Parshat Noah 5767

Next week, the world will mark the sixty-eighth anniversary of Krystalnacht, the night of broken glass. Krystalnacht took place in early November, 1938 after the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a distraught Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynspan.

As many of you are no doubt aware, in the course of one evening, 10,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed, synagogues and homes were burned to the ground, and thousands of Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned. For many, this event was seen as the beginning of the end.

And while the world gave a perfunctory response to the events of Krystalnacht by condemning this modern day pogrom in the most tepid tones, the Nazis saw the writing on the wall – the under whelming response of the world to these crimes opened the door for the Shoah, the holocaust.

For many historians, Krystalnacht marks the ‘official’ beginning of the Shoah, the Holocaust, but this is a subject of some debate. When exactly did the Shoah begin? Some argue that the Shoah began in 1933 with the election of Hitler to the Chancellor-ship of German. Others suggest that it began even earlier with the publication of Mein Kampf. Others argue that the Shoah did not begin until the events at Wannsee, when the leadership of the Third Reich met to plan the final solution.

This morning, I’d like to suggest that the Shoah did not begin with an event but with a phenomenon. The seeds of the Shoah go back to the time of Noah. They are present in his silence.

Despite the fact that Noah is described in the Torah as a righteous man in his generation, the rabbis had some glaring problems with him. When we look at the story of Noah we notice something quite startling. Noah has very little to say. And when he does talk he doesn’t have anything good to say.

God comes to Noah and tells him that He’s going to wipe out all life on earth. He then commands Noah to build an ark. Noah piously obeys God’s instructions. This was no small project. According to the sages, it took Noah 120 years to build this Ark. He had to plant the cedars, wait for them to mature, he then had to painstakingly build the ark and carry the supplies to the top of the mountain on which the ark was built. Noah also had to gather all the creatures that would be saved. And yet in all those years Noah never said a word. He never tried to convince the people of his generation to repent. And he never warned them of the impending disaster.

Surely in the course of 120, someone must have asked Noah what he was doing. Noah could have spoken out and warned the people of his generation of the danger that was looming over their head. But he never says a word. It’s for this reason that the sages were ambivalent about the righteousness of Noah.

Interestingly, the first time Noah says anything at all is after the flood. He leaves the ark, plants a vineyard, makes wine and immediately gets drunk. Lying naked in his tent, Noah’s son Ham enters the tent and something takes place, though the exact nature of this event is not clear. When Noah wakes up and learns what has happened, he finally speaks up for the first time. But what does he say? “Arur Knan, Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” The first time Noah speaks in the Bible he curses his son! It’s no wonder the sages were ambivalent about Noah.

In today’s Haftorah we find a fascinating expression. The prophet Isaiah describes the flood as Mei Noach, “the waters of Noah.” This week Cantor Lefkowitz shared a wonderful insight with me concerning this expression. He pointed out to me that if Noah was righteous enough to be saved, why does Isaiah refer to the waters of the great flood as “the waters of Noah?” He pointed out that because Noah failed to speak out and save his generation, he was seen as responsible for the flood. Had he said anything at all, Noah might have saved the world. Instead he chose to be a dutiful and self serving servant of God who did not care about others until they personally harmed him.

Language is at the heart of the story of the flood. This is not a story about the world’s wickedness but about our ability to make a difference even in a wicked world. Noah may have been a decent man but he failed to fulfill the greatest challenge of all. Maybe that is why God commands Noah to build a Teva, an ark, and not a sefinah or an oneeyah, the more typical words for a boat or a ship in Hebrew. The word, Teva, has another meaning – a Teva is a letter or a word. God tells Noah to build a word but he got it all wrong. Noah doesn’t understand that a Teva, a word, can save his entire generation. Instead he builds a refuge for himself. While we are indebted to Noah, how can we not feel a little ambivalent about this?

What would have happened if the leaders of the world rose up in rebellion in 1938 and summarily condemned the Nazis for Krystalnacht? History might have turned out differently. Elie Wiesel has said on many occasions that, "...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..." Hitler understood this and counted on humankind’s tendency to remain indifferent and silent to the suffering of others. Commenting on his decision to enter Poland and to wipe out thousands of ‘men, women, and children,’ he said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Every generation has the opportunity to build a Teva, to build an ark for itself. We can save ourselves and turn our back on the world as Noah did, or we can use the power of human language to speak out against injustice and save the world. The opposite of love, after all, is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. When we are silent, when we choose not to raise our voices in protest, we condemn the earth to another mabul, to another flood of hatred and destruction.

I wonder whether we are allowing such a flood of hatred to take place right now by remaining. As thousands die of hunger and violence in Darfur, as women are raped and villages are burnt to the ground in Sudan, most of us remain silent. We argue that Darfur is not our problem, that this is an internal issue of an African nation, that if Moslems aren’t speak out against genocide against their own coreligionist why should we, that we can not solve all the problems of the world. There are a hundred, a thousand reasons that we can offer for our indifference. But at the end of the day let us remember all human life is interconnected, and that when we do not argue against injustice or hatred we are not merely bystanders – we are accomplices. The Torah tells us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbor – it does not ask us whether or not we like our neighbor or even if we share anything in common with him. The standards of right and wrong have nothing to do with our personal feelings or commitments – we have a responsibility to save the lives of another person.

The words of Leviticus resonate throughout our world today: Lo Ta’amod al Dam rei’echa, “Don’t stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” But who is our neighbor? How far does that responsibility go? Is our obligation only to save Jews in danger? Only fellow citizens? If we fail to speak out against mass killings in Sudan, is it similar to the world’s failure to save Jews during the Shoah?

It seems to me that in a world that grows smaller and smaller, we can not ignore the suffering of others. We have a responsibility to speak out, to cry out and to do whatever we can stop the suffering and the injustice that is all around us. America is our Teva, our ark. We feel safe here. Our borders are secure and our military is vigilant.

There are those who would like to keep everyone else out of our ark. But the world does not work that way. God calls on us to use our Teva – to use our words and our resources to save those who are suffering. Otherwise we are no better than Noah, using words only when we feel slighted by others.

There is no question that the situation in Sudan is complicated. But we need to put aside the politics and focus on the innocent women and children who are suffering today. We need to affirm words such as those of the anti-defamation league which has said that the time has come to say, “Enough, to the Sudanese government and their murderous thugs. Enough, to turning a blind eye when other human beings are in desperate need of help. And enough, to the hatred and inhumanity that fester into heinous acts of genocide. The time has come to speak out for the victims of Sudan. Because we know all too well the price of silence."

Let us remember that words can save and words can kill. And let us remember that our silence “enables the killers to kill and tormentors to torment….”

Shabbat Shalom