Floods and Arks: Parashat Noach, Kol Shalom, 2025

Among the ancient civilizations of the Near East, the story of a great flood appears more than once. One of the best - known versions is the Epic of Gilgamesh, written on clay tablets, centuries before the Torah was given. There, too, we find a corrupt humanity, a god who decides to destroy it through a flood, and a man — Utnapishtim — who receives a divine warning and builds a vessel to save his family and some animals.

The similarities are evident: water as both punishment and purification, the salvation of a righteous man, the sending of birds to see whether the waters had receded. But it is in the differences that the Torah reveals its unique voice.

In Gilgamesh, the flood stems from the capricious wrath of the gods — deities who become angry, contradict themselves, and then regret their own decisions.

In the Torah, by contrast, the flood is born not of anger, but of divine sorrow. “And God regretted having made man on earth… and it grieved Him in His heart” (Genesis 6:6).

God does not destroy out of vengeance, but because the world had become so corrupt that it was no longer recognizable. The waters do not only punish; they also cleanse, making possible a new beginning.

Another essential difference: while Utnapishtim is granted immortality and disappears from the world, Noach must return to it. His task is not to escape from humanity but to rebuild it. The Torah teaches that spirituality is not about fleeing from chaos, but about learning to create life after the storm.

This idea comes once and again with Abraham, Moses, and almost all the Prophets.

The Midrash asks: Why was Noach saved? Some say by his own merit, others by divine mercy.

Rashi , following the Midrash, comments that Noach was “tzadik bedorotav ” — righteous in his generation — suggesting that perhaps he might not have been perceived as righteous in another time.

Ramban, however, emphasizes his quiet obedience: “Noach did all that God commanded him.”

The Zohar reads the ark as a symbol of the human soul — a closed vessel protecting the spark of life amid the waters of chaos.

Ibn Ezra notes that the covenant of the rainbow is not merely a sign of beauty but an ethical commitment: the promise that divine power will restrain itself, that the world will not again be destroyed as long as humankind upholds its part of the covenant.

The Torah, then, does not tell a story of destruction, but of relationship.

God establishes a covenant with all creation, not only with Israel, and this becomes one of the first expressions of biblical universalism . The Torah begins with Adam, not with Abraham. We are first human, then Jews.

As the sages teach, the rainbow reminds us that even after judgment, the world must endure , with all human diversity.

At the heart of the story lies an ethical call: if violence once filled the earth, the task of humankind is to fill it again with justice and compassion. The flood is not an ending, but an opportunity to begin anew — with awareness.

As a curious detail, the Hebrew word for “violence” in this story is Hamas.

Every generation faces its own flood — not always made of water, but of confusion, indifference, and fear. We live surrounded by “noise”: fake news, information without soul, images without depth, voices without compassion — all threatening to drown us.

Our challenge is much like Noach’s: to build an ark. A space of values, sensitivity, and faith that allows us to withstand the current. Not a refuge to escape the world, but a workshop in which to prepare ourselves to rebuild it.

Perhaps today’s ark is a family that protects its dialogue and promotes deep and honest conversations . Or a community that dares to listen to one another. Or a heart that refuses to grow hard in the face of daily violence. Noach was not a spectacular hero; he was a man who knew how to listen, to wait, and to begin again.

The flood ended, but the covenant remains. Each time we see a rainbow — in the sky or in a human act of reconciliation — we are reminded that the world endures not because it is perfect, but because of the memory of the commitment.

And perhaps that is the deepest message of this parashah: that after every storm, human beings have both the possibility — and the responsibility — to rebuild the world with a little more humility, and a little more light.