Shalom everyone! With the Jewish holidays ending, it seems that all of our inspiration is ending with it as well and that we are going back to the "normal and mundane" matters of life; however, as with many other things in life, the true test of dedication is to be able to preserve inspiration during the times and in the places that are seemingly void of it. AND SO with that, I'd like to start dedicating a blog for the weekly Torah portion, also refered to as a parshah, that we read in synagogues every week. Last week was Parshas Bereshis (the story of creation all the way up until the birth of Noah), which would make this week's parsah Parshas Noach, the story of the great Biblical flood and Noah's ark. While my knowledge of the Torah is limited, I'd like to share a little insight on the subject of the ark according to a lecture that I recently heard. Before we begin, I'd like to give a disclaimer to set aside any preconcieved ideas of nature, science, the laws of physics, history, etc. The reason for this is that in order to learn something properly, one needs to start with a clean slate. Much, if not all of what I'm about to say doesn't make sense and is seemingly impossible according to our established understandings, so in order to really get at what's being said, we need to be able to see past biases and to the core of the matter.
So most of us probably know the story of the flood: G-d saw that the world had become degenerate and immoral, that humanity had sunk to an incredibly low level and as a result, He (G-d) decided to destroy the world and start a new. There was, however, one person (Noah) who was considered righteous in that generation. G-d assigned him with the task of building an ark with which to preserve all life (animals two by two) during the flood so as to rebuild the post-flood world. Now if we understand the flood in the simple understanding, then the entire world was covered with water. However, with an interpretation through the lens of chassidus (a Jewish mystical philosophy) we can uncover much more about the flood, the nature of the ark, and ther ark's purpose during this turbulent time.
First the flood: It says in the Talmud (collection of Jewish rabbinic literature, law, philosophy, etc.) that "The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Noah: 'fix precious stones and pearls so they will light up the Ark like noon!'" (Sanhedrin 208b). To compliment this, it is said somewhere else (sorry that I forgot) that during the flood, there was such utter chaos that the sun, moon, and stars stopped doing their job. So where did they go? Why, into the precious stones and pearls that illuminated the ark of course! (Side note: like I said at the beginning, try to suspend what you know and try to understand both a conceptual, as well as physical component to what was just said) Not only did the sun, moon, and stars stop working, but time stopped working as a result of this since there was no way to measure time. Infact, outside of the ark, all that really existed was water and fish (why the fish is a completely different story, I'd like to focus on the water). It says right towards the beginning of the Torah in Bereshis 1:2 "The earth was unformed and desolate, and darkness covered the surface of the abyss. The breath of G-d hovered above the surface of the water." What we can learn from these two ideas, that outside of the ark during the majority of the flood there was only water (no land) and that there was formless land and water at the beginning of creation, is that G-d had literally undone all of creation: there was no time, space, life, mass, etc.
Everything existed only within the ark much like a womb sustaining life. The Lubavitcher Rebbe (R'Menachem Mendel Schneerson) gave an analogy of a teacher and a student to help us understand the idea of the pre-flood world and the post-flood world. Before the flood, the relationship between G-d and the world was like a teacher who teaches and the student that has no ability to function on his own outside of the relationship. After the flood, the relationship changed because now the student could attain knowledge, could learn and absorb new things, with the ability to function on his own. What does this mean? Before the flood, the laws of nature were eratic; it was completely unstable. After the flood, G-d placed permanent laws of nature into place, the world could seemingly work on its own, as it says in the verse "All the days of the Earth, the planting and the harvest, the cold and the heat, the summer and the winter, day and night, they shall not cease." (Bereshis 8:21) What was the sign for this: the rainbow. What is a rainbow? When the sun's rays shine through the atmosphere and rain droplets to reveal the beautiful colors hidden within the light. Seemingly, before the flood there was no rainbow; the colors hidden in the light weren't revealed. But now because of covenant between G-d and Noah, there was the ability to reveal what was hidden before. On a physical level, since there were laws of nature, there could be science; we can test the laws of nature to reveal just exactly what the laws are, their parameters, what they entail, etc. To understand the more spiritual level, we must look at one final analysis of what life was like iniside the ark.
One of the most famous messianic prophecies is the one about the wolf lying down with the lamb, the idea of there being such peace that the predator and prey will get along. According to the Talmud it says "There are those who explain that in Moshiach's (Messianic) era, the nature of the wild animals and beast will change and will return to what was...in Noach's ark." What can we learn from this? That not only did all of the animals (herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores alike) get along, but that within the Ark, it was like a taste of Moshiach, a time when "the Earth will be full of knowledge of G-d, like water covers the sea." (Isaiah 11:9) Since we can understand the ark to be like a womb, an incredible parallel can be drawn between this section of Talmud and another section of Talmud. It says that when a baby is in the womb, "he is taught the entire Torah. However, as soon as he enters the air of this world, an angel comes and strikes him on his mouth, causing him to forget the entire Torah." (Niddah 20b) With a direct comparison, we can now understand that within the ark we were fully experiencing the reality of what Moshiach was, but as soon as we left the ark we completely forgot it!
How does this tie into the idea of the rainbow and revealing the hidden? We know that Noah and company were in the ark for a full year. We also know that the ark is likened to a womb and that, from a comparison to Niddah 20b, the time spent in the ark could be likened to a 12 month pregnancy. We also know (or at least you will know) that Elijah the prophet is the only character in the entire Bible to have had a 12 month pregnancy, meaning that his physicality had been extraordinarly refined, which allowed him to refine physicality during his life and to accend the Heaven in a physical body. With all of this information, we can now understand the connection: that in the post-flood world, the very nature of our existence is to reveal what is hidden in the world, to reveal what we knew and then forgot, the reality of Moshiach. How do we go about doing this? By refining the physical, by utilizing this world to reveal the G-dliness inherent within. It is only once we've accomplished this fully that we will truly be able to say that "the Earth will be full of knowledge of G-d, like water covers the sea." May we see it speedily in our days.
With all of my love,
Zach
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