Ah, the lovely post-Summer, pre-Fall season. The holidays are over, the leaves are starting to fall, and there is a fresh, cold nip in the air. 'Tis the season to observe the time-honoured, annual ritual of dissing, bashing and besmirching the reputation of Noach (in English, Noah).
In Yeshivas, Chusun's Tisches (speeches by grooms and others at weddings), pulpits, Bar Mitzvahs -- just about everywhere where Divrei Torah are given, -- you can hear the unremitting, unrelenting loshon hora (evil, damaging speech) against Noach, the man who merely merited to begin a new order of humanity on the face of the Earth.
We all know the story. The generations in which Noach lived had become irretrievably corrupt and perverted. According to the Midrash, humans were making ketubas --wedding contracts -- with animals; everybody was stealing from and killing each other; there was no fear of G-d and, of course, they all felt they were invincible. All flesh had become so corrupt that G-d made the decision to wipe out all living things except for Noach, his family, and his passengers in the Ark. And the fish. The fish didn't sin, and, therefore, were not wiped out. They say that if the souls of Tzadikim, righteous people, need to be reincarnated in the world, they often have the merit of coming back as fish for a blissful life.
G-d, we should note, does not usually take an active, dramatic role in the world. Ordinarily (or extra-ordinarily, actually), G-d sustains the world at every moment by exercising His miraculous Will --without which the Laws of Physics would fail, -- and also plays a hidden role in countless miraculous events the world over. Rarely, however, does G-d take centre stage.
In fact, there is a rule of thumb one may infer from the Torah as to when exactly G-d does intervene in the course of human events. These, it seems to me, are the great turning points, when things are either at or past the point of no return, or rapidly approaching it.
When the Children of Israel were slaves in Egypt, they had become so beaten and oppressed that their spirits were broken. Many had adopted the idolatry of the Egyptians. The sages tell us that they had fallen so far, spiritually, that they were at the 49th level of Tuma (spiritual impurity), and were one short step away from the dreaded 50th level, at which their souls would, chas v'shalom, have been lost forever, i.e. the point of no return. Enter the Ribono Shel Olam with great signs and wonders to save the day, and to re-charge, like a car battery which has been drained to the point where it can no longer start the car, the faith of the people. The Torah is very clear that the signs and wonders of the Exodus were not really to persuade the Egyptians to release the Children of Israel but to re-awaken our ancestors' faith in Hashem.
In Parsha Noach, the sins of the people had been so egregious, that they had reached -- and passed -- that point of no return. They had reached this, by the way, because they did not have suffering to expiate their sins. It goes without saying that they didn't feel the need for repentance to expiate their sins, this generation so enamored of itself that it no longer even had a concept of sin. Yet if they had known pain and suffering, it might have saved them as an atonement for the sins they wouldn't even acknowledge. Alas, they did not merit to have these veiled blessings, and having reached the point of no return, "merited" annihilation. Enter G-d with the Flood.
The Zohar tells us that pain and suffering is how the Jewish people will survive the accusations against them in the End of Days. Yes, we have sinned but we have also suffered mightily, and the punishments we have already endured will keep us from annihilation by paying down the debt incurred by our sins. Just as convicts pay their debt to society with prison sentences, and are then released, so we who suffer punishments in this world have many of our sins wiped off the books.
My Theory of the Point of No Return, by the way, is why, when people complain to me that G-d was not "there" at a particular catastrophe, I say "Thank G-d" because I believe G-d only manifests, only plays a public role, when circumstances are so dire and extreme as to literally be at the point of no return. If G-d does not play a public role, then the circumstances, though bad, were not life-threatening to the Jewish people -- or the world -- as a whole.
Similarly, when people ask me how I can believe in G-d when he hasn't done any open miracles since the ones recorded in the Torah during the Exodus from Egypt, and they need to see miracles with their own eyes in order to believe, I also say "Thank G-d," because this means to me that our circumstances were never that desperate in all our history since the Exodus, that G-d felt the need to openly intervene again. In other words, G-d forbid G-d should have to do miracles. I'm happy to be living in such times as when open miracles are not necessary. The acquisition of faith is currently a matter of many factors, including upbringing, study and choice, and we are not, chas v'shalom, living in a time when the entire Jewish people is in danger of losing all contact with the belief in G-d.
Why G-d has not quietly -- rather than openly -- intervened in dire circumstances which may not have been quite at the point of no return, to me, is explained by the need, as explained above, for pain and suffering. Without the punishments, our accusers might -- G-d forbid -- persuade the Heavenly Court that we, like the Generation of the Flood, are, chas v'shalom, beyond redemption.
In Part 2 of this blog, I will get back to the disservice to Noach we tend to indulge in whenever his parsha comes up.
