Parshat Noach: Two aspects of God

            A quick note before Shabbat. This week’s Torah portion is ParshatNoach. It contains two stories with very different views of God.

            In the first, we are presented with a God who becomes so angry or fed up with human kind that S/He makes the decision to destroy the entire world – all except for Noah, his family, and some animals so that there will be a remnant to start over with. In the end, God realizes that perhaps a cataclysmic flood event was a bit extreme, even with a generation as degenerate at the generation of the flood supposedly was. So God becomes contrite gives us the rainbow as symbol that God will never again destroy the world by a flood.

            Adonai, the God of mercy, justice and forgiveness, is also a God of anger. If God can get angry, then so can we. We are created in God’s image and try to emulate God’s attributes – in this case anger and the recognition that anger needs to be reigned it. In other words, we should control our anger, it should never control us. There is godliness in anger. It can provide the impetus for change and action, but it must be controlled.

            The second story, which is at the end of the Torah portion, is that of the Tower of Babel. Here God sees a world, about 700 years after the flood (according to the Sages), where everyone speaks the same language, and everyone gets along. They get along so well that they decide to cooperatively build a tower that will reach God. Why? There are different explanations including in order to make their name or just because they think they can.

            God sees the people are setting themselves an impossible task and decides to intervene. Why? One possibility is God saw that the people would be so occupied with building the tower that nothing else would get done – no crops planted, no stores selling things, no houses built, no babies being made. Another is that God didn’t want the people to have the consequences of setting themselves an impossible and unachievable task.

            In this story we have a parental or benevolent God who chooses to intervene in order to protect the people. The result: Babble! God “gifts” humans with the gift of different languages. Suddenly it’s much more difficult to understand each other. People instinctively gather together with those that speak the same language that they do. Then they have to start figuring out how to communicate with those who are different. A lesson that we are still learning to this day.      

            A God of anger and a God who is parental and benevolent. Two characteristics of God that are innately human, have both positive and negative aspects, and teach us that we do not have to be perfect to access the godliness within.   

            It might be a bit more difficult to access the godliness within this weekend as we turn the clocks back tomorrow night and mess up our sleep! But I have faith that we will prevail and get to wherever we need to be Sunday morning on time if a bit discombobulated.

             Have a blessed and lovely Shabbat.

            Shabbat Shalom,

            Rabbah Arlene