the chat a person who you're praying for this morning, a person or place praying for an end to war, an end to human cruelty, an end to ra that is in the live of every Adam kolhayom says, says God and replacing it instead with a question of, how do we help? How do we heal? How do we support helpfulness and healing all the pain and fear in our country? My god, yes. How do we how do we create even like little moments, phone calls, texts, visits, of optimism, of hope, of caring. Okay, so just looking at the names here, Carl Yael and Joel, Erica and Shaq, everyone on Jessica's list, everyone on irene's list, even if Irene isn't here, Aiden, shalom, Ben or Rabbi no Vasari menu, my friend Laura

33:00  
Leila

33:02  
and the addicts and mentally ill. Oh, civil war in Cameroon, thank you. Emmet says, yeah, the rabbi's tried hard to get rid of the eight server. Hara, it didn't work, so we just pray to keep it where it belongs, like channeled, channeled. All right, So

33:28  
revana,

33:49  
if am on Ha, sending out

34:54  
a special prayer to Martin's mama, going through a lot right now, sending the floor. Schnabel,

35:03  
sharhoda, Israel, holiday, COVID,

35:10  
Omar Amin, I mean, I mean, I didn't even, I didn't get a chance even to read from it this morning. But this is another book I wanted to put on your radar screens. Eco Bible. And so this was written by a friend of mine, Rabbi Yonatan NARAL and Rabbi Leo D, I don't know Leo D, I do know Jonathan narrow quite well. And it basically goes through the whole torah in tiny, you know, in in small, small segments riffing off of lines just the way that we saw in the traditional commentaries. Um, and has just short paragraphs on ways to read the Torah through the lens of ecological and environmental awareness. Um, and, you know, and it's really beautiful. And so I was planning on reading you a couple of these today, and we're already very much at time. So yes, for Leia Ari, going to include Nancy Pryor in Kaddish. We'll make what we'll do Kaddish now and and then anybody wants to stay on and keep talking and maybe hear a little bit about, hear a little bit about from this book, happy to, happy to do that. Okay, so for Nancy Pryor, for Mark nur love Yvonne Jennings, Harold Jennings, Sylvia herring, who else are we remembering? As we say coddish this morning.

Nathan Pollock, Rosa Lizzi, is

there anybody who would like to lead us in coddish this morning? I

37:07  
Okay,

37:16  
I can do it if there's nobody else. I'm not saying television.

37:21  
Well, thank you. Here, wait, hang on. Let me, can you wait, hang on.

37:32  
That was a little a little busy. Yeah,

37:34  
that wasn't the correct screen. Here we go.

37:45  
Rabbi

37:47  
Amen.

37:50  
Keith a Mishkan of your meh from fire, the whole bit Israel, the agala. Visman karavimo, amen. Amen. Rabbi,

38:18  
amen call Bucha Mata. Tomato dam, Iran, beramavia, Bucha long Elena valcois val call Ishmael,

38:48  
thank you. Thank you. Betty Patashnik, Joan Carlo, may all their memories be blessings. Applause.

39:03  
Rise and shine and give God your glory. Glory, rise shine and give God your glory. Glory, rise and shine and give God your glory, glory, children of the Lord, alone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai