This is from a weekly “Shabbat Shalom” notice that I sent out to my students at Babson College on Friday. Babson - for those who don’t know - is an entrepreneurial school located in Wellesley, MA (it’s consistently ranked the best business school for entrepreneurship in America, and I hope that helps explain the last line in the post about “future business leaders.”)
This week's Torah reading is Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32), and it's the saga that so many of us learn when we're little kids: the story of Noah and the primeval Flood. But even though we learn this story when we're young, it's hardly a children's story.
The story of the Flood is actually Creation 2.0. It essentially teaches that G-d's first attempt at an ideal Creation goes terribly awry, so G-d wipes almost everything out and starts over with a new template. Noah, his family, and a small sample of life go out from the ark to repopulate the world that has been wiped clean.
At the culmination of the story, G-d puts a rainbow in the sky, as a "sign" to Noah and his descendants:
וְהָיְתָ֥ה הַקֶּ֖שֶׁת בֶּֽעָנָ֑ן וּרְאִיתִ֗יהָ לִזְכֹּר֙ בְּרִ֣ית עוֹלָ֔ם
בֵּ֣ין אֱלֹהִ֔ים וּבֵין֙ כּל־נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֔ה בְּכל־בָּשָׂ֖ר אֲשֶׁ֥ר עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant
between G-d and all living creatures, all flesh that is on earth. (Genesis 9:16)
What is the significance of this "sign"? G-d essentially says: I'm not doing this again; this is the last planet that I'm giving you. I’m not going to destroy the earth again - you humans, however, might.
It's one of those Torah passages that stunningly speaks to our own situation. The climate crisis is not a divinely ordained situation; it is purely the result of human obliviousness and corporate greed. And its solution, too, is given over to human hands.
There's a shocking modern midrash that speaks to this, asking: What do you imagine that Noah and his family saw when they first stepped out of the ark? Many of us, taught the story as children, picture that it's springtime: birdsongs fill the air; the sun is shining; animals are frolicking; all the strains of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." But the midrash imagines that Noah sees something quite different: He sees corpses.
After the Flood, Noah opened the ark and looked out. He saw the earth desolate, forests and gardens uprooted, corpses visible everywhere. There was no grass, no vegetation; the world was a wasteland.
In pain and dismay, Noah cried out to G-d: “Ribbono shel Olam! In six days You made the earth. Now you have brought the work of Your hands to nought, uprooting all You planted, tearing down all You built. Why didn’t you show compassion for Your creatures?”
G-d said to Noah, "Excuse me? Now, after the destruction, You come to Me and complain?When you saw what was about to happen to the world, you thought only of yourself and your family, while everyone else died by the fire and the water!"
And Noah realized that he had sinned.
The story of the Flood is fundamentally about this: You get one planet. You get to be either part of the solution - or you're precisely the problem. What could be a more timely message for us, and for every future business leader?
Image credit: R. Crumb, The Book of Genesis Illustrated (2009)