Torah Sparks
Genesis 6:9 – 11:32
This Torah portion includes a lot of building. The famous examples are Noah’s building of an ark and the collective building of the Tower of Babel. The building of the ark works out well enough – humanity is saved from sure destruction. But the building of the Tower is never completed. Instead God thwarts humanity’s plans and disperses us to develop as distinct nations, with separate cultures and languages.
There is one more act of building related by our portion, one much less famous that these others. It is Noah’s building of an altar to God right after he leaves the ark to begin the world all over again. While Noah built the ark at God’s command, he built the altar of his own accord. He built the ark to save himself, his family and some small sampling of the world. He built the altar to offer on it gifts of gratitude to God. The building of the ark was for the sake of survival. The building of the altar was for the sake of thanksgiving and communion with God.
Of these two building projects by Noah only the ark has captured our imaginations. We tend to ignore the altar project completely. That seems unfortunate. Yes, the story of the ark is dramatic, a story of life and death. But, in the end, what it accomplished was bare survival. Of course that is no small thing, but it carries with it no content to lead us further. We have weathered the flood and exited the ark. Now what? What are we to do with our lives after we survive? The only information God gives us is that all surviving living creatures will be fruitful and multiply. That’s it.
On the other hand, what came from the building of the altar was a rich Divine response. God “speaks to His own heart” (Gen. 8:21), pledges to accept human beings as they are, and promises never to destroy the earth. And then God communicates laws of life to Noah, the first teaching of Torah in history. And perhaps, most profoundly, God informs Noah that human beings are created in the Divine Image. (We never actually knew that fact about ourselves before. See Torah Sparks, Noah, 5774 ) Then, to cap it off, we are given the gift of the rainbow, an everlasting source of amazement and breathtaking beauty.
All this from a small building project that we tend to ignore, a project spontaneously conceived and executed by one person so as to express his need to give thanks. Maybe we should pay more attention to this story!
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein
image: “Rainbow” © William Welch altered and used with permission via Creative Commons License
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