Messianic Failures: D’var Torah for Parashat Noach
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
October 23, 2020
I’ve heard it said that we can hope for the Messiah to arrive—only not in our day and time!
Not that we couldn’t use a messiah today! Between the plagues of fire and smoke, a tragic and devastating pandemic, disastrous climate change, faltering economy, and social and political mayhem, how wonderful it would be if someone with supernatural powers would show up and either wave a magic wand or chant a magic incantation, and somehow just make it all go away!
Alas, the possibility of this happening is quite remote, and frankly, I for one am glad for it.
Messiahs have a bad track record. They appear at the worst possible times, and somehow only succeed in making things worse.
Since the beginning of time, we human beings have longed for relief from the exhausting burdens and demands placed on us. The first messianic figure to make an appearance in our texts is Noah. Arriving 10 generations after Adam and Eve, there were great expectations when Noah was born. Even his name (Noach in Hebrew) comes from the root N.Ch, meaning rest or respite. At the end of chapter 5 in the book of Genesis, we are told how he got his name: “This one will comfort us [y’nachameinu] concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed” (Genesis 5:20, NKJV).
Of course it’s all God’s fault. Since the Garden of Eden, and still to this day, we don’t like accepting blame for our actions; rather, we would rather to point to others. It all started with Eve, who blamed the snake; Then Adam blamed Eve, and it all went downhill from there.
Little did humanity remember that the earth was cursed because of Adam and Eve’s failure to obey God in the first place. Actions carry consequences, and in this case, the curse was that from then on, we would have to toil for our bread, that the earth would no longer just magically produce it for us.
Soon, whether through frustration or greed, “The earth was filled with violence.” Idolatry, ignorance and superstition blinded people to any sense of what was appropriate, moral or good. That’s when God repented of Creation as a whole, and decided to start all over.
Only Noah was to be spared—and along with him and his family, a tiny smattering of other creatures.
Amazingly, throughout the story, Noah was silent. He was silent when as he witnessed the violence around him; silent when God told him to build an ark the size of a football field; silent when God told him to load the ark with pairs of animals; silent when told to leave behind other living creatures—animals, men, women, infants, all doomed to drown in the raging flood.
Ironically, by following God’s orders to the most minute detail, Noah failed to fulfill the messianic expectations placed upon him.
Only later, once the waters began to rise, when he heard the shrieks of horror, the banging on the wooden hull of his lifeboat, the crying, the begging—only then did he begin to understand the enormity of his failure.
One can only imagine the toils he was subjected to for the next few months—feeding the animals, keeping them healthy, cleaning up after them. Perhaps that was when remorse began to flood his heart, when he began to understand that his silence in the face of God’s anger amounted to consent, that by his silence he became an accomplice to the suffering and destruction.
A simple action illustrates how guilt had transformed Noah: when, after releasing the dove with his prayers and hopes, Noah looks for it, desperate for a sign of dry land; when he finally spies the bird, it was struggling against the wind and rain, with its last bit of strength aiming for the tiny window that beckoned to safety and warmth. Filled with pity, Noah extends his hand, reaches for the exhausted dove, and then, shielding its tiny, shaking body, he takes it inside the ark with him. Only now, at this late point in his life, does Noah show kindness; only now does he offer comfort and rest to one small creature—a tiny fraction of what had been expected of him when he was young.
Noah was the first but by far not the last. Many other messianic figures appear throughout Jewish history, only to disappear in flames and disgrace: There were those who surfaced when the Roman empire was disintegrating, dragging into the abyss the kingdom of Judea and its capital, Jerusalem; Bar Kochba, the Judean general whom Rabbi Akiva declared the Messiah but who was killed by the Romans in the year 135 CE, taking with him the last hope for a liberated Judea. Some 1500 years later, a man who named himself—or was named by others—Shabbetai Tzvi, claiming to be the long-hoped-for Messiah, caused spiritual ecstasy and religious frenzy throughout Europe. But when he was finally taken captive in Turkey and offered the choice between death or conversion to Islam, he chose the latter, leaving hundreds of thousands of his followers homeless and devoid of any faith or hope.
The problem with Messiahs is that they leave behind them a trail of tragedy and destruction.
This is exactly how the story of Noah ends too. Haunted by guilt and what today we would call PTSD, Noah takes to drinking. One night, along in his tent, something terrible happens. Noah’s youngest son, Ham, walks in and does something so unspeakable that even the Torah refuses to give it a name. Upon awakening and seeing what was done to him, Noah utters the only words he speaks throughout the portion, cursing Ham and setting him slave to his brothers.
The portion begins with a curse, and ends with a curse. Yet lessons are learned. Noah understands that blind obedience is worthless to anyone. God learns that, left to our own devices, without correction or supervision, humanity is doomed to repeat its mistakes over and over. From that point on, God will give guidance and offer direction.
With a little bit of luck and understanding, we can all learn from our mistakes. What I and many others learned from these experiences is that messiahs are no more than just so much wishful thinking. Redemption won’t come through one individual, or even a hundred. Only through the work of our all-too-human hands, through the compassion in our hearts, and through words of encouragement and support, can we hope to make the world better. It’s not up to God to lift the curse, nor up to any angel, messiah or messenger. It’s all up to us.
© 2020 by Boaz D. Heilman
