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Parashat Noach: God Doesn't Destroy the World

I think that the story of the Mabul, the flood story of Noah, is a profound and challenging story about the extent of good and evil in the world.  I say all the time that there is no part of the human experience, no matter how difficult or dark, that the Torah shies away from.  We're not meant to feel comfortable when we read a story like Noah's.

But in order even to begin to interpret it, I can't start with belief in a God who would choose to destroy the world, all its humans of any age, all of its creatures.  I can't read this literally as one of my God's actions.  Even though at the end of the story, God pledges as a covenant never again to destroy the earth, I haven't found a way to talk about a God with this in the divine past.

So this is a post about theology, and "hermeneutics" -- a mode of interpretation.  Maybe you'll find it too conceptual or convoluted.  It's in blog form, not an artlcle or perfect essay.

But here goes. I approach the Noah story in a couple of different ways as a thought experiment.

One thought-experiment:  Suppose the world were truly so full of evil that there was only a single human being left who had any good in him.  What would have to happen?  What would that person be like?  Would there be any way forward other than a complete, violent, destructive collapse?

This approach to the Noah story is in the tradition of Maimonides.  In the Exodus story, Maimonides interpreted the phrase "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" in a metaphoric way.  He explains that sometimes, actions are attributed to God as a way of expressing an extreme situation, beyond human capacities.  Pharaoh was so stubborn, beyond all human experience of stubbornness, that the only way to express it is to say Pharaoh's stubbornness was equivalent to a force of God.  So too, I would say that "God destroyed the world" is a way of saying that the world was so corrupt that an act of extreme collapse was necessary, comparable only to a force of God.  Comparable -- but not authored by God.

A second thought-experiment that intrigues me is:  Suppose God created the world, decided to create human beings a certain way, and then has to work out over a period of time how to partner with these special beings who are like God but also very unlike God.

That's the overall story of the first part of Genesis.  There's the Adam-Eve experiment, the first try in the perfect garden, which faltered over a command.  There's the Cain-Abel problem, the first competition, and now the generation of Noah, when a large population of people descended into violence and chaos.  Finally, God will settle on Avram and Sarai, and things take a big leap forward but only with a small family at first.

It's a given that people are learning and changing over these stories, at least some of them for the better.  Is it possible that God too learns or adapts?  Could that still be our teacher and guide, still be the source not only of life but of wisdom for the universe?

As difficult as those questions are, I prefer them to the questions that a traditional reading of Noah raises.  If God really did destroy the earth then, why did God not intercede during the Shoah?

In the Kabbalah, there is a distinction between God as portrayed through all of our stories, and the true essence of God, the unknowable Ayn Sof or Undefined One.  In that kind of reading, it's not that God is changing from before Noah to after.  Instead, a kabbalistic interpretation takes the Noah story as a study of how the flows of divine justice and love struggle to be directed when the human community is off-center, corrupt, violent, far for a long time from our divine nature.  "God" in the story is a name for these dimensions of divine energy working in our universe.  The Torah personifies them, gives them form and voice, as a way of getting our attention.  As a way of saying that these forces are alive and real, and we can address them, and they are in relationship with us.

So it's not that "God destroyed the world in a flood."  Instead, the world was in a state where the force of divine love and generosity could no longer reach people to affect them.  The reality of divine justice and an orderly universe was all that remained, and the end of human society was simply the result -- the consequence that flows.  The failure was collectively human, at some point.  God weeps, as we do, when we read of a world so far gone.

We know too well of parts of the world where this has been real.  Not only the Shoah, but the other places of genocide and mass murder in our world.  To a lesser extent, pockets of hopelessness and violence even in our American cities.  We -- groups of people -- have to change and have to act, or the flood results again.

The world as a whole is not like this, but we know that parts of it are, and more of it has been not long ago.  We also know that humans do rise up and put an end to "floods", as Noah did.  So we have to keep the Noah story with us, as a description and a goad, so we know such a world when we see it.  A world flooded and destroyed is still part of humanity's legacy, and we have to face it continually as we read the Noah story.

I could have written this just as a drash, a story with a moral without all the philosophical and kabbalistic to-do.  But I find that people ask me about the theology often, and it's important for me to try and work it out too, so I know what God I am serving when the story of Noah calls.

Parashat Noach: Too Many Towers Today

Two contradictory teachings from the Torah:

Last week, we learned that human beings are created in the image of God, and charged with overseeing all the rest of Creation.  This week, in Parashat Noach, we have the story of the Tower of Babel -- a tower to reach and perhaps storm the heavens, thwarted by God.

What does God want?  That we use our minds and creativity to the full extent of their power?  That we set limits on the designs of human beings?

The answer we need will be different at different times.  When the BP oil spill began this spring, I immediately thought of the Tower of Babel.  This incredibly complex process of drilling under the pressure of the sea; these ridiculous, failed improvisations to cap the bleeding well....we think we have the design and the fix for everything.  But we don't.

It's not just about physical structures, "towers" into the air or beneath the ocean.  The financial system is another Tower of Babel.  More and more arcane derivatives, complex trading by computers, pieces of debt and insurance broken up and distributed around the world -- the financial markets are a dangerous Babel.

The Tower story begins with the motivations of the people, motivations that are good.  They want to preserve their unity as they are growing again after the Flood.  They want to deserve God's attention again, for something better than the corruption and violence of their ancestors.  They tap into their ingenuity, to design and build this structure to serve both purposes.

But they take it one step too far.  They want to claim the vision that God has.  They want to say that when they work together, they will equal God in creativity, and be suited to supervise everything they see.

The Torah teaches that such arrogance is a great danger.  When we think we can engineer absolutely anything to soak the energy we need out of the earth, we are wrong.  When we think we can build an economic system more around mathematical models and fiber optic wire, than around the things that people actually use and need -- we are wrong.

I can't say for sure where the line is between acting as the "image of God" and building Towers of Babel.  I'm pretty sure that iPads and constitutions are on one side, credit default swaps and biological weapons on the other.  Some think that we are destined to go through the Babel cycle over and over, to build and watch things crumble, and only to learn after the fact.

I hope not.  I say:  let's try to find the line.  If we've crossed it already, let's find where those figurative Towers are and try to remove them ourselves.  Before they come down on us in destruction, before more people have to suffer for the arrogance of us all.

Parashat Noach: Really Good or Good Enough?

Noach was a righteous man (ish tzaddik) in his generation; with God did Noach walk (Genesis 6:9).  The classic Jewish commentators pay close attention to the wording of this characterization.  Noach's generation was of course so evil, so full of violence, that God decided to destroy the world and start over.

So the commentators debate two interpretations of this verse at the very beginning of this week's reading.  One reading is:  Noach was a righteous man for his generation -- but in a different generation, we might not think of him so highly.  The other reading is:  Noach was a righteous man, which was particularly noteworthy since in his generation being righteous was especially difficult.

The first reading sounds like damning with faint praise.  There's some basis for it in a comparison of Noach with Avraham.  While Noach walked with God, God instructs Avraham "Walk before (literally: in front of) Me" (Genesis 17:1).  Avraham argued with God when he learned that God intended to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their evil.  Noach did not push back against God when he learned about the fate of all humanity.  So there's merit to the interpretation that Noach may have the best of a bad lot in his time, but compared to Avraham would not really stack up.

But there's another way of understanding the interpretation that interests me.  It relates to a concept familiar in psychology and other areas, the notion of good enough.

The psychologist D. W. Winnicott coined the concept "good-enough mother" to describe a certain style of parenting by a mother for an infant.  A good-enough mother is attuned to her baby's desires and development; knows how to respond to the hungry baby, and how to withhold a response just long enough to let the baby learn to experience separation without the feeling of abandonment.

The expectation is not that the mother responds instantly at all times to whatever the baby wants.  In other words, the mother is not supposed to be a "good mother" all the time in the stereotypical sense.  Nor is it that the mother does things exactly right all the time.  The overall attitude and approach are what is important, rather than whether the baby is content at all times.

Good enough, in this sense, sounds pretty good.  A mother (a parent) can't guarantee that life is perfect all the time, nor should she.  Indeed, to be too "good" would be to overfunction, to not give space for the baby to experience things and grow.

There's a similar concept in computer science, of all things.  In software development, the "Principle of Good Enough" favors the simple, workable solution to a programming program.  Get it out there and start using it, and improvements can follow.

We are not all able to be absolutely good as people, or to be the best possible parent, friend, relative, or professional.  Sometimes the "bests" come into conflict -- it's probably impossible to be the best doctor or the best plumber and at the same time the best spouse or parent.  But good enough in each of these aspects of life is always attainable.

And good enough isn't about a particular moment, but the longer view.  Everyone has a bad day at home or at work, but over time "good enough" is apparent.

Noach may not have been Avraham, but he got his important job done.  He did enough to be God's partner in recreating the world.  While we could imagine Noach having done other things, or doing more, he was good enough.  And sometimes that is even enough to earn you the rank, for a time, of tzaddik.