I have never really connected to Noah as a personality the way I have this week. This week, one of my congregants came to me and told me something I was not expecting. He said, “You know, Rabbi, I want to make a confession.” I said, “You know, by us we don’t really do the confession business, but...” He said, “No, I insist. I did not wear tefillin (phylacteries) today.”
I asked, “So what happened?” He said, “Since I became bar mitzvah (son of the commandment), I never missed a day of tefillin. But today, I did not wear tefillin.” This was exactly a week ago. I asked, “What happened? Why did you do that?” He said, “You know, the war—I’m so not myself. I don’t understand even what happened. I just did not feel like wearing the tefillin. I’m upset. I’m emotionally distressed. I’m broken. I don’t know. I don’t know. It just did not come out.”
By the way, I had mixed feelings because, on one side, I was like, “Man, this is a mitzvah (commandment) from the Torah. You have to wear the tefillin. You have to wear the tefillin every day.” And I didn’t have to convince the person, because that person wears it every day. What could have happened? On another side, I said, “You know what? Kol hakavod (well done).” Because this person is not wearing the tefillin like many of us do. It’s like a routine: you just wear the tefillin every day. This person may put a lot of emotions and a lot of simcha (joy) and a lot of kavanah (intention) into wearing the tefillin, and that day he didn’t feel it, and therefore he said he couldn’t do it. I felt almost jealous that he does mitzvot with so much simcha and so much connection that, when he didn’t have the connection, he didn’t do it. Of course, halachically it’s wrong, and he’s supposed to wear the tefillin. I get it. But the emotional aspect and connection with the mitzvah is so... important.
What does this have to do with Parashat Noach? Rabotai (my masters), since the beginning of this war, many of us can’t sleep at night. We’ve seen pictures we shouldn’t have. We’ve seen the horror of what some people who call themselves human beings are doing. It’s unbelievable. It’s very difficult. Sometimes you just want to stay in bed. You don’t want to do anything. You’re broken. You’re heartbroken. And that’s us here in America. Imagine those who are there. Imagine those who are there who lost family. How many members? Those who lived through those horrors. Those who have people who were kidnapped, who are still captive in Gaza. Imagine them. How do they wake up in the morning? How do they stand up? How are they going to turn this page, hopefully soon, and start life again? I don’t know, to be honest with you. I don’t have the answer to this.
Many people have done it after the Holocaust was over. They got up and they built again. And they built what today... a Jewish nation that is a strong, powerful people around the world. How did they do it? I don’t know. Somehow they dug very deep into their neshama (soul), into their heart, and they were able to get up and do it all over again.
But if you think about it, Noah went through this and maybe even more. Can you imagine? You would be the only survivor on the entire globe. Hashem punished you. He finished the world with a flood because the world was too violent. It was devoid of any principles. And God said, “The only hope and the only option I have is to start again with one family: the family of Noah.” And we know, as soon as he comes down from the teivah, from the Ark, he plants a vineyard. And the first thing he does is he drinks the wine and he gets drunk. And everybody says, “How did Noah do this? What kind of vineyard? What kind of individual? This is the man who is going to be the father of the universe.”
Rabotai, can you imagine what it is to wake up after a year of being inside the teivah, to open the door and see a whole desolate world? There’s nothing left. You have to start all over again. But you know that everything else got destroyed. Do you know how difficult this must have been? The power that Noah had, although he fell a little bit at the beginning, is something that we cannot comprehend. How did he get up on his two feet and start everything again?
So this time, for the first time, I really feel a connection with Noah. He was heartbroken much more than we were heartbroken. But the same way he got up, and the same way the Holocaust survivors got up, and the same way all those many people throughout the generations after pogroms and after difficulty got up and built again, so too, Am Yisrael Chai (the people of Israel live), we will build again, and we will be victorious.