Gen. 6:9-11:32
Précis: The story of Noah (Hebrew: Noach) and the Flood appear in this parasha. 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.
Gen. 6:13 “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with chaos. When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth, God said to Noah, ‘I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth.’”
What were the sins of humanity which justified its destruction? Ibn Ezra defines "chaos" (in Hebrew, “hamas”) as thievery, oppression and rape. Cassuto suggests “hamas” is cold-blooded, unscrupulous actions motivated by greed and hate. Both commentators agree: hamas merited all of humanity’s destruction except for Noah and his family.
But was everyone else guilty? This bothered our Sages. One response, however, has meaning today. All of humanity was to be destroyed because no one had opposed the hamas in which they dwelt. From this, we learn that we become complicit in evil when we fail to oppose it.
Israel is at war with the almost ironically named terror organization Hamas, and all war inevitably results in harm to the innocent. We regret the loss of life necessitated to eliminate Hamas, but we recognize that the failure of Israel to do so endangers not only Israel, but all of the peoples of the Middle East.
