Dear Friends,
As we move from the High Holidays into November and a stretch of uninterrupted Religious School sessions, “Ask the Rabbi” is back during Sunday morning Tefillah. I love these times of pulling a question out of the jar and sometimes answering it but just as often, holding the question back out to the kids for their ideas. Our students, for their part, respond with knowledge, curiosity, and willingness to explore new ideas and learn from them. Each one of these young people makes me proud.
I recently found myself remembering a different Q&A at a different synagogue during which I asked the class: “Who knows what goes inside the ark?” One little boy furrowed his brow earnestly, and having concentrated hard on the question, volunteered: “Animals?”
This Shabbat, he is absolutely right!
The story of Noah is etched indelibly in many of our memories. A story whose images and sense of adventure are irresistible for children, and carries powerful if sometimes unheard messages for us as we grow.
Did you know that nearly every culture, along with its creation myths, has its flood stories? There is something compelling about playing with different notions of how we got here, as well as different notions of how it all came crashing down and started over again.
A Celtic myth imagines Heaven and Earth as great giants, who birthed many children between them. Only a single pair survived their great flood – saved in a ship made by a beneficent Titan.
In Lithuania, water and wind were sent to destroy the earth, succeeding in a mere twenty days.
And, perhaps my favorite, from Germany, courtesy of the Brothers Grimm:
A louse and a flea were brewing beer in an eggshell.
The louse fell in and burnt herself.
This made the flea weep, which made the door creak,
which made the broom sweep, which made the cart run,
which made the ash-heap burn, which made the tree shake itself, which made the girl break her water-pitcher, which made the spring begin to flow.
And in the spring’s water everything was drowned.
So, what does the story of Noah, and by extension Judaism, do differently? Like other flood stories, the events are dramatic, the imagery arresting. But there’s a twist. The story of Noah asks us to envision something more. Beyond the ark and the animal pairs, the waters, the raven and the dove, there is a God in this story who cares about our actions. A Divine Presence who abides among us, and for whom our choices and actions matter a great deal. At the same time, this Torah portion, while asking us to be our best, does not demand that we be perfect.
Whether Noah was immensely righteous, or sufficiently righteous, in God’s eyes, he was good enough for another start. That’s what each of us must find our own way of being. In Torah, the obligation to truly see each other, care for each other and be each other’s keepers will come as the portions Bereishit unfold. But the very first seeds are here. And that’s what makes the story of Noah one to grow up with, then and now.
Join us for services at 7:00pm tonight and 10:00am tomorrow. And a special note: I hope to see you on Tuesday October 28, 7:00pm at Temple Israel in Westport. Their rabbi and my longtime friend Michael Friedman will be in conversation with none other than Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue in New York!
May hope and comfort be ours this Shabbat, and may we find renewed strength and optimism together.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Gutterman
