and come off the boat and repopulate the Earth.

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1 Parsha Noach By Patrick Beaulier This Torah portion is called Noach or Noah. Makes sense, because the story is about Noah, his ark, and everything leading up to the Abrahamic story. This Torah portion could also be called not quite yet. I would like to focus on what the phrase not quite yet means, in the context of this week s dvar Torah. While Adam, Eve and Cain all had interactions with God, it is generally agreed upon that the first covenant with humanity was between God and Noah. In the epic of Noah, God instructs Noah, a man considered righteous in his time, to build a large wooden ark, so that he and his family will survive a great flood of the Earth. Rain falls for forty days and forty nights (forty being the Hebrew number for too long ), and the waters churn for another one hundred and fifty days before receding. After one more year, the Earth dries up and Noah and his family and come off the boat and repopulate the Earth. Let s pause for a moment. Noah is not actually called righteous, or tzadik, but righteous for his time or in his generation. This generation; however, is a cruel one. God s plan for humanity is going terribly wrong it seems, but Noah is a decent guy.

2 The Talmudists interpreted this use of the word tzadik as something of an underhanded complement. It is not that Noah is a holy, righteous man, but that given the circumstances he came from (in this case, a very nasty world), he is good enough to keep the human race going (Babylonian Talmud: Sanhedrin 108). God is not destroying the world; God is renewing Creation. Is it perfect? Well, Noah is not perfect. He is good enough. So I suppose the world is on its way to being perfect but not quite yet. It is confusing whether Noah brought two of each kind of animal on the ark (6:19-22, 7:8-9, 7:14-16) or seven pairs of certain kinds (7:2-5). Biblical apologists reconcile the passages by saying that indeed, Noah did bring two of each kind of animal aboard the ark, but in addition, he also brought the clean and unclean pairs in sevens. It begs the question: without the Torah, how did Noah know what was clean or unclean, or why it even mattered? It would seem like a great time for God to say, OK Noah, there s this thing called derekh Torah, and I want you to be on it. So before we do this whole flood thing, how about you go to Mount Sinai and I will tell you the difference between Hebrew National, Glatt and Ballpark Franks. Of course, God did not do this. God instilled in Noah only the knowledge he needed to accomplish the task of the ark. Do we have perfect knowledge of what the new world is supposed to be like, our role in it, and a covenant with God? Not quite yet!

3 So far, I have told the children s Bible story version of Noah: the one that lines the walls of nursery school and babies bedrooms. The second part of the story, the part that takes place on dry land, is where things get really interesting. The first thing that happens is an animal sacrifice. Now, at this time, God has not instituted a formal system for sacrifice. We know that Cain and Abel offered sacrifices (Gen. 4:3-4), but nowhere does God explicitly say that sacrifices are a part of the God/human relationship. When Noah offers the sacrifice, he has a choice: do I kill the clean animals, or the unclean ones? No surprise, Noah offers the clean animals and of all the clean fowl (Genesis 8:20), which when offered by fire to God, had a pleasant aroma, and the Lord said to Himself, I will no longer curse the earth because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will no longer smite all living things as I have done. So long as the earth exists, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease (Gen. 8:21-22). This is an amazing moment. We do not have a covenant yet, but we have God stopping to pause. The first action in the new creation is not God bursting forth a new Garden of Eden or anything like that. Instead, the new created world is a place where human beings act, and God says, huh. I like that. It reveals a difference between Judaism and Christianity. While Christianity awaits the redemption of a broken world, Judaism lives in the Noah moment where God is forced to sit back and realize that humanity, while very flawed, is essentially good. God s sense that

4 creation is tov or good is now extended to humanity. We are no longer the children of Adam and Eve, but the children of Noah; and accordingly, God will never stop humanity, so long as the earth exists (9:11). It is time now for God to offer up a deal with Noah, and through Noah, all of humanity (Gen. 8-9). The details of the deal work like this: God blesses Noah and his sons, and the rest of humanity through them (9:1). God gives the original Adamic commandments to Noah and his family: be fruitful and multiply this new creation (9:7) and take control of it (9:2-3). By giving Noah these commandments, God is saying that the world is not as it should be. The world is simply a stage on which the human drama, the entire drama of creation, can continue to express itself creatively. The world is not finished unless humans live fully it at least, not quite yet. God cannot (or will not) suppress man s natural desire to destroy, so at the very least, God can put limitations on it. Think of it as the difference between the war on drugs and decriminalization, or abstinence versus comprehensive sex education. It is from this mindset of regulation versus criminalization that Noah receives the laws on eating and murder. Unlike Adam and Eve, who were vegetarians, this new creation would allow for certain kinds of violence including eating meat (9:4). However, since blood represents life, blood will not be eaten and animals must be fully dead before they are eaten.

5 In this new world, humans cannot murder one another (9:5) and if they do, the human family has the right to seek capital punishment against them (9:6). God continues to hope for a time when there is no bloodshed. The prophets Isaiah and Micah foresaw a time when the world would reach this place of spiritual purity: swords turning into ploughshares (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3). But at the time, human beings just are not ready for that at least, not quite yet. God seals the deal by letting Noah know that the world will never again be destroyed and gives a rainbow as a sign of "everlasting covenant" for all ages to come (9:12-17). So, the descendants of Noah remain a single human nation, with a single language and culture, for several generations after this tale ends. The deal is done or perhaps, not quite yet. Covenant, or brit, is likely the greatest gift of the Jewish people. While it is possible that monotheism came from the monolatry of Pharaoh Akhenaten (who chose to worship the sun god Ra exclusively in a form of pseudo- monotheism), the Jewish people were the first to develop a theology, which transcended national boarders, and to craft a narrative about a god who specifically sides with one peoplehood in a special way. Judaism teaches that this force is the grounding of all

6 reality, and that this spiritual potentiality has a vested interest in the success of humanity. The problem with covenants is that they continue to change. Our first covenant, Noach, is universal. The Abrahamic covenant is a family covenant. The Israelite covenant is a peoplehood, and through the prophetic tradition, we arrive back at the universal, only this time through a Jewish lens. How do we make sense of any of this? How can God continue to change God s mind? Rationalists, Biblical literalists and fundamentalists contend that God never contradicts God s word, but many, many passages exist where this is not true (see Exodus 32:14, Numbers 14:20, 1 Samuel 15:35, 2 Samuel 24:16). Sometimes, this thing called God and God s law just does not make sense. At least, note quite yet. In an interview with Dutch Lux magazine, Chief Rabbi of Britain Jonathan Sacks eloquently stated, If you look carefully at the Bible, you will see that it doesn t talk about Truth. It talks about covenant. Covenant is a relationship in the Bible, between God and us. In the book of Genesis, God makes two covenants: one with Noah, the other with Abraham. The one with Noah embraces all of humanity, so that after the flood, we have a covenant of human solidarity. That s the universal covenant. God makes universal covenants with us as human beings [even] before he makes a particular covenant with Abraham.

7 In his famous book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People Rabbi Harold Kushner suggests that while asking God for forgiveness is a huge part of religious devotion, we must also forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all (p. 147) The key to all this, I believe, is brit: covenant. To lift again from Rabbi Sacks, the chief Rabbi ended his interview by saying that we should stop thinking about Truth. Start thinking about covenant, about relationship. Technically, in the Bible, the word emet means truth. [That is] a Greek translation. What it really means is truthfulness. It means being honest. Are we in a time when we can all be honest? Are we in a place in our lives where we know how the universe operates and how to perfectly navigate it? Are we anywhere close to using science to discover, as noted atheist writer Sam Harris suggests the good life which is [un] encumbered by religious mythology and baggage? I would say, not quite yet. And in the meantime, having a hand to hold, having kehillat kedoshah or sacred community, having a rhythm to life which will never be interrupted, are all amazing covenants which guide us through life s endless mysteries, come hell or high water. Additional Sources:

8 The Soncino Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin YouTube: LUX - Jonathan Sacks - on the covenant in Judaism OneShul.org: Noachide Laws YouTube: Sam Harris and David Wolpe Debate at American Jewish University Wikipedia: Noachide Kushner, Rabbi Harold. When Bad Things Happen To Good People.

L E S S O N L E V E L. The World Before the Flood

L E S S O N L E V E L. The World Before the Flood 2 2 2 L E S S O N L E V E L 2 The World Before the Flood The World Before the Flood Adam and Eve sinned, disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God expelled them from the