Gen. 6:9-11:32
Précis: The story of Noah (Hebrew: Noach) and the Flood appear in this parsha. Noah, called by God, builds the Ark and collects the animals. It rains for forty days and nights. Noah and his family are saved, and afterward leave the Ark, build an altar, and make sacrifices to God. God sets a rainbow as a promise not to destroy mankind again. Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, and becomes drunk. An odd incident with sexual overtones takes place with his sons. The story of the Tower of Babel is included in this parsha, and it ends with a genealogy of the ancient peoples of the Bible, concluding with Abram.
Gen. 6:14 “Make thee an ark of gopher wood.”
Of course, we look at the story of Noach and the Ark and say, “it’s a myth.” After all, other non-Israelite corollaries are legion, but as Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buckwald notes (My Jewishlearning.com, 11/1/16) a close reading of these other accounts reveal important differences.
The most well-known alternative story (which some critics say form the basis of the Noach story) is the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the world is flooded out of caprice, but the gods save Utnapashim because he is their favorite.
In Noach, we see a moral imperative instead of arbitrary favoritism. Our God decides to destroy the world because of its corruption, and Noach is saved not because he is a favorite, but because he is righteous. When the waters recede, Noach is reluctant to leave the Ark. Why? Buckwald cites Elie Wiesel, who calls Noach the “first survivor.” The entire world had been turned into a graveyard, and Noach couldn’t face it. When he does emerge and offers sacrifices to God, Noach’s first step is to plant, an act of hope. But Noach plants a vineyard, and cannot face the world without his drug of choice: alcohol.
Some Holocaust survivors adopted different strategies to deal with their experiences: some maintained silence, some denied God, some became alcoholic, and some were merely unable to continue living as the lone survivors of their families.
The story of the Flood is not a myth: it is a narrative we have repeated time and again. Its real focus is about the nature of survival when faced with overpowering loss. Noach, at bottom, was a failure whose familial relations could not withstand his own reaction to the horror he witnessed. But our Torah holds out hope, with the end of the parsha reciting the connection to Abram.
