Post by Rabbi Neil on Nov 29, 2019 19:09:07 GMT
In this week’s Torah portion, the portion of Noah, we read that “the earth was corrupt in the sight of God and full of violence. God looked upon the earth and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their ways” (Gen. 6:11-12). Rashi understands the corruption as “lewdness and idolatry” and the violence he understands as “robbery.” In terms of all flesh corrupting their ways, Rashi says that even cattle, beasts and fowl did not consort with their own species. Most commentators do not go as far as Rashi, though, and understand “all flesh” to means only human beings. Ramban says that a later verse (verse 17) uses the term differently. In that verse, it says “all flesh in which is the breath of life,” which means all living bodies but here, where it just says “all flesh”, it only means “all people.”
Rashi’s interpretation doesn’t seem to make sense. If all flesh was corrupt but Noah was saved because he was more righteous than the rest of his generation, why were so many animals saved as well? Is he saying that there were righteous animals among their generation? Sure, we can tell a dog that it’s a good dog, but that means in terms of obedience, not in terms of moral decency! In fact, Jewish tradition has in the past been clear that what distinguishes human beings from animals is morality – where they only have an animal inclination, we have both an animal inclination and an angelic one. Research clearly shows that this belief is totally untrue, by the way, and that animals from mice to chimpanzees regularly make moral choices. But the idea that there were ethical animals and unethical animals clearly didn’t make sense in an ancient Rabbinic context - there were just animals. But for Rashi, all those animals became perverse. Their animal inclination was perverted. This position is supported by a Midrash which says that when the humans at the time were running around displaying sexual depravity, the animals were not coerced to join in but did so willingly. But that’s rather gross, so we tend not to focus on that viewpoint. Indeed, not only is it gross, but it’s really rather silly. It’s one thing to imagine a depraved human society, it’s another to imagine animals willingly mating with human beings.
We’re left with an interesting dilemma. If the animals did indeed become corrupted, why were some allowed onto the ark, since Jewish tradition doesn’t allow for righteous and unrighteous animals? But if the animals didn’t become corrupted, why were so many of them drowned? The first question really doesn’t have a decent answer, but at least there’s an answer to the second question, even if it’s not a nice answer. When we think back to the creation of the universe, everything is created before humanity. The early Rabbinic mindset understood this being because everything was being prepared for human beings. Everything existed not for its own sake with humanity as the pinnacle of creation but, rather, everything existed for the sake of humanity. So, the Midrash says that the reason that God kills off all the animals is because if God was killing off all the rest of humanity, what need would there be for the other animals? This early Rabbinic view of the world was therefore totally androcentric – they believed that man literally was the centre and the ultimate reason for creation. Every cow, every bee, every mosquito had a purpose under heaven. Without humanity, there is, according to this common ancient Rabbinic perspective, no point in the rest of creation. Creation exists for God to reveal the Divine self, which necessitates the existence of human beings. We are the pinnacle of creation so that God can exist in relationship. Everything else is just stuff that helps make us who we are. Talmud is very clear on this. For example, in Tractate Berachot (6b), Rabbi Eleazar says that “The Holy One of Blessing declared, ‘The whole world in its entirety was not created other than on behalf of this [human] species.” Jewish traditional has until the very modern age been thoroughly androcentric, putting humans, specifically man, at the center of creation.
This entire discussion of why God wiped out most of the animals is understandable because we can easily empathise with animals because they are in some ways similar to us. Only once, though, have I ever seen the questions extend to plants, though. Why would God wipe out the plants? Very few people ask or care about that question because they see plants as being a fundamentally different kind of life to us. While early Judaism suggests that we have two inclinations and animals have one, it doesn’t even give one inclination to plants. They are non-sentient Rabbinically speaking. This is challenging because as separate elements of creation, their very existence sings praise to God. In the Bible, particularly throughout the book of Psalms, we find constant reference to non-sentient creation praising God. Psalm 96, for example, says yismechu hashamayim… “Let the heavens rejoice and the earth delight, let the sea thunder in its fullness. Let the field be glad and all within it, let all trees of the forest sing out at the presence of our Creator…” (Ps. 96:11-13). How can a field be glad? How can trees of the forest sing? This isn’t just a cute image, this is repeated constantly through the book of Psalms. A text from the Middle Ages known as Perek Shirah has every animal and plant and even clouds sing its own unique song of praise to God. With that in mind, how could God have wiped out the plants which sang their own unique praise to God?
One midrash addresses this question (GenR 28:8). According to that midrash, the earth itself acted lewdly so that when wheat was sown, it yielded weeds. In other words, it was also promiscuous! Midrash uses this to explain why weeds sometimes grow, because it’s essentially the earth being lewd. In this midrash, the earth is viewed very creatively, as a living being. That makes sense because when God makes a covenant with the Israelites it is a covenant made with heaven and earth as witnesses. The relationship between God and humanity isn’t a two-fold relationship, but a three-fold one, between God, humanity and the earth. The problem with this midrash, though, is the idea of the earth being lewd. The plants deserved to be wiped out, says this perspective, because they were as wicked as the violent, perverse human beings and animals. That’s really stretching the bounds of credibility.
A contemporary Midrash talks of Noah’s wife, Na’amah, gathering some of the plants just as Noah gathers some of the animals. But assuming that we don’t subscribe to the idea that the earth is lewd, the question still remains – why did God kill the plant life? In fact, this question is deeply theological, and opens up the topic of theodicy, which is the theological study of how any kind of evil could exist in a world with a just God. That is another sermon, or a whole other series of sermons, in and of itself. But even if we don’t answer the question, asking it is very important because it ensures that this week’s portion of Noah isn’t just a story about a guy on a boat and a vengeful God.
Noah is a story that is embedded into our psyche, but it carries with it some assumptions that many of us – most of us – would find problematic. We don’t view human beings as the pinnacle and end point of evolution. We don’t consider plant life irrelevant. Many of us don’t even relate to the vengeful God as portrayed in the story. We cannot ignore the suffering of innocents, or believe that an entire world, especially all of non-human nature, can be wicked. I doubt any of us would see weeds as the earth being lewd. And that’s okay. It’s okay for us to hold differing ways of viewing the earth as did Torah and early Rabbinic thought – in fact, more than okay, it’s very healthy, because Jewish thought develops. So, as we reread the story of Noah again, let’s view it as the second statement of Jewish theology, the first being the Creation narrative. Let’s not view it patronisingly, but as an early attempt at Jewish theology which in turn led to a flourishing of Jewish thought. Let us not be held back by the theological questions that the narrative brings out, but instead invigorated to address those questions and to suggest new answers. When Noah’s ark rests on Mount Ararat, let us not rest on our previous interpretations and on interpretive safe ground. Instead, let us continues to sail forward across a sea of new, exciting interpretations, guided by the past but steered by the desire to bring out more of our tradition every time we engage with it, and let us say, Amen.
Rashi’s interpretation doesn’t seem to make sense. If all flesh was corrupt but Noah was saved because he was more righteous than the rest of his generation, why were so many animals saved as well? Is he saying that there were righteous animals among their generation? Sure, we can tell a dog that it’s a good dog, but that means in terms of obedience, not in terms of moral decency! In fact, Jewish tradition has in the past been clear that what distinguishes human beings from animals is morality – where they only have an animal inclination, we have both an animal inclination and an angelic one. Research clearly shows that this belief is totally untrue, by the way, and that animals from mice to chimpanzees regularly make moral choices. But the idea that there were ethical animals and unethical animals clearly didn’t make sense in an ancient Rabbinic context - there were just animals. But for Rashi, all those animals became perverse. Their animal inclination was perverted. This position is supported by a Midrash which says that when the humans at the time were running around displaying sexual depravity, the animals were not coerced to join in but did so willingly. But that’s rather gross, so we tend not to focus on that viewpoint. Indeed, not only is it gross, but it’s really rather silly. It’s one thing to imagine a depraved human society, it’s another to imagine animals willingly mating with human beings.
We’re left with an interesting dilemma. If the animals did indeed become corrupted, why were some allowed onto the ark, since Jewish tradition doesn’t allow for righteous and unrighteous animals? But if the animals didn’t become corrupted, why were so many of them drowned? The first question really doesn’t have a decent answer, but at least there’s an answer to the second question, even if it’s not a nice answer. When we think back to the creation of the universe, everything is created before humanity. The early Rabbinic mindset understood this being because everything was being prepared for human beings. Everything existed not for its own sake with humanity as the pinnacle of creation but, rather, everything existed for the sake of humanity. So, the Midrash says that the reason that God kills off all the animals is because if God was killing off all the rest of humanity, what need would there be for the other animals? This early Rabbinic view of the world was therefore totally androcentric – they believed that man literally was the centre and the ultimate reason for creation. Every cow, every bee, every mosquito had a purpose under heaven. Without humanity, there is, according to this common ancient Rabbinic perspective, no point in the rest of creation. Creation exists for God to reveal the Divine self, which necessitates the existence of human beings. We are the pinnacle of creation so that God can exist in relationship. Everything else is just stuff that helps make us who we are. Talmud is very clear on this. For example, in Tractate Berachot (6b), Rabbi Eleazar says that “The Holy One of Blessing declared, ‘The whole world in its entirety was not created other than on behalf of this [human] species.” Jewish traditional has until the very modern age been thoroughly androcentric, putting humans, specifically man, at the center of creation.
This entire discussion of why God wiped out most of the animals is understandable because we can easily empathise with animals because they are in some ways similar to us. Only once, though, have I ever seen the questions extend to plants, though. Why would God wipe out the plants? Very few people ask or care about that question because they see plants as being a fundamentally different kind of life to us. While early Judaism suggests that we have two inclinations and animals have one, it doesn’t even give one inclination to plants. They are non-sentient Rabbinically speaking. This is challenging because as separate elements of creation, their very existence sings praise to God. In the Bible, particularly throughout the book of Psalms, we find constant reference to non-sentient creation praising God. Psalm 96, for example, says yismechu hashamayim… “Let the heavens rejoice and the earth delight, let the sea thunder in its fullness. Let the field be glad and all within it, let all trees of the forest sing out at the presence of our Creator…” (Ps. 96:11-13). How can a field be glad? How can trees of the forest sing? This isn’t just a cute image, this is repeated constantly through the book of Psalms. A text from the Middle Ages known as Perek Shirah has every animal and plant and even clouds sing its own unique song of praise to God. With that in mind, how could God have wiped out the plants which sang their own unique praise to God?
One midrash addresses this question (GenR 28:8). According to that midrash, the earth itself acted lewdly so that when wheat was sown, it yielded weeds. In other words, it was also promiscuous! Midrash uses this to explain why weeds sometimes grow, because it’s essentially the earth being lewd. In this midrash, the earth is viewed very creatively, as a living being. That makes sense because when God makes a covenant with the Israelites it is a covenant made with heaven and earth as witnesses. The relationship between God and humanity isn’t a two-fold relationship, but a three-fold one, between God, humanity and the earth. The problem with this midrash, though, is the idea of the earth being lewd. The plants deserved to be wiped out, says this perspective, because they were as wicked as the violent, perverse human beings and animals. That’s really stretching the bounds of credibility.
A contemporary Midrash talks of Noah’s wife, Na’amah, gathering some of the plants just as Noah gathers some of the animals. But assuming that we don’t subscribe to the idea that the earth is lewd, the question still remains – why did God kill the plant life? In fact, this question is deeply theological, and opens up the topic of theodicy, which is the theological study of how any kind of evil could exist in a world with a just God. That is another sermon, or a whole other series of sermons, in and of itself. But even if we don’t answer the question, asking it is very important because it ensures that this week’s portion of Noah isn’t just a story about a guy on a boat and a vengeful God.
Noah is a story that is embedded into our psyche, but it carries with it some assumptions that many of us – most of us – would find problematic. We don’t view human beings as the pinnacle and end point of evolution. We don’t consider plant life irrelevant. Many of us don’t even relate to the vengeful God as portrayed in the story. We cannot ignore the suffering of innocents, or believe that an entire world, especially all of non-human nature, can be wicked. I doubt any of us would see weeds as the earth being lewd. And that’s okay. It’s okay for us to hold differing ways of viewing the earth as did Torah and early Rabbinic thought – in fact, more than okay, it’s very healthy, because Jewish thought develops. So, as we reread the story of Noah again, let’s view it as the second statement of Jewish theology, the first being the Creation narrative. Let’s not view it patronisingly, but as an early attempt at Jewish theology which in turn led to a flourishing of Jewish thought. Let us not be held back by the theological questions that the narrative brings out, but instead invigorated to address those questions and to suggest new answers. When Noah’s ark rests on Mount Ararat, let us not rest on our previous interpretations and on interpretive safe ground. Instead, let us continues to sail forward across a sea of new, exciting interpretations, guided by the past but steered by the desire to bring out more of our tradition every time we engage with it, and let us say, Amen.