Noach
Parashat Noach – Let's get rid of the bad .
The pasuk in this week’s parasha says “and the world became corrupt from before G-d, and the world was filled with theft”. Rashi explains that the word corruption denotes idolatry and adultery. Later, the verse repeats that all “flesh” had become corrupt, and Rashi explains that even the animals were corrupt – they were cross breeding in an unnatural manner, so bad was the level of corruption in the world. In fact, even the earth itself had to be punished, and thus, the flood destroyed three tefachim (hand-breadths) of ground. What has the earth done? Our Sages relate that when a person sowed wheat, barley would sprout. The ground no longer did as was expected; this too was a form of “illicit activity”.
How did all this happen? How did the entire creation stoop to such depravity? We can understand that human beings, who are creatures of free will, can become corrupt, but how are we to understand the unnatural behaviour of the animals and even the ground?
R’ Elya Lopian zatzal explains these events with the following story. Once, he visited a small town in Poland, where he came across a one-hundred year old hospital that was built entirely of wood. In this hospital, many of the sick people of the entire district were treated, and some of the most skilled doctors worked there on all the ailments known to man. After many years, the building became old, and somehow, the patients who were treated there would become infected with a new, strange disease. Unsure what the cause of this new infection was, the directors and doctors of the institution sent for the top doctors in Warsaw to come and investigate. The doctors arrived, and the news of the issue spread quickly through the district, until it made the headlines of all the day’s major newspapers. After two weeks probing and testing the doctors concluded that there was simply no other choice but to totally destroy the hospital. The reason, they publicised in the papers, was that the wooden structure that the hospital had been built from had, during the course of many years, absorbed many of the harmful bacterium that the patients suffered from. The wood had simply become saturated with these harmful organisms, and when patients would come, they were cured of their infections, but infected with other ones. The only solution was to burn the hospital, and transport all remnants out of the town, so that any bacteria left behind would not be able to harm anyone.
Just like there are bacteria that are harmful to the body and others that heal, there are spiritual ‘bacteria’ that are altered due to man’s actions. When people do mitzvot, they affect these ‘bacteria’ so that they become forces of positive spirituality in the world. If people sin, however, these ‘bacteria’ are altered in a negative way, and when they attach themselves to people, they can pull them down to the lowest levels. This, explains R’ Elya, is what happened in the generation of the Flood. Since “mitzvot cause more mitzvot, and aveirot cause more aveirot”, each sin that the people did created multitudes of these harmful ‘bacteria’ which affected the entire creation; not only man sunk to the lowest levels, but animals and even plants were affected by these harmful spiritual beings. The only way to rid the world of such impurity was by bringing a flood to “wash away” all traces of the harmful spiritual influences.
The Torah praises Noach that he was a “righteous man, perfect, with G-d walked Noach”. Such praise is accorded to one who succeeds in remaining pure, in spite of the rampant impurity that rages in the world around him, that was influencing everything, even inanimate objects; yet Noach remained righteous. Perhaps this explains why Noach could not influence the people of his generation, since he felt it would be impossible to stay clean from such strong levels of contamination if he interacted with those around him.
Hashem did not need Noach to build a tevah to protect him from the flood waters; G-d could have performed any miracle to save him. In fact, from a rational perspective, the tevah would never have been able to save Noach were it not for a miracle anyway, so why build one? Perhaps the tevah symbolises a “vacuum”, a space in which the total contamination could not enter. When Noach spent 120 years building it, the people were supposed to understand the message: “your actions are contaminating the very fabric of creation – repent before it’s too late!” Ultimately, it was only Noach who would merit salvation, and be tasked with rebuilding the world.
May Hashem help us get rid of the bad and evil people who want to destroy Am Israel and May Hashem protect our soldiers and our brothers and sisters from Eretz Hakodesh .
Shabbat Shalom
