Everybody makes
jokes about Noah and his Ark. Bill Cosby has a whole routine on the subject
which, strangely enough, is uncannily faithful to our commentaries'
understanding. (Other than the one about Noah being the first stock market
manipulator in history - he floated a company while the whole world was in
liquidation!)
Our sages saw Noah in a far more serious light. Noah was a survivor.
Noah was saved from the deluge of destruction that engulfed his world and his
greatest contribution is that he set out to rebuild that world. We don't read
about him sitting down and crying or wringing his hands in despair, although
he probably had his moments. The critical thing the Torah records is that
after emerging from his floating bunker, Noah began the task of rebuilding a
shattered world from scratch. He got busy and picked up the pieces and, slowly
but surely, society was regenerated.
Only 70 years ago a great flood swept over our world. The Nazi plan was for a
Final Solution. Every Jew on earth was earmarked for destruction and the Nazis
were already planning their Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race. Not one Jew was
to survive. Therefore, even those of us born after the war are also survivors.
Even a Jewish child born this morning is a survivor - because according to
Hitler's plan, which tragically nearly succeeded, he or she was not meant to
live.
This means that each of us, like Noah, has a moral duty to rebuild the Jewish
world.
When I was young, every other man at the morning minyan bore a number on his
arm. They were once concentration camp inmates. The Germans had tattooed those
numbers onto their arms. Sadly, today, the ranks of those individuals have
been greatly diminished. Every time one of them would roll up his shirt sleeve
to put on Tefillin, the number was revealed. It seemed to me as if they
thought it was nothing special. But to me they were heroes. Not only for
surviving the hells of Auschwitz, Dachau or Mauthausen but for keeping their
faith intact, for still coming to shul, praying to G-d, wearing His Tefillin.
Today, I am older and more sensitive to the feelings of fathers and children,
of family and friends, and those men have risen in my estimation. They have
become superheroes. After all they went through, to be able to live normal
lives again, to marry or remarry, to bring children into this world, to carry
on life, businesses, relationships, are mind boggling achievements.
Say our sages, we all have that same responsibility - because we are all
survivors.
Who will bring Jewish children into the world if not you? Who will study Torah
if not you? Who will keep Shabbos? Who will keep the Jewish school afloat? Who
will rebuild the Jewish world if not you and I and each and every one of us?
In the smaller country communities of Europe there are still small bands of
dedicated Jews, who come together in someone's home to make a minyan, or who
serve as an ad hoc chevra kadisha to bury the Jewish dead according
to our tradition. These are not rabbis, chazonim or cheder teachers. They are
ordinary people. In the big city they would probably not be anywhere that
involved but in their small town they know that if they don't do it nobody
will.
We need that same conviction wherever we are.
Thank G-d for His mercies in that our world is, to a large degree, being
rebuilt. Miraculously, the great centers of Jewish learning are flourishing
today once more, but far too many of our brothers and sisters are still
outside the circle. Every one of us needs to participate.
We are all Noahs. Let us rebuild our world.