[The following was a sermon for Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA, on Shabbat Noach. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the community I am honored to serve this year.]
The story of Noah and the flood is a tale of violence, destruction, and renewal. Just last Shabbat Jews across the globe read of the creation of a world God unequivocally proclaimed “good”; indeed, after the sixth day of creation, the day on which adam, the human being, was made, God pronounces v’hinei tov m’od—“and behold! It was very good” (Genesis 1:31). As generations live and die upon the earth, however, something goes terribly wrong: “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with violence” (6:11). God decides to drown all of creation in the chaotic waters of the Flood; the only person God warns of this plan and the impending doom is Noah, whom the Torah describes as ish tzadik, a righteous person (6:9). God instructions Noah to build an ark, to save his family, and to preserve pairs of animals to repopulate the world after the Flood waters recede.
For forty days the rains pour down, and the water rises so high that even the tallest mountains are submerged in its depths. For one hundred and fifty days Noah and the other inhabitants of the ark float upon the surface, their futures uncertain.
During the Days of Awe, our futures, too, were uncertain, and in that uncertainty we called out, “yizkor”—May God remember. May God remember our loved ones who have died, we pleaded; may God remember the good deeds of all our ancestors, judging us less harshly on their account; may God remember the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all Israel.
In the story of Noah, God remembers:vayizkor elohim et Noach v’et kol ha’chaya v’et kol ha’behema asher ito bateiva, vaya’aver Elohim ruach al ha’aretz vayashku hamayim—“God then remembered Noah and all the animals and all the beasts that were with him in the ark, and God caused a wind to sweep over the earth, and the waters subsided” (8:1).
After the Flood, God takes care that this remembering will always serve for renewal, not destruction: “And when I cause clouds to form over the earth, and the bow appears in the cloud,” God proclaims to Noah, “I will remember My covenant between Me and you and all living beings, all flesh, and never again shall the waters become a flood, to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the cloud, and I see it, I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living beings, all that live upon the earth” (9:14-16).
God makes a covenant with Noah, charging Noah and his descendants, like Adam and Eve, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and prohibiting violence and murder. God reminds Noah and his descendants that human life is precious, ki b’tzelem Elohim asah et ha’adam, for human beings were made in the image of God” (9:6).
How are these survivors of the devastating Flood, human beings, made in the image of God, different from the souls drowned in the waters that rose higher than the mountains? What changed after the Flood?
“The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with violence” (6:11) God brings the Flood to wipe away the corruption and violence, leaving the earth to the descendants of Noah, a righteous man. But it is not the nature of human beings that changes after the Flood; as biblical scholar Tamar Cohn Ezkenazi argues, it is God’s expectations of human beings that changes.
Before the Flood, at the end of last week’s parasha, God decides to destroy the first creation: “And the Eternal saw how great was the wickedness of human brings on the earth,” v’chol yeitzer machs’vot libo rak ra kol ha’yom—“and the entire inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only wicked all the time, the Eternal regretted that He had made human beings upon the earth, and was heartsick. And God said, ‘I will wipe the human beings that I have created from off the face of the earth […] for I regret that I made them’” (6:6-7). Saddened and disappointed, God destroys the works of God’s own creation, human beings corrupt in their yeitzer, their inclination and instinct.
After the Flood, Noah builds an altar and offers sacrifices to God. In verses I chanted this evening, we learn, “The Eternal, inhaling the soothing fragrance, thought: ‘Never again will I bring doom upon the world on account of what people do,” ki yeitzer leiv ha’adam ra mi’n’urav—“though the inclination of the heart of the human is evil from his youth; never again will I destroy all living beings as I have done’” (8:21). Eskenazi finds this verse “striking,” for it represents “God’s change of heart” (WTC). What changes in the Flood?
The story of Noah shares some similarities with the creation story: the waters of the flood parallel the waters described in the time of tohu va’vohu, the unformed chaos that immediately precedes God’s first act of creation (Gen 1:2); the ruah Elohim—the breath or spirit or wind of God that “hovers” over the water just before God speaks, “Let there be light” (1:2-3)—can be likened to the ruach God sends to blow away the waters of the Flood (8:1). But Noah’s story is not the tale of a completely new creation, resulting in some new human being free of the potential for corruption and violence displayed by the preceding generations drowned in the Flood waters of God’s disappointment and anger. The human beings formed in Genesis, those drowned in the Flood, and the survivors, the descendants of Noah who are blessed to enter into a covenant with God—each of these human beings possesses a yeitzer, an inclination or instinct, toward evil, corruption, and violence. Human beings do not emerge from the ark changed; rather, as Eskenasi writes, “The transgressions that led to the Flood transform God’s expectations. They result in new rules to guide humankind and a promise of a perpetual covenant” (WTC 44, emphasis added). According to Eskenazi’s interpretation, the covenant God makes with Noah, a covenant that brings both responsibilities and rewards, is one that “aim[s] at channeling impulses and containing them” (Ibid.) God will never again Flood the earth, but not because human beings will never again distress God’s heart so with our wickedness, corruption, and violence. Instead, God acknowledges the limitations of these beings created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, but created, too, with free will, with a yeitzer, an inclination or drive, that can sometimes lead us astray.
The Sages argued that we were created with two yeitzers, a yeitzer ha-tov as well as a yeitzer ha-ra. In the Torah, when God forms the animals, the text reads, and God “formed,” vayitzer, spelled with one yud (2:19). But when God forms the first human being, the text reads, and God “formed,” vayitzer—with two yuds (2:7). Why? Why is the same word spelled in two different ways in the Torah? In the Talmud, Rabbi Nachman explains that the two yuds “show that God created two inclinations, one good and the other evil” (Bavli Berakhot 61a). Both the yeitzer ha-tov, the impulse toward good, and the yeitzer ha-ra, the impulse toward evil, were created in us by God, the same God who created us b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s own image. Indeed, the Sages, in the midrash collection Genesis Rabbah, find the yeitzer ha-ra in the story of the first creation, on that sixth day when God creates the first human being and declares, v’hinei tov m’od—“Behold! It was very good” (Gen 1:31). Believing that no word in the Torah is superfluous, the Sages wonder why, on this day, the Torah declares not just hinei tov (“it is good”) but hinei tov m’od (“it is very good”). Rabbi Nachman responds that tov m’od—“very good”—indicates both the yeitzer ha-tov and the yeitzer ha-ra (Genesis Rabbah 9:7). “Can the yeitzer ha-ra be good?” the Sages chorus. Indeed, it can: “But for the yeitzer ha-ra […] no man would build a house, take a wife and beget children” (Ibid.). Our impulses and drives lead us to all kinds of endeavors and actions, some of them good, some of them wicked. Our impulses motivate us to take action in our lives.
From a midrash on the Noah story, Genesis chapter eight verse twenty-one:
If you argue: “Is it not the Holy One Himself who created the impulse to evil, of which it is written, yeitzer leiv ha’adam ra mi’n’urav—‘The impulse of man’s heart was evil from the time he was expelled from his mother’s womb’? Who then can possibly make it good?” the Holy One replies, “You are the one who makes the impulse to evil stay evil. How? When you were a child, you did not sin. Only when you grew up, you began to sin.” If you argue: “But no man can guard himself against it!” the Holy One replies, “How many things in the world are even less bearable and more bitter than the impulse to evil, yet you manage to sweeten them. […] if you sweeten for your need bitter things that I alone created, all the greater is your responsibility for the impulse to evil, which was placed under your control.” (Sefer ha-Aggadot quoting Genesis Rabbah).
In this imagined argument, God reminds us that we have the power to shape our own actions, that our yeitzer is an impulse, not a mandate. It is up to us to discern when our impulses are good and when they are wicked. It is up to us to take responsibility for the choices we make in reaction to the realities we face. Our drives and impulses, like our skin color or our nationality, are accidents of our birth. We cannot control how we are made, how we emotionally respond to the world. But we can control what we do with our emotions and our impulses and our drives.
God takes mercy on human beings after the Flood, not because we emerged from the ark all tzadikim, all righteous like Noah, but because God decided to deal with our humanness differently. Human beings are capable of good and of wickedness; our drives and impulses sometimes lead us astray. Shall God utterly destroy us all each time we slip up? No. Instead, God makes a covenant with us and calls us to ethical behavior; it is our responsibility to respond to our impulses and drives, directing them toward the good. As Tamar Eskenazi writes, “God recognizes that the inclination to do evil is part of human beings. God’s observation does not claim that humans are inherently sinful but rather recognizes human limitations” (WTC 43). Sometimes we will slip up. But sometimes our desires will motivate us to live and work and create.
God entered into a covenant, with such imperfect beings. God let go of the anger and disappointment God felt in seeing the wickedness in the yeitzer of human beings—an anger and disappointment that led to the Flood and the destruction of a work of creation God had previously deemed “very good.” God replaced that anger and disappointment with new, more realistic expectations. God cut us some slack.
I find it particularly inspiring to read the passage where God smells the fragrance of Noah’s offering and decides, in full awareness of human limitations, to enter into a covenant with us—I find it particularly inspiring to read this so soon after Yom Kippur, the day on which the ways we followed our yeitzer ha-ra to terrible consequences are laid bare before us, before the community, and before God. I find it inspiring that our Torah does not only ask us to lament our sins, but asks us, too, to be gentle with ourselves, to be realistic. Our actions have consequences; we reap what we sow. And yet, God takes enough mercy on us to acknowledge our humanness. And if God can treat us with such mercy and kindness, all the more so should we be merciful and kind toward one another.
When God sees the rainbow in the cloudy sky, God will remember. God will remember that human beings are created b’tzelem Elohim and that this “very good” world we inhabit contains both the yeitzer ha-tov and the yeitzer ha-ra. Let us be patient with ourselves and one another, human beings worthy of being remembered, human beings created b’tzelem Elohim.