Dvar Torah on Parashat Noach (Gen. 6:9 – 11:32) given on Friday evening 10/23/20
Torah teaches that the great flood described in Parashat Noach lasted forty days and forty nights. However, it took a lot longer than that for the floodwaters to dry up sufficiently so that Noah and his family and the animals could leave the ark. According to the chronology derived by the 11th century commentator Rashi, the residents of the Ark were cooped up in there for a full year.
Dare I suggest that all of us in this pandemic era can personally empathize!
Someone during our Torah study group earlier today said that all of us during the pandemic --- just like Noah and company during the flood -- have essentially been ordered to “Go to your Room!” Whether by governmental order or just by our own health-based prudence, we are isolated and immobilized in ways we might not have imagined as being possible a year ago.
And now, when we are moving into a third wave of rise in new infections, “pandemic fatigue” abounds.
This week’s Torah portion speaks to that fatigue. But it also speaks to the hope of relief.
Noah sends out a dove from the Ark three times. The first time, as it says in Genesis 8:9
The dove could not find a resting place for its foot, and returned to him to the ark, for there was water over all the earth.
The second time, once the waters had receded at least from the tops of some trees, the dove comes back with a plucked off olive branch in its mouth.
The third time, the dove must have found a place to land because on that third time, it doesn’t return – and that’s how Noah knew that relief was on the way.
According to midrash, it was on a Shabbat that the dove found a place to rest. And so Judah halevi wrote a poem about it -- “Yom Shabbaton”.
As beautifully translated by Reb Zalman Schachter Shalomi[1] – the poem teaches the message that just as the dove found respite from its troubles on Shabbat, so can we. And so do we.
In the midrash collection Bereshit Rabbah (compiled around the second century of the common era), one of the sages asserts that the olive branch in the beak of Noah’s dove came from the Garden of Eden.[2]
However, when Noah and company subsequently emerge from the ark, it soon becomes clear that the new post-Flood world is no longer a Garden of Eden. God had commanded the first humans – be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. (Gen.1:28)
And now, God similarly commands Noah and his family – be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. (Gen. 9:1)
Why the repetition? The answer stares us in the face: Because all of humanity that had filled the earth thus far had drowned in the flood – all except Noah and his wife and three sons and daughters-in-law.
I know, we are dealing with ancient tales here. The stuff of legends. But any scholar will tell you there’s at least a foundation of historical truth here. Back in the day there must have been some sort of major disaster that killed off a significant chunk of humanity.
Once again we are living in such a time.
Thank God for the front-line responders. Thank God for those who are seeking to help those in need and for those who are seeking a vaccine and for those who are following the science and being prudent in their behaviors in order to help stem the pandemic.
And, in the meantime, may we find rest and respite from the weary toils of the week as did the dove in the days of Noah.
Shabbat shalom.
© Rabbi David Steinberg
October 2020/ Cheshvan 5781
[1] https://opensiddur.org/prayers/solilunar/shabbat/seudah-shniyah/yom-shabbaton-a-shabbat-song-by-yehudah-halevi-interpretive-translation-by-rabbi-zalman-schachter-shalomi/
[2] Bereshit Rabbah 33:6
