How do we stay calm in a crazy world?

How would Hollywood portray the Great Flood? I picture them casting Noah as a haggard man with dark rings under his blue eyes, his gaunt face framed with a flowing white beard. I can see him staggering from cubicle to cubicle, vainly trying to feed lions and calm parakeets as his creaky vessel pitches violently in the turbulent waves of the deluge. The Ark is dim and stuffy, crammed full of a menagerie of baying, howling, screeching creatures. Noah’s sons carry bucketloads of refuse to the ship’s bowels, and Mrs Noah is perpetually seasick. Lightning flashes briefly illuminate the chaotic scene as resounding thunderclaps remind the voyagers that their tumultuous journey is still better than the fate suffered by those who never made it on board. 

I assume that most people have a similar mental image of life on board history’s most famous floating zoo. 

Jewish tradition paints an altogether different picture. 

G-d, as we know, commands Noah and co. to enter the Ark as the first raindrops fall. None of them was running to spend a year holed up with hundreds of animal species on a windowless vessel. We are unsurprised that Hashem has to tell them to get in. 

What is unexpected is that He has to tell them to leave. By the time his boat scraped the top of Mount Ararat, Noah must have had DEFCON 2 type cabin fever. His family would have been springloaded to fly out of there as soon as the door opened. 

That’s not what happened. Noah and his family stay put until G-d greenlights their exit. If their stay on the Ark was half as bad as we imagine it, they would have bolted as soon as the dove flew in with his olive leaf. Why linger until you get the Divine okay?

Perhaps Noah appreciated that he was on a Divine mission, and could not abort until Mission Control authorized it. That’s true. It’s also true that life on board the Ark was so tranquil, nobody wanted to leave. In our tradition, the year on the Ark was the closest thing to the Messianic Age anyone has experienced. Isaiah describes the time of Moshiach by saying the wolf will lie with the lamb, and lions will go vegetarian. That’s what happened on Noah’s ship for that year. Contrary to popular perception, life on the Ark was serene. There was no chaos or stress or fear of turning into an apex predator’s dinner. 

Imagine living in a peaceful cocoon while everything around you is in utter chaos? If we could master that, we’d survive life in the 21st Century. 

The Torah shares the Flood story to help us navigate our own overwhelm. No narrative recorded in the Torah is there for curiosity or dramatic effect. Torah means instruction, and every chapter in the Torah is intended as a guide for life. 

If you know how Noah survived the Flood, you understand how to make it through life’s tough times. When you unlock his secret of living Moshiach-level calm amidst a global maelstrom, you appreciate that you can enjoy peace of mind even when stress and anxiety swirl around you.

What was his secret? The Baal Shem Tov says it lies in Hashem’s “all aboard” instruction. Hashem tells Noah, “Come into the Ark”. In Hebrew, the Ark is a “Teiva”, which is the same Hebrew word for “word”. As He guided Noah to survival, Hashem dropped us a hint to staying sane in the craziness. “Get inside the word”. Judaism is built on two types of words- words of prayer and of study. We all say those words. We pray daily, and we study Torah regularly. Noah would not have made it riding on the Ark’s bow; he needed to shelter inside. We should immerse in the words of our prayers, not just say them. We should contemplate on the words of our Torah study, not just flip pages. The more we live within the holy words, the more tranquil our lives become, no matter tempest stirs up the world around us.