The Flood and Upcoming Elections

Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz shares a beautiful yesod from this week’s parsha. The Torah introduces Noach by telling us: “נח איש צדיק תמים היה בדורותיו”. Noach was a righteous man, perfect “in his generations.” The word בדורותיו is strange. Why does the Torah describe Noach as a tzaddik in his “generations,” in the plural? There are many people who live long lives and see multiple generations come and go, but we still describe someone as the gadol or tzaddik of a particular dor. What was unique about Noach that the Torah specifically emphasizes בדורותיו? Rabbi Lebowitz quotes his friend Rabbi Moshe Bamberger, the Mashgiach at Lander College, who suggests that Noach did not simply live through many years or generations. He literally lived in two different worlds, with two completely different realities. He knew the world before the Mabul, and he then emerged from the Teivah into an entirely new world after the Mabul.

The Midrash supports this idea and teaches: “כל מי שנאמר בו היה ראה עולם חדש”. Whenever the word “היה” is used in this way, the person saw a new world. Noach watched the destruction of the world he knew and then stepped out of the Teivah into a completely different one. The Midrash points to a similar experience surrounding the destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash and the building of the second. Galut Bavel lasted only seventy years, which meant that some of the people who witnessed the Churban of Bayit Rishon were still alive when Bayit Sheini was built. The pesukim in Ezra describe the incredible celebration when the foundations of the new Beit HaMikdash were laid. The people sang and celebrated the fact that they once again had a Beit HaMikdash. But at the very same time, the older people who remembered Bayit Rishon began crying. They remembered the Beit HaMikdash that had been destroyed and recognized that what they were now building could not compare to what they once had. The crying and celebration were so loud that the pasuk says that you could not even distinguish between the sound of the celebration and the sound of the crying.

There are two important messages we can learn from this idea. The first is that two conflicting emotions can both be real at the same time. The Jews at the beginning of Bayit Sheini could celebrate the incredible zechut of rebuilding the Beit HaMikdash while simultaneously mourning what had been lost. Noach could be grateful for his survival and the opportunity to build a new world while still recognizing and mourning the tremendous destruction that had just taken place. Rabbi Lebowitz quotes an idea from Rav Schwab to demonstrate this point. At Kriat Yam Suf, the Malachim wanted to sing shirah, but Hashem stopped them: “מעשי ידי טובעים בים ואתם אומרים שירה?”. “My creations are drowning in the sea, and you are singing?”. Yet Klal Yisrael themselves did sing. In fact, Az Yashir, the shirah we say every day, was sung at that exact moment. Rav Schwab explains that a Malach has one shlichut and, in this sense, can only represent one emotion at a time. If the Malachim were singing shirah, they could not simultaneously express the tragedy of "מעשי ידי טובעים בים." A human being, however, is more complex. We are capable of recognizing the tragedy unfolding before us while at the same time feeling tremendous gratitude and singing shirah for the yeshuah Hashem has given us. That itself is part of our avodah as human beings and as Jews. Sometimes we are called upon to experience real simcha and real tzaar at the same time, without allowing one to erase the other.

For many of us, this idea has felt especially real over the past few years on Simchat Torah. I know that I have felt it personally. It can feel strange to dance and celebrate on a day that has now also become the yahrzeit of so many kedoshim who were murdered on October 7. How can we celebrate while carrying the memory of such tremendous tragedy? But perhaps that is exactly part of our avodah. The answer is not necessarily to choose one emotion over the other. We do not need to ignore the pain in order to celebrate, and we do not need to abandon the simcha of the day in order to properly remember the pain. Part of being a Jew is having the ability to hold space for both and to genuinely feel both.

There is also a second message in the word בדורותיו. Noach teaches us the importance of recognizing when something has happened that is so significant that the world itself has changed. Certain events are not simply events that happen within our lives. They divide history into a “before” and an “after.” We often speak, for example, about the world before and after 9/11. The world did not simply experience one terrible day and then return to exactly what it had been before. Certain assumptions changed, the way people behaved changed, and the world that followed was in real ways different from the one that came before it. October 7 was one of those moments. We live in a very different world than we did before Simchat Torah 5784. The question we therefore need to ask ourselves, something Rav Taragin often emphasizes as well, is: what are we supposed to do about it? If the world changed, then we need to make sure that we changed as well. That does not necessarily mean making some enormous life-changing commitment. Rabbi Lebowitz points out that history has shown us how quickly grand declarations can disappear. After moments of tragedy, people often make sweeping promises about how everything will now be different, only for life eventually to return to normal. The more meaningful question may be much smaller and more practical. Did we change anything in our lives because of what we experienced? Did we take on a new hanhaga, a new hakpada in halacha, additional learning, chesed, tefillah, or something else? And perhaps even more importantly, did it last? Sometimes we know that an experience is supposed to change us, but it takes time before we understand exactly how. That does not mean it is too late. Parshat Noach reminds us to take stock and ask whether the changes in the world around us have been properly internalized into our own lives.

This message is especially appropriate now, coming out of the Yamim Noraim and Chagim, when we are already trying to realign ourselves and make sure that the commitments and inspiration of the past few weeks actually continue into the year. It also comes at a time when both Medinat Yisrael and the United States are approaching elections, with high stakes and tremendous uncertainty about what comes next, while we are still dealing with so much of the pain and consequences of October 7. At the same time, we have also been zoche to witness incredible yeshuot, achdut, gevurah, chesed, and so many things for which we have tremendous reason to thank Hashem. Perhaps that is exactly the message of בדורותיו. We need to be able to recognize both the suffering and the yeshuot that Klal Yisrael has experienced. We need to know how to mourn and how to celebrate, without allowing either one to erase the other. And when we recognize that the world around us has changed, we need to make sure that those experiences do not simply pass us by, but that we learn from them and actualize them in our own lives.

May we be zoche to properly internalize both the tzaar and the yeshuot that Klal Yisrael has experienced, to know how to carry both in our hearts, and to make sure that as the world around us changes, we continue to grow and change along with it.