This D'var Torah originally appeared in an edition of the Shaaray Tefila e-News
In this week’s Torah portion (Gen. 6:9-11:32), we read the story of Noah’s Ark. Only ten generations after Adam and Eve, God grows tired of humankind’s lawlessness, and decides to start again from scratch.
In this week’s Torah portion (Gen. 6:9-11:32), we read the story of Noah’s Ark. Only ten generations after Adam and Eve, God grows tired of humankind’s lawlessness, and decides to start again from scratch.
Now, you might be wondering: “Didn’t we read on Yom Kippur that
‘God does not want the death of sinners, but rather that they should turn from
their evil ways and live’? What’s up with the change of heart, God?” Our
ancient rabbinic sages were troubled by this too. And so they creatively
determine: “God told Noah to build an ark so that Noah’s neighbors might see
his labor and be moved to repent.” But unfortunately, as we can infer from the
Torah story, Noah’s neighbors were not moved by his actions.
We learn an important lesson from Noah’s neighbors. Sometimes
we imagine that we can leave the work of repairing our broken world to other
people—that someone else will help that hungry person, that someone else will
repair that flooded home. But we can’t
just rely on other people to play the role of Noah for us. Rather, we should be
inspired by their example and roll up our sleeves, so that together we can
build something more than just an ark.
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