We just heard the story of the Tower of Babel. It is the final episode of the Noach Torah portion before we trace the descendants of Noah down to Abraham and Sarah and the Jewish people. The story that takes up the majority of the portion is the story of Noah and the ark. It is such a well know story because its messages speak to generation after generation and the image of the ark full of animals two by two is so easy to picture.
Thirty years ago Julian Barnes wrote his own interpretation of the story in his book History of the World in 10 ½ chapters. He wrote it from the point of view of a stowaway on the ark, who had to make sure that he and his partner are never discovered for the duration of the flood, or they would certainly have been thrown overboard. In the story, he accounts for what happened to the unicorn so that they didn’t make it to the end of the voyage, to how Noah managed to keep the cheetah away from the antelope. In the final line of the story you find out why the narrator had to be a stowaway on the gopher wood ark and not show his face at all during the time on the ark – he is a woodworm.
The Noah story in children’s books and toys is lovely – the jaunty pointed prow ark, the animals looking out the windows, a kindly Noah and matronly wife with his three sons Shem, Ham and Jafeth. But that is not the Noah story of the Torah.
The dimensions of the ark are not those of a ship but the dimensions of a free floating and vulnerable platform from which to watch the world’s destruction. Midrashim on the Noah story (Tanchma 5:6) show Noah warning the people among whom he lives that the destruction of the world is coming unless they change their ways for as long as it takes to grow a Cedar tree – over a hundred years. But they will not listen and will not change. This Midrash is the essential source of the account of the Noah story in the Muslim Koran, (Sura 71) which is why Noah or Nuh in Arabic is seen as a prophet in the Muslim tradition.
Why does the destruction of the flood come? It is made clear in the opening verses of the Torah portion this week (Genesis 6:11): It is because vatishatei ha’artetz lifnei ha’elohim v’timalei ha’aretz hamas – the whole world had become corrupted before God, and the world was full of hamas. The word hamas here is not etymologically related to the name of the Hamas terrorist movement, whose name is an acronym of the Arabic words for Islamic Resistance Movement, but it is a chilling coincidence. Hamas in Hebrew means violence and constant violence has been the hallmark of the blasphemously named Hamas in Arabic.
How enormous that violence has been. In the past ten years Hamas has fired 20,000 rockets into Israel. As Tal, one of the Australian Israelis who has been living with a family in our community since evacuating from Israel said at one of our sessions to support each other through this crisis earlier this week: “Every one of those rockets was intended to kill or maim Israelis at the point when it was fired from Gaza. It was only stopped by the Israeli technology of Iron dome. What country could ever be expected to refrain from putting a stop to this intended slaughter of its civilians?”
Despite the extreme violence and destruction wreaked by Hamas, despite the 1400 Israelis massacred just two Shabbatot ago, we still expect of Israel what God found in Noah. Noah is described as tzadik tamim hayah b’dorato , truly righteous in his generation. Though nations from Saudi Arabia to China kill their citizens and those of surrounding nations indiscriminately in pursuance of their military aims, we expect Israel to live by Jewish values, which sees peace and the preservation of life as our highest values.
It means that we do expect Israel as far as possible to spare civilian Gazans from suffering and death, and we are right to do so. Every one of us, as was made so clear at the beginning of the Torah last week is made in the image of God. When God sees the blood of our brother crying from the ground as did Abel’s when Cain murdered him it is irrelevant whose blood it is. But we must stop the Hamas violence. And do so in a way which is righteous in our generation. We must not fill the world with hamas, with violence. But do not ask Israelis to live under constant threat of rocket attack from a neighbouring country.
When the Ark comes to rest on dry land God shows a rainbow in the sky. It becomes a symbol that God will never destroy the world again. That though does not mean that humanity cannot. Only through always aiming for peace, always recognising the ultimate human value in every other person, whatever their faith or ethnicity can we stop the world from returning to being full of hamas, of violence.
The story right after the Noah’s ark narrative, which Henry read for us this morning, is a story of the danger of extreme human pride and hubris. When the people of the world come together in Babel ready to look after themselves, no longer in God’s care in the Garden of Eden, they do not build a society of care and compassion. They do not build a place of opportunity. Rather they build a tower as tall as they can make it. In Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 38) the purpose of this tower is to mount an attack on God in the heavens.
Gaza could have been a society of opportunity, an example of the peaceful and productive existence of Palestinian society from the time of the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. Instead the people elected Hamas who, unchallenged since that time, have built an infrastructure to attack Israel with the aim of the destruction of the Jewish state.
Water pipes have become rocket casings, underground tunnels have become fortresses, every person in Gaza has become a human shield for the terrorists. Just as Babel had to stop, so Hamas domination of Gaza has to stop. Cities are not built to become attack posts, they are built for people to live good lives within.
Right after Babel in the final part of the Torah portion this Shabbat we trace the beginning of our Jewish people. We take up the story of the line of Shem, Noah’s oldest son. Shem’s name it the root of why attacks on our people are known as anti – Semitism, attacks on the people spiritually descended from Shem.
His line leads to Abraham and Sarah the founders of the Jewish people whose names we hear for the first time in the final verses of the portion. We have travelled in Parashat Noach from a world filled with hamas to the potential for all of the values that make the Jewish people who we are as Abraham and Sarah find God.
But as well as finding the Jewish people in Abraham we have in him the spiritual roots of Islam and Christianity. Though the Tower of Babel story ends with the dispersion of the peoples of the world with their different languages and ethnicities, Abraham reunites such a large part of the world right up to the present day – Judaism, Islam and Christianity are the faiths of well over half the world’s population. Though it has happened again and again the key principle of Semitism should bring us all together.
As the children of Abraham and Sarah what does our brotherhood and sisterhood with the people of Israel demand that we do in this terrible situation? It tells us to stand together and to be, like Noah, their common ancestor, be righteous in our generation.
It tells us to support the people of Israel, to donate to causes that can help them in their time of need, to check in on friends, family and colleagues in Israel, we know that messages of support and care help more than we can know. It tells us not to hide or withdraw from the Jewish community, to be there and give our time to help Synagogue security, to continue to be part of Jewish community life, to show up. It tells us to understand Israel’s case and situation so that we can advocate for her when we hear falsehood. It tells us to be sure to lend our time, willingness and financial resources to ensure that am Yisrael chai, the Jewish people is fully living.
This Shabbat, at the end of Parashat Noach the Jewish people is born with Abraham and Sarah, and still lives today and in our future generations. This Shabbat we reject absolutely a world filled with Hamas.
