When Noach leaves the ark, he witnesses a sight of destruction and desolation that is difficult for us to comprehend. All animal life on earth, other than the few of each species that had remained on board his vessel, had utterly perished. We can imagine the impact that the eerie silence, the stillness,and the memory of all that had been and was wiped out must have had on Noach’s psyche. And it is therefore no surprise that one of his first actions was to produce wine, seeking to intoxicate himself into forgetfulness.
The alcohol in Noach’s wine was not only meant to numb his suffering. It was a desperate attempt to escape from his meaningful yet excruciating mandate to engage with the broken world he encountered. As the Mishna in Avot (3:10) teaches: “Midday wine… puts a man out of the world.”
The episode of Noach’s drunkenness is thus a poignant commentary on the difficulty of beginning again in a universe that has seen death and pain. On some level in our own day, amid the fragile ceasefire in Gaza after two years of war and enormous loss of life, we too face the struggle of beginning again. The temptation to retreat into numbness is real, but the Torah calls on us, as it did to Noach, to confront our pain and rebuild with courage and faith.
Appropriately paired with the parsha, this week’s haftara of consolation from the book of Isaiah speaks to this difficulty with words of beauty and grace. It charges us with the responsibility that we bear toward ourselves and our descendants to guarantee the continuation and rehabilitation of the world, even when the suffering it contains seems overwhelming.
The prophecy, issued in the wake of the destruction wrought by the invasion of Israel’s enemies, begins with a command to our people to find joy amidst difficulty: “Barren woman, never a mother, rejoice!” (54:1). It continues by describing the future flourishing and expansion of the nation’s society and civilization, encouraging Am Israel to prepare for renewal, despite the losses and tragedies:
Broaden the site of your tent; stretch out your canvas home; do not hold back; lengthen your tent cords, and strengthen its pegs: you shall overflow rightward and left, your children possessing nations, and filling forsaken towns with life. (vv. 2-3)
It is not a coincidence that this command mirrors God’s directive to Noach in our parsha, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1). We can guess that both prescriptions, understandably, were met with incredulity among the people. After all that had happened, how could they rebuild? How could they rejoice? But such commands also inspire optimism.
God’s insistent demand that we do just these things, that we put all of our might into picking ourselves up again, shows how much He believes in our ability to create a better future, even when it must be built on the ashes of tragedy.
Now, thank God, as all of Israel’s remaining live hostages have been returned, we can begin to confront the grief and pain that the last two years have inflicted on our people. Figuratively, and in some very important instances, literally, we have not yet buried our dead: bodies of murdered hostages still remain in Gaza and our national and personal losses are difficult to comprehend.
But amidst all of the darkness and difficulty, we must find it within ourselves to branch out and rebuild, broadening the sites of our tents in our country’s war-torn northern and southern reaches, and within our own hearts. This includes caring for the mental and emotional health of our families, soldiers and citizens of Israel. By putting our efforts into making a better future for ourselves and our families, we demonstrate faith in God’s limitless ability to redeem and liberate us, even in the face of all the challenges that come with trauma.
Rabbi Yedidyah Lau, head of the Joseph and Gwendolyn Straus Rabbinical Seminary, shared that the blessing “הַטּוֹב וְהַמֵּטִיב” [“The Kind One who Bestows Kindness”], in the fourth and final section of the Grace After Meals, was composed after the fall of the city of Beitar during the bloody culmination of the second century Bar Kokhba rebellion against the Romans; when the Jewish people were able to bury their slain (Brachot 48b). The battle was a large-scale catastrophe marked by the massacre of men, women, and children. And yet, the Sages teach, a miracle occurred that preserved the numerous corpses intact until the surviving Jews could reach them, allowing them the final dignity of burial.
The ability of the Jewish leadership of the time to use that traumatic event as an opportunity to celebrate God’s kindness shows the deep commitment of our people to finding the miraculous potential for salvation even in the most trying of circumstances.
Today, we have much to be thankful for, and we also have much to mourn. God’s lesson through the story of Noach and the prophecy of Isaiah is that even in the face of all the difficulty and trauma, we must still recognize the blessings and opportunities that await us. We cannot allow our justified sadness at what we have lost to negate our joy at all we have achieved, and at all the kindnesses that a benevolent God has granted us.
We must never cease to anticipate a future that will only be better and more blessed. Many generations of Jews have faced this challenge; now it is our turn to rebuild, to believe and to plant the seeds of an even brighter future.