Saturday, October 5, 2013

Noah and his Neighbors

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.

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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