Boulder Aish Kodesh

The flood in Noah’s time was a time of unprecedented and unrepeated wrath from G-d toward G-d’s world. When it was finally over, G-d made a covenant with Noah and Noah’s family that G-d would never again bring such destruction on the world. And G-d made a sign that we would see that would always remind us that G-d had made that covenant – and the sign was a rainbow.   Interestingly enough, the rainbow is actually a sign that occurs after rain that says, according to the Talmud, that G-d actually had wanted to destroy the world, and thus the rain, but did not. And when we see the rainbow, we bless G-d and say, basically, “Thank you for remembering your promise not to destroy us.”   So the flood won’t happen again – but that is not to say that the reasons for the anger that brought about the flood do not exist. And what are the reasons that the Torah gives us for the flood? The Torah tells us two things – the world had been corrupted, and had turned to thievery. The Rabbis tell us the corruption had to do with sexual immorality and idol worship. The Torah tells us, as it were, G-d’s thoughts – these are why the world is being destroyed. But when G-d tells Noah why the world is being destroyed, he only tells him about the thievery – in Hebrew, ironically, Hamas.   There is an interesting comment about this thievery in the Gemarra Sanhedrin 108a. The Gemarra quotes Rebbe Yohanan as saying, “See how powerful thievery is – for the generation of the flood transgressed every transgression, and their sentence was sealed only because of thievery.” And the Talmud Yerushalmi tractate Baba Metziah asks, “What did they steal? Someone would go out into the market with a container full of beans, and people would steal precisely a near-worthless amount – an amount which would not be judged in court.” Not only was the world destroyed for a sin which does not seem to be as bad as some of the other sins committed at the time (i.e. sexual immorality, idol worship), but it was destroyed because of thievery which, in its amount, seems inconsequential.   This should make us think. If “G-d wants our hearts”, as it is written, then our true value is not the big things we do once or twice a year, but our everyday. It is our attitude toward life and toward the world – if I speak just a little bit of lashon harah, that won’t be so bad, right? And if I snag a few almonds from the bulk bin in the health food store, that’s not really stealing. Everybody does it. But if we look at these things, we realize it is like saying that G-d is not really there, and G-d is note really “G-d of small things.” And that is exactly the thought process of the generation of the flood – the Gemarra in Sanhedrin tells us that they felt they had everything that they needed in life – their livestock were blessed, their kids were happy, they had just about all the water they needed. So they realized that all they needed G-d for was a few drops of rain once in a while. So G-d says, “I’ll show them a few drops of rain…”   When we put G-d in a box, when we think G-d is not really interested in the small things, or these things or those things, or that G-d is only paying attention when I address G-d directly, and that’s three times a day or two times a year, or only when things go wrong, then we are cutting ourselves off from the Living G-d. And then we are in real danger, spiritually and otherwise. We all need to get real about G-d – if G-d is real, then does it make sense that G-d is only looking at the things I think G-d is looking at, or does it make sense that perhaps G-d has a larger span than I may be comfortable with? Is G-d silent, relating to me only as I expect G-d to relate to me, expecting of me only what I think is reasonable to be expected of, or is it possible that G-d has a whole other agenda for me that I haven’t figured out yet? Does it make sense that I decided that G-d is no longer interested in keeping mitzvot (commandments) and really Judaism is all about self-realization? Well, should I at least once in a while consider that I may be wrong about that?