The Rainmaker • Torah.org

 

 

Posted on October 21, 2020 (5781) By Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky | Series: Drasha | Level: Beginner

Noach lived through trying times to say the least. He survived not only a generation of spiritual chaos, but physical annihilation as well. However, Hashem walked with him and guided him. He instructed him every step of the way. He warned him of the impending  flood. He instructed him to build an ark. He told him to bring all the animals to the ark. Yet Noach is labeled as a man who was lacking in faith. The Torah tells us that, “Noach with

his wife and sons and his son’s wives with him, went into the ark because of the waters of the Flood” (Genesis 7:6).

Rashi quotes a Midrash which proclaims that Noach, to a small degree, lacked faith as he only entered the ark “because of the waters of the Flood.” The implication is that Noach did not enter the ark until the rain forced him to.

The obvious question is how can we say that Noach lacked, even to a tiny extent, faith? He had to believe! After all, he spoke to Hashem! He built the ark! He gathered all the   animals! He was the only one in his generation to worry about the impending doom!

 

Surely, he must have believed! Why is there a complaint against Noach? What is wrong in waiting until he had no choice but to enter? To what degree is he considered lacking in faith?

Rabbi Shimshon Sherer, Rav of Congregation Kehilas Zichron Mordechai, tells the following story.

In a small town there was a severe drought. The community synagogues each prayed separately for rain, but to no avail. The tears and prayers failed to unlock the sealed heavens, and for months, no rains came.

Finally, the town’s eldest sage held a meeting with prominent community rabbis and lay leaders. “There are two items lacking in our approach, faith and unity. Each one of you must impress upon his congregation the need to believe. If we are united and sincere, our prayers will be answered!” He declared that all the synagogues in the city would join together for a day of tefilah. Everyone, men women and children would join together for this event. “I assure you,” he exclaimed, “that if we meet both criteria – faith and unity – no one will leave that prayer service without getting drenched!”

There was no shul large enough to contain the entire community so the date was set to gather and daven in a field! For the next few weeks all the rabbis spoke about bitachon and achdus (faith and unity). On the designated day the entire town gathered in a large field whose crops had long withered from the severe drought. Men, women, and children all gathered and anxiously awaited the old sage to begin the service.

The elderly rabbi walked up to the podium. His eyes scanned the tremendous crowd that filled the large field and then they dimmed in dismay. The rabbi began shaking his head in dissatisfaction. “This will never work,” he moaned dejectedly. “The rain will not come.” Slowly he left the podium. The other rabbis on the dais were shocked. “But rebbe everyone is here and they are all united! Surely they must believe that the rains will fall! Otherwise  no one would have bothered to come on a working day!”

The rabbi shook his head slowly and sadly.

 

“No. They don’t really believe,” he stated. “I scanned the entire crowd. Nobody even brought a raincoat.”

The level of faith that the Torah demanded from Noach would have had him bolt into the ark on the very morning that the Flood was meant to come. He had no inkling of the ferocity that was impending at the storm’s first moments. Though it began as a light rainstorm his waiting until being forced by the torrents is equivalent to one who hears predictions of a tornado and stands outside waiting for the funnel to knock at his door.

Noach should have moved himself and his family in the ark at zero hour without waiting

for the rains to force him in. The instinctive faith should have kicked in turning the bright sunny day that he may have experienced into one that is filled with fatal flood water. But he waited to see if it would really come. And for that he is chided.

How often do we cancel plans or change a course of action on the say-so of the  weatherman, but plan our activities so in contrast with the predictions of the Torah? Even Noach, who built the ark under intense pressure, is held accountable for the lack of instinctive faith that should have been interred in his bones. And on that level of faith, unfortunately, all of us are a little wet behind the ears.

Good Shabbos!

 

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

 

Copyright © 1998 by Rabbi M. Kamenetzky and Project Genesis, Inc.

 

If you enjoy the weekly Drasha, now you can receive the best of Drasha in book form! Purchase Parsha Parables – from the Project Genesis bookstore – Genesis Judaica – at a very special price!

The author is the Dean of the Yeshiva of South Shore.

Survival Syndrome

 

Posted on October 24, 2014 (5775) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

The main character described in this week’s Torah reading is naturally Noach himself. I think that the Torah wishes to illustrate, through Noach’s personality and his reactions to the impending disaster and to the world afterwards – the challenges of being a survivor.

Everyone who has ever survived a serious challenge or tragedy replays in one’s mind what might have been done differently, and whether the tragedy could somehow have been averted. There is always, as well, that element of guilt which every survivor carries with  him or her.

Noach had ample warning as to the arrival of the flood – a flood that would destroy civilization as he knew it. There are different opinions in the commentaries to the Torah as to whether Noach really tried to save his surrounding neighbors or whether he was mainly passive, hoping that somehow by publicly building the Ark they would get the message.

Whatever opinion we adopt, it is obvious that Noach was unsuccessful in saving his generation from destruction.

That stark fact must have undoubtedly weighed very heavily on Noach in the aftermath of the flood. It explains his superficially strange behavior – planting a vineyard, becoming drunk and being sexually abused – but it does not excuse it. Post-traumatic syndrome is today recognized as a medical disease – a psychological and physical problem.

Almost all servicemen who were engaged in actual combat suffer from it in one way or another. There are grief counselors to help people recover after personal tragedies in their families. But Noach was all alone in the world and there was no one to help him cope with his own survival syndrome.

Coping with sad and difficult events is ostensibly the true measure of a person and of life itself. It is perhaps what the Mishna meant when it described the ten trials of our father Avraham “and he withstood them all.” It was not only the trials that made him great but rather the fact that after so many trials he still stood tall and resolute, faithful and graciously kind to the end.

Avraham was also a survivor but his method of overcoming the survival syndrome was far different from that of Noach. This dichotomy was clearly seen in the past generation when the survivors of the Holocaust made choices regarding their future lives after their liberation. All of them were affected by the horrors they witnessed and in fact endured. Yet their choices as how to pursue life once more became the true mettle of their existence and

personality.

 

Choosing life, family, faith and entrepreneurial, social and national productivity was, for many a survivor, the road to rehabilitation and normalcy. The past was never forgotten and the events could never be erased, but rebuilding life took precedence over all other factors. Adam and Noach both could not overcome the tragedies that previously engulfed them.

They became reclusive and lost their drive for leadership and their ability to inspire others. By so doing, they compounded the tragedies that overtook them and forfeited the opportunity to forge an eternal people that would somehow be able to rise above all calamities and fulfill its historic mission.

Shabbat shalom Rabbi Berel Wein