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By Rabbi Mario G. Gurevich,
Jewish Community of Aruba

Translated by Inés Baum - Proofreading by Ellen Zindler

Many texts in the Torah share the characteristic of deeply touching the reader’s sensibility, no matter what their age may be. Noach’s parashah is one of those texts.

I first heard it when I was about 4 years old, and I still remember my grandfather doing the mimics of opening the window of the Ark to release the dove in search of dry land. I also recall feeling very sad when the dove did not return.

Today, other ideas come to my mind, and they have more to do with the insensibility of humanity towards the environment, which makes a new flood possible, different from the first but with the same fatal consequences.

Is it already the time to start building an Ark?

Is there someone around who deserves to be appointed as savior of all the species on the planet?

And who was this Noach, who built it the first time?

We read that “Noah was in his generation a righteous man”. All scholars have always agreed on the meaning of this sentence: that Noach was a righteous man only by comparison with the environment surrounding him, and that, if he had lived in another generation, for instance in Abraham’s, he would never had deserved such qualification.

But his name was used to designate the seven fundamental precepts that make a man, in every generation, worthy of being considered righteous: “The seven precepts of the sons of Noach”.

However, the same scholars who took care of enhancing the positive data of his conduct, did not do the same when researching his misdemeanors.

Sometimes, what is important is not what is said but what is not said and, in this sense, I find important gaps in this week’s reading. The description shows us a Noach who “walked with God” and who was extremely obedient.

He was commanded to build the Ark and he did it; to summon the animals and he accepted; to embark his immediate family and prepare for the Flood with food and all that was needed, and “thus did Noach; according to all that God commanded him, so did he”.

But, what about solidarity?

Noach, knowing what was to come, how did he not feel the need to try and save at least one of his neighbors? We know that humankind was evil, but didn’t he have any friends?

Let us compare his attitude to that of Abraham when God announces the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: “Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there are fifty righteous within the city…, or forty five…, or forty…, or thirty…, or twenty…, or even ten…?

Abraham grants the evil cities the benefit of the doubt, and that makes him argue and bargain with God. At the end the effort is useless, but Abraham, with all his faults, will always be considered as the righteous man par excellence in any generation.

Possibly, any effort undertaken by Noach in that sense would have had the same unsuccessful result, but it would have been worthy nonetheless. Perhaps, just his solidarity or lack of it, separated him from being considered as a universal model.

Let us now return for a moment to our world. The signs are forebodingly ill: global warming, climatic changes, endangered or frankly extinct species, overpopulation, shortage of food, economic cataclysms these last days.

Is it already the time to start building an Ark?

Clearly not.

This time, if we are to save ourselves, it will only be possible through that which Noach lacked: solidarity.

The whole world is, at this moment, an Ark traveling through space, to which only mutual responsibility conveniently exercised will spare it from sufferings, floods, and catastrophes.

Our mission lies in creating and sharing attitudes of solidarity and partnership to prevent the forecasts of the Apocalypses’ prophets from becoming true.

Genesis 9:13: “I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the cloud, that I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature… and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

God will undoubtedly remember His part of the deal, and let us fulfill ours.

This Parashah commentary was done by the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean, and may be reproduced quoting its source.
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Forwarded by Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, from Kol Shearith Israel Congregation, Panama.
Translated by Inés Baum and proofread by Ellen Zindler, from B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica.

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