The Ballad of a Dove

As kids, my brothers and I had plastic Noah's ark dish/ cutlery sets. They had simple pictures of animals and a red ark in the center of each dish and the Hebrew and English alphabet around the rims. There may have been a rainy cloud and a rainbow. Also: you could not put them in the microwave.

Noah's ark is all over things for children: puzzles, puppets, paintings, you name it. ... And I sorta get why the story is marketable to children (and their parents and grandparents): there are lots of fluffy animals! And "two by two"! There's a rainbow! But between you, me, and the internet, the place of Parashat Noach in Judeo-Christian society freaks me out.


The best way I know to get into this story is to talk through a different one.

On Passover, we tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt, about how Hashem took the Children of Israel out of bondage and into freedom with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. At the Seder, we ask the question, "How do we tell this story to our children?" and we come up with at least four different answers.

To the child who approaches the story with bright eyes and an open heart, ready to celebrate, ready to embrace with only one question, "How?" we explain the laws of Passover and invite the child to participate in the traditions of his heritage.

To the child who sees a (frankly) bizarre ritual taking place before her, one in which her family is deeply steeped, to a child who begs for a window to peer into and understand, to the child who asks, "What is this service to you?" tradition shows little compassion. It instructs adults to parse her words and punish her for them. To frighten her with terrible words, "If you had been there, you would not have been redeemed."

We are provided by our tradition with simple answers for the child who knows only enough to ask "What's this?" and for the child who does not yet know to ask.


What of the child who asks about the flood?

When I taught the story of Noah to my Hebrew school classes, my older students, seventh graders nodded along, taking the story in stride. My fifth graders rose from their chairs.

They'd never heard the story before.

"Hashem destroyed the whole world?"
"Everything but what lived in the water and the animals and people in the ark."
"All of the people?"
"All but eight. Noah and his family."
"All the children?"
"The children."
"Even babies?"
"The babies."
"By drowning them?"
"By flood."
"Hashem?"
"Hashem."

What consolation is there for a child who asks these questions?

The world was full of sinners. Noah was a righteous man in his generation. Strive to be righteous. When around you all you see is wickedness, strive to be good and kind. Be worthy of saving.
What sort of answer is that when infants were drowned?

The rainbow stands as a reminder to us of the covenant Hashem made with humankind. Never again will Hashem destroy the world by flood. What the hell kind of weak-ass covenant is that?

In retelling them the story, we must reassure bright-eyed, open-hearted children that they are right to be horrified. That they are blindingly beautiful for it. That when they continue to spot injustice throughout their lives, as they no doubt will, that they should be moved to such righteous indignation. That they should move their teachers to tears. That they should move their elders, those who have walked the earth so long that they take stories of destruction in stride, that these 'realistic,' wizened, calloused hearts, these hearts they should move to action.

In retelling the story of Noah, it is our duty as adults to hear the questions of children. To remember that for our entire lives and for many years thereafter, it is to our children we will have to answer.

And it was Evening and it was Morning, One Day.

One of my oldest friends was in town for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. I spent the last few hours of the Shabbos thereafter with her and her family. She, her youngest sister, her brother, and I sat in the kitchen playing Rummikub at one end of the table while her parents played backgammon at the other.

While playing, my friend's sister began humming. Absent-mindedly I joined in, as did my friend and her mother. While waiting for my friend's brother to rearrange (and then re-rearrange) the tiles on the table, I registered which song it was we were humming. --"One Day" by Matisyahu.

I turned to my friend's sister and spoke the kind of truth that occasionally is shared among surrogate family: the slightly embarrassing but (hopefully) endearing kind. "Sometimes, when I'm running, this comes on my iPod. It makes me feel epic." She smiled and repeated my last words as though tasting them, "It makes me feel epic."

We continued to play and sing, building harmonies, breaking down rhythms, making a mess of Rummikub tiles.

There are, of course, a million things to talk about when it comes to Bereshit, Genesis, the story of creation. This year, what rests most weightily with me is the immediacy of the story --everything happens in a day.

This is the way the world begins:
Day One: Separation between light and dark, designation of Day and Night.
Day Two: Separation between sky above and waters below.
Day Three: Separation between land and water. Creation of plants to cover the earth.
Day Four: Creation of the heavenly bodies: the sun, the moon, and stars.
Day Five: Creation of fish to fill the sea and birds to fill the sky.
Day Six: Creation of animals to roam the earth and of human beings.
Day Seven: Hashem took a breather, a Sabbath day.

The story of creation orients us to our place amidst the cosmos. We are but dust of the earth. Our lives are merely an exhalation. And yet. On day six, Hashem turned the world over to humanity to guard, to rule and to look after. The Torah teaches us that we were made in Hashem's image, that our history, mythical or otherwise, is our great act of creation.

Will we create light where there is darkness? With what will we fill the earth and sky?

Feel epic.  Feel epic because today we can build one another other up. Today we can break one another down. The world is ours.

What will we make of it?

...the Beginning: a statement of mission

A few months ago, as I was peering out into the horizon to see the beginning twinklings of 5769, reviewing the past year, I realized that I've been missing an old friend of mine pretty dearly: Torah.

I decided that to rectify the situation, weekly, I would start to write a little something (a question, an interpretation, an application) on the week's Parsha (starting in Bereishit... because it just has to be done that way) in hopes that the process will get me to become more familiar with the text, to struggle with it, and to continue thinking (critically) about the Torah and how I'm going to apply it to my life.

In the spirit of learning (in so many senses of the word), I'd like to invite you --to ask you, please, to join me in this conversation: to offer new questions, new answers, to challenge me or the text or... whathaveyou, or to express your own troubles with the text. I'd thoroughly appreciate anything you might have to say, and think that it would make (at least) my learning all the richer.

So, with that:
Onward, Chevreh, let's hit the books!