Parashat Noach - Judaism and challenging authority
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Kabbalah: just like yoyos, tazos, slinkies and hypercolour t-shirts it is now having its time in the sun. It's so hot right now, if you are not on board, you are uncool. FACT!
(I hope sarcasm can be read in an e-mail)
So because of my desperate and wide-ranging efforts to fit in, including new phrases in my repertoire such as "safe" - here is some Kabbalah to feed the hungry masses.
IN BLUE, A SMALL TEXT ADVENTURE: NOAH AND HIS CRAPPINESS
IN RED, HOW THIS WEEKS PARASHA RELATES TO US
IN PURPLE, NOAH GETS DRUNK AND LOSES HIS BOLLOCKS, OR GETS ONE IN HIM (no joke, I can't make this stuff up)
this week's parasha e-mail is mainly based on an article at:
http://www.aish.com/torahportion/moray/Was_Noah_a_Good_and_Just_Man$.asp and other assorted readings by googling "noach" and "kabbalah noach"
God and Noah having a chat after the flood, according to the Zohar (the main Kabbalah book):
What did God answer Noah when he left the Ark and saw the world destroyed? He [Noah] began to cry before God and he said, "Master of the universe, You are called compassionate. You should have been compassionate for Your creation." God responded and said, "You are a foolish shepherd. Now you say this?! Why did you not say this at the time I told you that I saw that you were righteous among your generation, or afterward when I said that I will bring a flood upon the people, or afterward when I said to build an ark? I constantly delayed and I said, 'When is he [Noah] going to ask for compassion for the world?' ... And now that the world is destroyed, you open your mouth, to cry in front of me, and to ask for supplication?" [Zohar Hashmatot, Bereishit 254b]
Noach in Hebrew means comfortable, and Noah is all about comfort. He accepts the decision to destroy the world with ease, no questions, no problems.
AT OTHER POINTS IN THE JEWISH STORY:
Avraham hears god saying he is going to destroy the people of Soddom and Gomorrah: He prays, questions gods decisions and tries to find a way to save the good people
Moses hears that god wants to destroy the Jews for the whole golden calf debacle - he tries to save them and even offers himself to be destroyed along with them
Everybody knows the tower of babel story...
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech ... And they said one to another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven ... And the Lord said, "Behold, the people are one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have schemed to do." [Genesis 11:1-6]
The Zohar tells us that Noah was around at that time
We find that Noah lived ten years after the dispersion following the destruction of the Tower of Babel; Abraham was forty eight years old at the dispersion.[Seder Olam, Ch. 1]
Noah had a second chance according to that source. He didn't speak up for his generation, but when his kinds and grandkids were around at the tower building time, he still chose not to speak up.
What do i take from all of this?
There is a message here. If you don't stand up for what is right, you may come out of it fine, but look what happens to everyone else. Ever heard that thing: In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up. -Martin Niemoller
Anyway, that is the message I want to leave you with this shabbat. 'It' may not affect us, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it. Social conscience, social responsibility, caring about others, challenging authority when you know you are in the right...Blah blah blah - you get what I'm saying, don't want to sound too preachy - I just like the way it comes out of the texts above.
He [Hillel] used to say, If I am not for me, who is for me, if I am not for myself, what am I, and if not now, when?
- Pirkei Avot 1:14
It is not upon you to complete the task, but you are not free to desist from it.
- Pirkei Avot 2:21
I think this is a great message to tie in with the cheshvan social action stuff that Steeno and Yan are doing.
And now, following on from lilith the sucubus, the continuing series of ancient weird stuff...
NOAH - AND THE PERILS OF BINGE DRINKING
almost completely unrelated, but who would have thought?
If you don't want to read on, Noah gets drunk, then his son either castrates him or takes him up the bum, depending on who you ask.
copied and pasted directly from http://www.aish.com/torahportion/moray/Was_Noah_a_Good_and_Just_Man$.asp
Noah's spiritual stumbling continues after he leaves the ark. He and his family are the only human beings alive -- all around him are the remains of a holocaust. He is a survivor. How does Noah cope with all this? He plants a vineyard and then gets drunk on the wine. Noah cannot cope with the enormity of the destruction that he has witnessed. Perhaps he senses his own failure -- that his passivity led to the destruction of an entire civilization.
He [Noah] drank of the wine and became intoxicated; and he unconvered himself inside his tent. And [Noah's son] Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. And Shem and Yafet took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. [Genesis 9:21-24]
The Sages of the Talmud have two opinions about what actually transpired: "Rab and Samuel differ, one maintaining that Ham castrated him, while the other that he sodomized him." [Sanhedrin 70a]
SHABBAT SHALOM
BENJI
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