Envisioning A New World

Parshat Noach

The contrast between the beginning of the book of Bereshit and our parsha is not only striking in terms of God's vision for the world, but is even fascinating to compare on a textual level.

After completing creation, "And God saw all that He had done, and behold it was very good." (1:31) Compare that to the beginning of Chapter 6, "Hashem saw that man's wickedness on earth was increasing. Every impulse of his innermost thought was only for evil, all day long." (6:5)

            

Unlike the optimism that came with God's declarations of "Let there be light" (1:3) and "Let us make Man" (1:26), we see, "Hashem regretted that He had made man on earth, and He was pained to His very core. Hashem said, 'I will obliterate humanity that I have created from the face of the earth - man, livestock, land animals, and birds of the sky. I regret that I created them.'" (6:6-7)

            

[A very lively conversation can be had over the usages of "Elokim" (which I translate in verses as "God") and the "shem havaya" Tetragrammaton (which I translate in verse as "Hashem"). In the interest of space, that conversation will be ignored now, beyond noting it in the translation.]

            

Despite the regret over the creation of Man, God chooses to rebuild the world not with a new, perhaps more perfect model of humans, but with one specific human who "has found favor in God's eyes." (6:8)

            

In other words, the prototype seems to be what God wants. It's just the wrongly mutated models which have caused God to "regret" the first 1650 (or so) years of human endeavor.

            

Like Adam, Noach had 3 sons who are named in the Torah. Unlike the terms "Adam" (human) and "Basar" (flesh) which are used to describe the flawed human beings (6:6,13), Noach is called an "Ish" (6:9, 9:20) – the same term used to describe Adam when he is first introduced to his wife – before any sinning had taken place. "She will be called 'Ishah' (woman) for she had been taken from 'Ish' (man)." (2:23) "Ish," it seems, is a better kind of human than an Adam or a Basar.

            

The difference between Noach's world and the world of Adam, however is laid out in how the world is described and what God sees and says.

            

In the beginning the land was empty and void with the spirit of God hovering over the water's surface. God said, "Let there be light" and it was, and God saw the light was good. (summary of 1:1-4)

            

In Noach's time, "… The land was filled with crime. God saw the world, and it was corrupted. All flesh had perverted its way on the earth. God said to Noah, 'The end of all flesh has come before Me. The world is filled with [man's] crime. I will therefore destroy them with the earth…'" (6:11-13)

            

Which world would be the ideal? The world with the spirit of God hovering, or a crime-ridden corrupt world? The world where God says "Let there be light" or where God says, "The end of all flesh has come?" The world in which God sees light and calls it Good, or one in which God sees a corrupt world on account of the acts of Basar – all made-of-flesh beings – which must be darkened and destroyed so a new effort by a man described as being righteous could begin?

            

There are different reasons why new beginnings might come about. A child is born – the child did not exist before, it has a clean slate and a world of opportunity before it. What life it will have will be determined by its parents and by what Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik called the "Covenantal Community" in which it is raised.

            

A person or family move to a new community or are the pioneers in creating a new community, they have a tremendous opportunity to build a world that follows the ideal of the sprit of God hovering, in which the focus is on creating light, and making a very clear division between light and darkness.

            

And sometimes a new beginning comes about because what has happened in the past has brought a person to the pits of despair. An addiction, a bad breakup, a divorce, a death, being fired from a job, being frustrated with a spiritually empty life and returning to God, the pursuit of materialism turned to a pursuit of meaning in life.

            

Both beginnings bring a tremendous potential. They begin with similar qualities.

            

But the role a person plays in either beginning has a tremendous impact on whether the endeavor will be successful or not. Adam and Chava ate from a tree and threw their potential into the wind. They produced two sons, one of which died at the hands of his murderous brother, who himself was banished to a life of wandering. They only seemed to get real "nachas" from their third son, an ancestor of Noach.

            

Noach also had three sons – and while they did not kill one another, they too had the opportunity to follow their father's footsteps for good – and he seemed to only be successful with two out of three.

            

Despite all our best efforts, nothing is perfect. But everything has potential. Our challenge is to tap into the potential for good in every person and opportunity. And hopefully, with God's help, we can build a world that God can look down upon and say, "It is very good."