Noach: Why Won't You Save Your Life?
What we can learn from Noah's anguish
Heshy (my husband) and I have a friend whom we call the COVID Whisperer. A doctor who has been treating COVID19 patients throughout the pandemic, he recently sent us the Seattle Times article “Doctor who has lost more than 100 patients to COVID says some deny virus from their death beds: ‘I don’t believe you.’” In this piece, Dr. Matthew Trunsky shares what patients have told him during his last two days of work:
In my last two days of work I have heard the following:
1) “you’re wrong doctor. I’m too healthy. I don’t have Covid. I’m fine.” (In reality, he’s fighting for his life).
2) “I demand ivermectin or you’ll hear from my lawyer.”
3) “I demand hydroxychloroquine.”
4) “I don’t care what you say. I’m going to leave.”
(Response: “That is your prerogative but you’ll be dead before you get to your car.”)
5) “I’d rather die then take the vaccine.” [You may get your wish.]
6) “I didn’t take it because my son told me it would kill me.” (The patient is currently fighting for his life — in fact it was the son‘s advice that may kill him.)
7. “I want a different doctor. I don’t believe you.”
8. From a woman whose husband died of Covid, “I would never feel comfortable recommending the vaccine for family and friends.”
The toll, even trauma, this is taking on the medical community is immeasurable. Exhausted, depleted and disheartened, the question many of them are asking themselves as they continue to work with recalcitrant patients is “Why won’t you save your life?”
This is not a new query. For centuries, it has shown up across literature, history and religion. (A recent example of this featured Jon Snow of ‘Game of Thrones,’ disillusioned and disheartened, asking Tyrion Lannister at minute 1:42 “How do I convince people who don’t know me that an enemy they don’t believe in is coming to kill them all?” Tyrion replies, “People’s minds aren’t made for problems that large.”)
In this week’s parsha, we encounter a man named Noah. In Genesis 6:9 we are told, “Noah was in his generation a man righteous and whole-hearted; Noah walked with God.”
Our rabbis pick up on the peculiar wording- “in his generation.” There are two possibilities as to how to read this statement:
IN HIS GENERATIONS — Some of our Rabbis explain it (this word) to his credit: he was righteous even in his generation; it follows that had he lived in a generation of righteous people he would have been even more righteous owing to the force of good example. Others, however, explain it to his discredit: in comparison with his own generation he was accounted righteous, but had he lived in the generation of Abraham he would have been accounted as of no importance (cf. Sanhedrin 108a).
Noah is given a singular responsibility - to build an ark of gopher wood that will allow him, his wife, his sons, their wives and the animals to survive to populate a new world (Genesis 6: 14-21). He is told that God will bring a flood that will signal the end “of all flesh” with these exceptions.
And Noah sets to work. It is described as follows:
Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he. (Genesis 6:22)
This was a massive undertaking. Recall that Noah had to construct this ark by hand, without drills or modern machines, and thus it had to take years. Why did God command him to do this? Surely there would have been easier ways to save Noah, his family and the animals. God is all powerful! If He wanted, He could simply will everyone in the world to turn into mist (think Thanos’ snap of disintegration) except for the survivors.
Our rabbis tell us there was a reason.
MAKE THEE AN ARK — There are numerous ways by which God could have saved Noah; why, then, did he burden him with this construction of the Ark? So that the men of the generation of the Flood might see him employed on it for 120 years and might ask him, “What do you need this for”? and so that he might answer them, “The Holy One, blessed be He, is about to bring a flood upon the world” — perhaps they might repent (Sanhedrin 108b).
Noah lives as successor to Cain, who asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Now there is an opportunity for Noah to do better than Cain- indeed, to be his brother’s keeper, to actively tell them about the calamity that is coming, the misfortunate that will destroy them all, the doom that will reveal itself in time.
But Noah is not successful. And this begs the question- why isn’t he successful?
The Alshich sees a hint to this in God’s phrasing to Noah. God tells him “make for yourself an Ark.” For yourself- and for no one else. You, Noah, have chosen to live a spiritually isolated existence. You do not partake in evil, but neither do you influence your companions to choose what is right and what is good. You focus on yourself, and that is why the Ark is only for you and your family.
The Zohar takes this further. As Rabbi Ari Kahn writes,
The Zohar, the chief work of the Kabbalah, recounts a conversation between Noah and God which took place after the flood:
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]
God is telling Noah that as the leader of his generation, he had responsibilities toward his followers. He was commanded to build the ark, yet he did not save even one person. His leadership may be compared to a shepherd who sees his flock straying from the proper path, wandering in the proximity of dangerous wolves, and concludes that the sheep deserve to be eaten because they have strayed. This is why God called him a "foolish shepherd."
The Zohar continues:
Rabbi Yochanan said, "Come and see the difference between the righteous among the Jews after Noah, and Noah. Noah did not defend his generation, nor did he pray for them, as Abraham did. When God told Abraham that [he would destroy] Sodom and Gomorrah ... immediately Abraham began to pray in front of God until he asked of God if ten good people were found, would God forgive the entire city because of them ... Some time later, Moses came, and when God said to him, "They have turned aside quickly from the way in which I commanded them," immediately, Moshe stood and prayed ... It is said that Moses was willing to give his soul for the people in both this world and the next ... "[Zohar Hashmatot, Bereishit 254b]
According to this approach, the reason Noah is not successful at changing the fate of his generation is because he did not try. He focused on saving himself rather than concerning himself with the welfare of others. Unlike Abraham, he did not supplicate God and ask that God save the world in the merit of himself and his family. And thus, if you will permit me to edit the lyrics, “there was a man/ a lonely man/ who lost the world/ through his indifference.”
But there is another version of Noah. This is the Noah who tries- hard.
The building of the ark, then, served to warn the generation to better its ways. Noach was asked by his contemporaries, “Why are you busy building an ark?”
“This is the commandment of the Master of the Universe,” Noach replied, “since He intends to bring a Deluge upon the world!”
The people answered with a curse, “If there will ever be a deluge, let it come upon your own house!”
-The Midrash Says: The Book of Beraishis, page 90
I’m reminded of a scene in the 1994 version of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Maurice, Belle’s father, breathlessly enters the tavern, telling Gaston and all the townspeople about the Beast that has Belle in its clutches. For his pains, he is mocked, jeered at, and then tossed out into the snow. “Crazy old Maurice,” Gaston’s goons say as they wash their hands of him, “he’s always good for a laugh.”
The people who lived during the generation of the Flood were not impressed by Noah’s warnings.
People did not fear danger because they felt secure in the knowledge of their colossal physical strength. “We are giants,” they boasted, “and we control the universe. Should He bring water from above, it will not reach further than our necks since we are so tall. Should He bring water from below, we will step on the wells with our heels to hold them back.”
-The Midrash Says: The Book of Beraishis, page 90
In Sages and Dreamers, and in a lecture at the 92nd Street Y, Holocaust survivor and prolific author Elie Wiesel narrates what it was like to be Noah. (Since I don’t have the book with me, below is my transcription from the audio.)
God decided to annihilate the world because it had gone beyond redemption. Its corruption was total. Sodom, later, might have produced ten just men, but didn’t. The same is true of the world Noah knew. Noah is the exception just as Abraham would be the exception of Sodom. Noah’s world, then, was like Sodom. Only larger than a city. Larger than a country. Larger than a nation. Imagine Sodom conquering the entire world and you might conceive of society in the time of Noah. The difference: Sodom was punished by fire, Noah’s world by water. Furthermore, Abraham was not a citizen of Sodom, whereas Noah was of his land and his time.
Wiesel deftly paints a portrait of an Abraham who had the easier task. He was able to intercede for Sodom from a distance. Noah, meanwhile, lived within the very community that would ultimately be destroyed. As Wiesel continues, “Jonah’s horror vision would remain pure hallucination. Not so Noah’s. His was about to turn into reality. Read the story and you will be struck by its realism- dates, figures, measurements.”
I here link the Johns Hopkins COVID19 dashboard, with its dates, figures and measurements, and suggest that we are living in a time that has parallels to Noah’s.
In this version of the story, Noah wants to save the lives of his fellow men. But he fails. And that failure will haunt him for the rest of his life; even when he begins again, even when he chooses gratitude, he will never be able to leave behind that failure.
Watch the devastation these nurses feel as they lose COVID19 patients, and you will have an inkling of what Noah felt as a survivor.
Wiesel frankly admits he did not like Noah. He examines him, especially his disappointing end, which involves drunkenness and debauchery (see this story in the Midrash in which he acts as a business associate to Satan). But God had a reason for choosing Noah. What was it?
Wiesel suggests it was not who Noah was before the Deluge or after the Deluge that matters most. It was who he was during the Deluge. In Wiesel’s words,
To raise the question in a more brutal form, even if Noah was not a just man before the Deluge, is it possible that he did not become one afterwards? How could he have not become one afterwards? He had to repent and study and look for meaning somewhere. Why didn’t he resort to other things, to building, to study, to learn poetry, study, philosophy? Disappointing Noah. As a character, he leaves much to be desired. he never acts, he only reacts. He never aspires to grandeur; he only wallows in routine. The average citizen he was before the Deluge- he remains just that after the Deluge. To paraphrase John ____ (Posacht?), he took great events and reduced them to small circumstances.
But then why the uniqueness about him? Well, I will tell you. Let’s not be too harsh on him. If Scripture took Noah and God chose Noah, they had a reason. Let’s find a reason. I think the reason has to do not with before or after but during. We have discussed what he did before, we have discussed what he did after and we forgot conveniently to remember what he did during the Catastrophe. During the Catastrophe, during the Flood, he was superb. Tenacious, obstinate, stubborn, Noah and his sons are alone when they are working on the Ark, alone against those in power, alone against power. Mocked by the inhabitants, they nevertheless continued their work. Perhaps that was the major sin of his contemporaries- they humiliated Noah by laughing at him. That they were skeptics was their business. Still they had no right to ridicule him. For the Midrash insists on the fact that Noah worked on his project in public on God’s orders so as to attract attention and to incite all neighbors and passers-by to repentance. The preparations lasted 50 years according to one Talmudic source to give the sinners plenty of time to mend their ways. 50 years of mockery, that’s a long time, you must admit. To be the target and the victim of a moral majority, to be attacked and vilified day after day by people who think they know everything. Well, that’s not easy. Did Noah respond? Did he show anger, bitterness, regret perhaps? No. He kept quiet. He made neither speeches nor demands. Made no excuses and claimed no special privileges. All he wanted was to serve as a living example. It was enough to see him to know that he had heard God’s warnings as others must have, only he decided to act and be ready. What was special about him was that he turned awareness into action.
But even though Noah did all this, he is, ultimately, a survivor. And as a survivor, he experiences unbearable anguish, something which Wiesel understands as a Holocaust survivor. Wiesel paints a portrait of Noah, still alive when humanity decides to embark on yet another problematic conceit, the building of the Tower of Babel. As Wiesel puts it, “He sees and hears it all. And he knows how it will end. Does he warn his contemporaries not to repeat past mistakes? If so, no one listens. No one even noticed. He speaks, and his words are lost to indifference. Poor Noah. Having escaped cosmic tragedy, he is not happy- how could he be? Haunted by his memories, he escapes into sleep. He drinks and sleeps.”
Noah realizes that the covenant binds God. God will not destroy the world again. But humanity can do it for Him.
The question at the heart of Noah’s pain is the one that our doctors, nurses and healthcare workers are asking every day right now. “Why won’t you save your life? There is a vaccine- a vaccine that will save your life- all you need to do is take it! That is the only thing! The only thing you need to do!”
And still people won’t.
What then do we do? It would be easy to become indifferent. To say, “They brought it on themselves- those foolish people who choose not to listen to the doctors, to medical advice.” Or if we were to frame a similar viewpoint within the context of Torah, we could argue people reap the wages of sin, “those people who deny God, deny His commandments.”
But that is not helpful. It will solve nothing. So instead we must learn how to get up and try, and try again. We must speak to people from a place of empathy, where we take their concerns, no matter how strange, odd or upsetting they seem, seriously. As Daryl Davis well knows, it is the only way to persuade people to believe differently.
To love your brother in your heart means to fight for your brother. Because you are your brother’s keeper and his death should matter to you. Even if it was a death he chose, a death that came about through mistaken beliefs, hubris, arrogance, foolishness, vanity. A preventable death.
To love your brother means you love him even when he chooses to act against his own interests.
Resist the urge to alienate yourself from his plight, to seek refuge in your own moral superiority. Instead, act like our doctor friend, the COVID Whisperer. What, you may ask, makes him the COVID Whisperer?
He spends every day treating people who are critically ill, people who do not believe in COVID19 and who are resistant to the lifesaving treatment he wants to give them. So he has learned to operate within their reality. Unable to persuade them to believe as he does, he instead attempts to get at the root of the problem. He speaks to them as an equal, nonjudgmental, kind (see: nonviolent communication). Why is the person resistant? What are they afraid of? And how can he best address their needs? And so, slowly, he coaxes, wheedles, persuades and negotiates with them…in order to save their lives.
He should not have to do this. But that is not the point.
He swore an oath. He has a duty. And he will fulfill it in the best way he can, as long as he can.