NOACH 5786

Let Torah and Your Shul Be Your Ark

Let me begin with a word from one of the most famous and most disgraced philosophers of our time: Bill Cosby. I’ll deal with his disgrace another time, but Bill Cosby, in the early stages of his career, had this brilliant and hilarious routine about Noah and the flood. He spoke about 2 hippos being herded through the doors of the Ark. Suddenly he hears Gd saying, “Wait a minute Noah, both of those are male. We need a female.”

         Noah is furious. He complains: “You know how difficult it is to turn a hippopotamus around on a boat—much less take him out and then go round up another one?”

         Gd says, “I don’t care. Get a female hippo!”

         Finally, in desperation Noah shouts, “Why don’t you just make one of them a female?”

         Gd replies, “Noah, how long can you tread water?”

 Cosby’s Noah’s may elicit a laugh, but beneath the humor lies a profound metaphor. The ark is not merely a vessel to survive a flood, but a potent symbol of finding shelter and resilience amid the storms of life.

 You see, sometimes we need to be able to tread water. Sometimes the storms of life are so strong and frightful that it’s better to tread water, to stay where we are, to just hunker down and wait out the storm rather than confront it head on and risk being carried away by it. That’s what Noah’s Ark was—a safe place to hunker down and wait out the storm of a mankind gone berserk.

 My friend and colleague, Rabbi Baruch Melman, points out that if you look closely at the text of the Torah you’ll see that although Noah built the ark, he was not the captain of his ship. In fact, it was not really a ship—not even a boat. The Torah uses the word teyva to describe Noah’s ark. Teyva literally means, “box,” suggesting containment, sanctuary, and surrender rather than mastery over the waters. Rabbi Melman conjectures that the English word “tub” quite possibly derives from the Hebrew teyva, because they share the same root letters, “t” and “b” or taf and bet.

According to Gd’s instructions in the Torah, the ark was built in a rectangular shape, with squared edges and a flat bottom. A boat is designed with rounded and curved features that are more useful for navigation. A boat, by design belongs in the water. A tub, by contrast, more readily belongs on the earth.

the Torah tells us that Noah’s ark was built to save the world from chamas—the Torah term for the violence that consumed all the earth. Sound familiar? The ark emerges as a shelter from this chamas violence, a space where Noah and his family could survive not only the physical flood, but the spiritual devastation of a broken world.

The use of a flatbottomed teyva box implies that Gd’s preference was not that it float in the water. Rather, Gd’s deepest wish was for mankind to repent, come back from the brink of destruction, return to Him and heal. Again, the teyva was not a ship or a boat. It had no steering mechanism, no rudder, no navigational controls nor source of power other than Gd’s guidance. Noah built the box, but Gd steered it.

My friends, at times in our lives, most of us will crawl into a box to escape the violent storms around us. It happens when we feel that we’re no longer in control—that we’re not the captains of our ship. Our navigational controls that steered us before are no longer working. We feel helpless and somewhat hopeless, so we crawl into an ark of our own making. Some people crawl in so far that they fall into a hole of addiction—drugs, alcohol and the like. We should follow Noah when we feel out of control and crawl into a box—just let go and ask Gd to steer our lives,

It happens to us as individuals, and it’s happened to us as a people. For millennium the Jewish people weathered the storms of persecution and oppression. We didn’t abandon our traditions as other persecuted peoples have—falling prey to the seductions around them—melting away and disappearing. Instead, the Jewish people sought refuge in the Ark of Torah. No matter how severe the oppression, no matter how poor a Jew was—for example—on Shabbos he could escape it all and become a king in his home with his wife as the queen along with the Malachey Hashareyt and Malachey Elyon—the Shabbos angels we sing about in Shalom Aleychem. In his home the Jew was surrounded by holiness.

Then there were the shul and the house of study where a Jew entered a holy realm and felt elevated and connected to his people and to Gd. These arks or sanctuaries are not escapes from reality, but spaces where we reclaim hope and strength. This, I feel, is the secret of Jewish survival.

A number of years ago I was introduced to a great little book of wisdom by Noah benShea called, Jacob the Baker. In his sequel, Jacob’s Journey (p. 62), Jacob the Baker teaches us the lessons of Noah as he speaks with his friend Joseph: There comes a time in each of our lives when it is necessary to build an ark, to create a structure in which we can hide—a habit or a place or an attitude within ourselves that  shelter us—if we are to survive life’s terrible storms.

         “Yes,” said Joseph, interrupting, thinking back on the story he read as a child, “but why was Noah told to put a window in the ark? What could he see by doing this but the sadness of his fate?”

         “My friend,” said Jacob the Baker, “faith sees beyond fate. Noah was told to put a window in the ark so he could tell when the rain had stopped … and so we need to remind others who have struggled to survive that we, too, should put a window in our ark, so we will know when it is time to come out from behind the habit of the walls we build to survive.”

         “And what will we see then?” asked Joseph.

         “We will see,” said Jacob the Baker, “that the world is not always filled with a flood!”

        To counteract the feeling of helplessness that Noah must have felt, Gd told him to put a skylight into the roof of the Ark so he could feel connected to Heaven—even if he couldn’t see it. Why? To see the rain and to know when it stops and the flood recedes. As we said, there were no controls or rudder in the Ark. The window gave Noah something to hold on to. It gave him hope—to keep looking through the window hoping this time he’ll see the daylight and the dry land. The window was a reminder that even in isolation, we’re not alone. So, Jacob the Baker advises that when we build an ark of walls around us to protect us, we too must put in a window to let us know when it’s safe to come out. The window can be a family member or friend you trust, or just the courage to look outside yourself once in a while.  

For the Jew, the Torah has always been his ark of shelter shielding us from the ravages of the world. Within it we find an escape to keep us grounded and connected to Gd—and at the same time be part of and in this world.

My friends, in a world beset by storms, the metaphor of Noah’s Ark invites us to choose spiritual refuge over destructive escapes, to build arks in our lives through Torah, family, and shul, and to surrender to Gd’s guidance with faith and hope. So, let the Torah and your shul be your ark. Let prayer and learning be your shelter. Look up, through the skylight of your soul—trusting that light and connection await. In doing so, we affirm our faith in Gd’s protection and our commitment to resilience, hope—hope that when we need to tread water Gd will steer us in the right direction and keep us safe. Amen!