An Uncertain Future - Parshat Noach Drash 2025/5786

The rains have stopped and the waters appear to have subsided. It has been one really long year for Noah and his family. They have been stuck in an ark with every kind of stench and noise and with no space at all, and finally they have an opportunity to leave the ark.

So they do. And when I told the story to the preschool kids this week, that’s where the story ended. But, in truth, the story keeps going, and is much more complicated.

We continue. Noah, who was originally a tiller of soil, returns to working the land. But his motives appear, now to be around alcohol. His first crop is a wine vineyard. The story tells of a moment when he gets drunk, embarrasses himself in front of his children by getting naked in front of them. And when he awakens the next morning, he curses the son who first saw him naked out of embarrassment. 

Now, how I see it, Noah is in a moment of grief. He is coming to terms with the fact that the world he left is different from the world that needs to be rebuilt. Perhaps, he grew familiar with the ark, and the transition back to land was harsh and abrupt. When he returns to what should be his old places of comfort, he sees that they are forever altered; all of the people are gone, and these places don’t look like they once did.

Elie Wiesel explains it well. He writes, “Imagine what he must have felt as he walked ashore and discovered the empty, devastated land. He must have looked for familiar ground, vantage points, cities of light and life, dwelling places and their sounds. He knew that they had vanished, still he went on looking for them […] During the catastrophe, Noah was a protagonist; now he has become a witness.”

Again, it is normal if this is the first time that you’re confronting this part of the story for the first time. You’re not alone, and that’s okay! We tell the stories that we need to in order to pass on certain messages. For Noah, that message usually is that God regretted the flood and promised never to do it again.

We need this story, because we need to be able to trust that our God is benevolent. And that story is capped beautifully. There is a dove that goes out, looking for dry land, and returning with an olive branch. And there is a rainbow, a symbol which, at every rainfall that we see, reminds us of God’s promise not to flood us again.

But after the dove, and after the rainbow, is when the danger for Noah begins. How will he transition back into a life where he must till the land and tend to his family? How will he recreate all of humanity with his family?

We, too, have just navigated a transition out of a war and back onto dry land. The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas has offered us an opportunity to finally, at long last, catch our breath. It seems like, perhaps, the dove has found the olive branch. And thank God. Because the ark that we have been sitting in for the last two years has been a loud one.

And we need to tell a story that will allow us to move forward. In recognition of that need, this past Sunday we held with the organization JEWISHColorado a ceremony to honor the release of the hostages. We needed to create a separation between the war as it was, and the olive branch which we are praying is ahead of us. It’s worth naming; Even amidst that ceremony, it wasn’t clear that the ceasefire deal would hold up. And it’s still not. I don’t trust any of the leaders at play to make decisions based in peace. But we needed to recognize that there was a before this ceasefire deal and there is an after. The hostages are home. Food appears to be entering Gaza. Dayenu, for now.

We have needed time to mourn our dead. To mourn all that has been lost in the last two years. And look around to recognize that we need our community, even when it is made up of those who you may or may not see eye to eye with. This war has fractured us. And, we need one another.

So what can the Noah story teach us about coming together? Well, as I see it, quite a lot. For now, I’ll name two things that I got from this story. The first is the reminder that these are vulnerable times. It is vulnerable both for those who are directly impacted by the war, and by those of us who feel deep connections to that region. It is a time when we will have to confront the ways in which the hostages have been killed and tortured. It is a time when we will have to grapple with the images we have seen of Gaza - And with the Palestinians who were killed because of a war which was fought in an area that’s as long as Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, with its widest point being no wider than the distance from Ball Arena to Aurora. Just as Noah returned to a land destroyed, we can imagine the woman in Gaza returning home; only to find that it is no longer there.

And we have to reconcile with our neighbors and our families. Not necessarily because we agree, but simply because they are our neighbors and our family. These are vulnerable times. There will be anger, guilt, shame, and grief. And the world is not put back together yet. The psyches of the hostages, the rubble of Gaza, the relationships between families will each take time to rebuild. But with vulnerability, comes an opportunity to remember what is important to us. That we are all made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and thus our relationships with our neighbors matters. Rabbi Akiva, one of our ancient sages, says that one of the most fundamental parts of the Torah is v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha, that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. Why? because they are our neighbors.

The second thing that Noah also teaches us is that we don’t have to be perfect to be good enough to survive the world. In the first verse of the Torah portion, we are taught that: “נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה בְּדֹרֹתָיו” That Noah was a rightous and simple man within his generation. There is an implication here, that had Noah lived in a different generation, it’s not clear that he would have been considered so righteous. Noah was righteous within his context, and that was good enough to merit the ark that he lived on.

We, too, don’t need to be heroes of our generation. The expectation is not to be Moses, or Abraham, or Miriam. The moment we are in is one in which we are called to walk with humility, remembering that we are flawed and don’t hold the only perspective. This is a harder task than we give it credit for. Our news feeds and social media algorithms are designed to tell us that our perspective happens to be the correct one. But that is wrong; our pain is not unique. We are swimming in a world filled with loss. That’s not to say that it doesn’t matter. The grief you may be feeling, be that about the last 2 years or about anything on your heart, is incredibly important. And, if we walk with the humility to remember the person next to us, that is the embodiment of v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha - loving your neighbor as you need love too.

I’m not sure that after the flood, Noah was able to hold that boundary. He appears to be lost in his grief. And I don’t blame him. But perhaps we can take the lessons learned from his experience. We are living in delicate times. We don’t need to be perfect human beings. We simply need to walk humbly with our God in this life. Perhaps, then, we can truly move forward - within Jewish community and among the community outside of these walls.

Shabbat shalom.