Thoughts & Teachings
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
Our first full week, our first regular week, after the holidays. It is time for us, like Noah, to open a window as we readjust to our new reality.
Noah was a simple man, despite being unusual in his generation. A family man, without even a trade at the beginning of his life, he was dedicated to his family and tried to keep himself and them on a moral path, a path that was sometimes different from those around him. So he was chosen to build an ark, to be a bridge from one world to the next.
In God’s blessing to Noah, He tells Noah how to adjust to this new reality. “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth, and upon all the birds of the sky - everything with which the earth is astir - and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. Every creature that lives is yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you these.”[1]
Five ways to adjust to a new world:
First, concessions to human weakness, such as the desire to eat meat, is to realize that permission to kill is not a license for savagery. God has entrusted us with power and dominion over the earth to do as desired. [2] Hand in hand with that power is the responsibility to behave as civilized people. As Noah is blessed with the permission to slaughter animals for food, a complete barrier is erected between animals and humankind. In this new world there is no doubt as to the unique place that moral human beings have in creation separate and above animals. [3]
Second, be fruitful and multiply. We must replenish the earth not in the sense of creating more people but in the sense of creating more people who have the same values and morals as do all civilized people.
Third, acknowledge that in this new world, fear and dread have replaced goodwill. The harmonious kingdom that was created at the time of Adam is no more and in its place we have in the blessing to Noah the ingredients of fear and dread. The world is now divided into two camps in which one intimidates the other.
Fourth, underlying your every behavior must be respect for the principle of life. The Torah was in principle opposed to the eating of meat. When Noah and his descendants are permitted after the flood to eat meat this was a concession conditional on the prohibition of not consuming the blood.[4]
Last, the ordered processes of nature will never again be interrupted, this world, though new, will also be marked by the rhythms of life, rhythms in which we will still take pleasure and comfort.
[1] Genesis 9:1-3
[2] Rambam 1:28
[3] Nehama Leibowitz p.76
[4] Umberto Cassuto 1:27
