(or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flood)
After such an intense, personal, and revelatory yamim noraim …
After reading the beginning, those first six blessed Torah letters, Bereshit – בְּרֵאשִׁית …
After having such depths pour forth unbidden …
I felt like beginnings were coming, that even without hope I could /do/ things. Hell, I felt it so much I wrote about it. And even posted it!
Three weeks later though and I already felt trapped again in the innards of Jonah’s big fish, crying out from the darkness and the deep.
Maybe this is why the story of Noach comes so soon after such intense holy days. After the high of communal connection and intense spiritual work, there is an inevitable shift down. The drop.
While rereading Noach this year, I realized how strange it was that we tell this story to children. Sure, the animals are made cute and it’s got great quotable plot lines – “Two by Two” and all. But ultimately it’s a terrifying tale. A man only 10 generations removed from the first human has g-d tell him to build a giant box, shove all types animals in it, and wait for over a year while the world is destroyed around him.
Yes. A year. We often forget just how long Noach spends on the arc, in that box, his coffin. And that doesn’t even include the decades spent in construction. Pirkey de’Rabbi Eliazer, a well know midrash, states that Noach planted and felled cedar trees for 120 years and spent 52 years alone constructing the arc, going slowly in the hopes the humans would repent. And then, after none of his neighbors would change and the rains began to fall, he boarded the ark and did not leave for 375 days.
To be trapped while the world dissolves around you, while boiling geysers gush from the ground and your neighbors’ corpses float by …
I suddenly had a great deal of sympathy for Noach. The rabbis don’t exactly make him out to be a great person – Why is he only righteous in his generation, hmmm? But, like Jonah, there is something understandable about him, relatable even. In some ways, he is the inverse of our Yom Kippur prophet. One literally attempts to flee from the face of g-d, the other accepts the demanded fate, but both are trapped in the tight confines of metaphorical death.
Despite these recent revelations and the decisions made, I still feel boxed in by metaphorical and literal death. I am swinging between Noach and Jonah – trying desperately to escape the gaze of divine expectation while bowing down to the divinity propelling me forward. Noach is an important remembrance as we move into these colder months, as we come off the joy and deepness of the yamim noraim, and as we grapple with parts of our current human story.
Even the destruction of the world has to end some time.
I’m going to be celebrating Noach’s time in that crowded coffin, by remembering the moments of the story throughout this upcoming Jewish year. The first one is already around the corner: (Mar)Cheshvan 17th – the rain begins. And yes, I think we all know right now there is a great flood threatening to destroy our world. By the time the rain comes this year in Noach’s story, there will already be a downpour – a deluge – in the United States. And that will be true no matter the results.
(Mar)Cheshvan 17: The rains begin
What have you brought on your ark? G-d commands Noach bring his family and their partners; what family and loved ones do you want to strengthen your connection to now? Have you sealed things well? What parts of yourself feel exposed and hurting? What can you do to help make those places less raw and more able to hold against storms?
Here’s the rest of the calendar. I’ll be adding introspective questions and midrash and stories as I go along. May we all come out the other side and plant our vineyards.
(Mar)Cheshvan 27: Noach leaves the arc
Kislev 28: The end of the rain
(Yes, this is a pause of several months. Thankfully there are lovely things like Pesach and Purim in this part)
Sivan 1: The water starts to recede
Sivan 17: The ark rests on the mountain
Av 1: The mountain tops become visible
Elul 10: The raven is sent out
Elul 17: The dove is sent out
Elul 24: The dove is sent out again and returns with an olive leaf
Tishrei 1: The dove is sent out and doesn’t return
(Mar)Cheshvan 17 & 27- The year of Noach can begin again
eish zarah 