Noah and the Arks of History

The Bible and the later Jewish commentary contain many concepts, words, symbols that sing to each other across distance and time. A symbol, a phrase, an image from an earlier text may interact with a later one; the meaning of both is enhanced when they are allowed to resonate with each other in the heart and mind of the listener—who may in turn become a commentator or creator who produces yet another variation on the theme.

Noah’s ark (Genesis 6:9–9:17) is featured in this week’s Torah reading. Surrounded by a boundless chaos, there is a container filled with righteousness and sanctity. That container is not only holy in its time and place. It preserves a past that might otherwise perish, but it is also capable of radiance. Noah’s Ark preserves the family of a righteous man; it contains kosher animals that can not only sustain the passengers in body, but permit them to carry out the rituals of connection with the Creator.

The Tabernacle in the desert (Exodus 25:1–40:38)—a holy place, a container, where a sacred order is practiced and preserved. The surrounding land is like the surrounding water of Noah. Noah in his Ark, the Israelites in the desert, are both displaced from their familiar order, and uncertain as to their destiny beyond their immediate state of transience. In the Tabernacle, the holy order of rituals is preserved, enacted, taught to the next generation. A small priesthood is charged with receiving and passing on the sacred order even in a desert, even after generations of oppressors attempted to destroy the carriers of the covenant, even before the Israelites will return to the holy land.

The ark of the covenant (Exodus 25:10–22) is another container filled with a radiant content—the holy words of God’s revelation (Exodus 25:16).

In the sacred city of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:6–9)—the walled city, the redoubt of the Israelites in the face of invaders—is a container for the Temple (1 Kings 6:1–8:66), another place of preservation and generation.

In the tradition, we find other arks of preservation and radiance. The synagogue and homes of the dispersed Israelites. Jewish kehillot in the diasporas become containers of preservation and radiance even when surrounded by a sea of hostility.

On the doorpost of every home, there is a mezuzah (Deuteronomy 6:9), a little ark of the covenant. In putting on the tefillin boxes (Deuteronomy 6:8), we put on little containers with the essence of the revealed message. We are told to do so as part of remembrance and part of maintaining the chain of teaching from generation to generation.

Scholars have noted that the parable of Jonah (Jonah 1:1–4:11) in the Bible strongly resonates with the Noah story. Noah is able to save and preserve his family and kin, as ordered by God. He is criticized in the Tradition (e.g., Midrash Genesis Rabbah 30:10; Sanhedrin 108a) for not protesting to God to try to save his doomed neighbors, even if they were sinful. Jonah is a prophet—presumably a righteous man—who is ordered by God to do precisely that: save the wicked inhabitants of Nineveh by pronouncing their doom. Jonah runs away and attempts to embrace the oblivion of the deep and wide waters. It seems he anticipates God’s mercy for the Ninevites, and does not wish to be a pronouncer of an illusory doom. Or perhaps he considers the Ninevites unworthy of salvation. Jonah is spit up by the fish back on dry land, and carries out his mission.

Let me suggest another variation on the theme. Just as Noah was in a way the second Adam (Midrash Genesis Rabbah 26:3), Moses had a chance to be the second Noah. The theme is well known tradition in respect of Noah’s childhood; the bible uses the rare word for ark [tevah] to describe the basket in which baby Moses is placed to escape the murderous attention of the Pharaonic regime. But there is a less noticed Noah moment in Moses’ story, much later in Moses’ life. After an idolatrous rebellion (Exodus 32:1–6), God proposed to destroy the Israelites and replace them with the loyal Moses and his people the Levites (Exodus 32:10). Moses vigorously pleads to save the mainstream Israelites (Exodus 32:11–14), despite their lapses in faith, complaining, quarreling, and the fears they carried as former slaves—balanced by their courage in pursuing freedom. Noah dutifully saves himself and his kin, but does not plead for the rest; Jonah is ordered to preach to the wicked neighbors that they might be saved, and he runs away and plunges into the water before he effectively—if ambivalently—carries out his mission; Moses has the chance to be the leader of a new Israel—his own kin—after an apocalypse for his fellow Israelites. Moses, the most humble of men (Numbers 12:3), speaks up and saves them.

The variations on a theme show that history does not merely repeat. Progress is possible. Noah survived, and was assured by God that despite human wickedness, there would not be another global apocalypse (Genesis 9:11). Moses resists the temptation to become a second Noah, and pleads for salvation for his fellow Israelites. Jonah, the prophet in the Mosaic tradition, is chastened into serving as an instrument for the salvation of the wicked Ninevites.

In biblical times, God creates humankind (Genesis 1:26–27) and learns of its propensity for hubris and evil (Genesis 6:5). Humans, in turn, discover that God demands righteousness, anticipates their failures amid audacity and weakness, and requires the highest righteousness from His nation of priests (Exodus 19:6)—yet assures that at least a fragment, an ark’s worth, will survive and achieve redemption. This theme of preservation through arks extends beyond the biblical era into later historical periods.

In ancient times, the Jewish community forcibly deported to Babylon survived in their own urban ark, maintained its traditions, and eventually returned to re-establish the Temple and to incorporate the sacred writings into the Tradition. Relics of the exile community in Babylon can be found today in the Bible Lands Museum in Israel; but all around the museum are descendants of the people from the Babylonian exile and the Tradition they helped to create. Echoing these ancient survivals, similar ark-like communities have emerged in more recent centuries, adapting the motif to new challenges of exile and persecution.

Ark communities landed all over the world. The shtetls portrayed in Eastern Europe were among the most pious and cohesive Jewish communities that ever existed. Their annihilation during the Shoah disproved any Deuteronomic theory that the Jewish people will thrive if they maintain the covenant. But fragments from the Shoah survived and returned to Israel, where some created little ark communities like kibbutzim in the desert and others joined a more mixed Israeli society – the state that survived and remains as the primary Ark of the Jewish people. The Declaration of Independence proclaims that the foundations of the state would include not only preservation of the Jewish tradition, but a commitment to the enlightenment freedoms – free speech, equal civil rights, legal equality – for all. This modern embodiment of the ark continues in diaspora settings as well, including my own experience.

I have lived most of my life in Winnipeg Manitoba. It was an ark originally for Jews fleeing persecution and poverty in Europe. For a while, it was known as the “Jerusalem of the North”. It had a thriving Jewish life, synagogues of all kinds, Jewish schools. There is a joke that Winnipeg, with its isolation and Siberian climate, is a good place to be from. Many talented Jews grew up in Winnipeg and ventured forth to become brilliant scientists (like Louis Slotin), business leaders, and philanthropists.

I have lived most of my life in the Winnipeg Ark. I am not sure whether arks like these will survive in the decades ahead. The waters around many diaspora Jewish communities have been contaminated with a Jew-hatred that was almost unimaginable twenty years ago. Among the worst places are institutions to which Jewish communities have contributed enormously – like museums and cultural institutions. Yet, amid these uncertainties in the diaspora, the central Ark of Israel endures as a beacon of continuity and innovation.

The Ark of Israel is as necessary as ever for the Jews of this world – one in five hundred of the global population – to have any chance of continuing in the centuries ahead. It is embattled. It has all the expected internal rivalries and dysfunctions you would expect of any human population, but there is also in Israel an extraordinary spirit. Its people have contributed far beyond their numbers to contemporary arts and sciences. It is the one democracy in the Middle East. Where the Jewish populations of the surrounding Islamic world have almost disappeared, and those in Europe perhaps on their way to extinction, there are national minorities in Israel that form a fifth of its population, and who are in many – albeit not all – ways progressing and integrating into the larger life of the state. Problems there are. In my little Ark on the Canadian prairies, while it might overall be on a downward arc, there are not only Jewish emigres from South America but also Israeli Jews seeking a more tranquil life. In the meantime, the Ark of Israel continues to stay afloat despite the waves below, storms around, driving rains from above – and it radiates out to the world not only extraordinary people, but ideas that the wider world ought to cherish along with its creators.