AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY

THE WATERS OF THE FLOOD CAME UPON THE EARTH. IN THE SIXTH

HUNDREDTH YEAR OF NOAH'S LIFE, IN THE SECOND MONTH, ON THE SEVENTEENTH DAY OF

THE MONTH, ON THAT DAY, ALL THE FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP BURST APART, AND THE

FLOODGATES OF THE SKY BROKE OPEN. THE RAIN FELL ON THE EARTH FORTY DAYS

AND FORTY NIGHTS.

(Bereishit 7:10-12)

BY THESE THINGS HE

CONTROLS PEOPLES; HE GIVES FOOD IN ABUNDANCE.

(Job 36:31)

The Quality of Rain is Determined by the Behavior of Human Society

The rain fell on the

earth – and [only] later it says the flood persisted (7:17).

When He brought down the rain, He brought it down out of compassion: if they

had repented, it would have been a beneficent rain, but when they did not, it

became a flood.

(Rashi 7:12)

By these things

– Water that came from the heavenly treasury where He made judgment against the

generation of the Flood – in those very days that very water also brought

abundant food. Two opposite effects were created through a single cause; once

He sent it to destroy the world, another time it became a rain more beneficent

than any natural precipitation.

(Metzudat David on Job 36:31)

They said: Even years

like those in which Elijah lived, when the rains fell on Sabbath eves – that is

a cursed omen. When, then, is [the blessing] I will grant your rains in their

season (VaYikra 26:4) fulfilled? (When

it rains on) Wednesday nights [i.e., the night which

constitutes the beginning of Wednesday]. It happened in the days of

Herod that it would rain at night, and in the morning the winds would blow and

the sun shined, so that the workers could go off to their toils knowing that

they acted for the sake of heaven.

I will grant your

rains in their season – On Sabbath nights. They said: It happened in the

days of Shimon ben Shetah that it would rain every Sabbath night, until wheat grains

grew to the size of kidneys, barley the size of olive pits, and lentils the

size of gold dinars. The sages collected and

saved some of them as evidence for later generations of sin's great influence.

(Yalkut Shimoni

B'Hukoti 671)

Man's Heart

is Always Inclined to Evil

God's

Post-Traumatic Reaction

Joop Meijers

Everything

seemed promising at first. The experiment succeeded beyond expectations. In

less than a week, the entire world had been created. True, there was no

committee of peers to judge the quality and significance of the results. Also

true, as the comics would later point out – the experiment was not written up

in a prestigious journal. None the less, the evaluation proclaimed by the

Experimenter Himself elicited universal assent; that which had been created was

very good. The experiment's crowning achievement was granted the epithet

the image of God. There were great hopes for man.

The

experiment's shortcomings quickly came to light: lies, trickery, murder, violence,

fornication, rape – these were but a few of its dangerous by products. As often

is the case, the immediate results fulfilled expectations, but the follow-up

study uncovered serious problems. When the experiment's results began working

against the goals set by the Experimenter, He decided to terminate the entire

project.

The

beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them. (Bereishit 6:5-7)

It

looks as if the experiment failed. Man – the image of God – ends up a

bitter disappointment.

As

someone faced with loss, God is saddened. It is not that man is naturally evil.

After all, God created him good and in the image of God – that is

to say, possessing absolute free will, just like God who does as He pleases. Man

was created very good – that is to say, with

the ability to be very good, and with, as a consequence, the ability to be very

bad.

God gives

him the choice. The experiment is designed to see how he will behave. If God

knew the results ahead of time, the experiment would be pointless. But the

creation turned against his Creator, and uses the plan devised by his mind

(which, according to Rabbi S. R. Hirsch refers to ideals=ideios=his

guiding concepts) in order to cause unadulterated evil.

Great

was man's wickedness on earth shapes the present, and as for the future,

man aspires to nothing but evil. The conclusions: humanity's

annihilation (sparing Noah, who pleased God). Noah saves man's honor. When,

after the flood, he brings a thanksgiving offering, a reversal occurs in how

the Divine experiment is understood:

The

every living being, as I have done… " (Bereishit 8:21)

This

reversal is most surprising and raises many questions. How could it be that the

reason given for annihilating humanity in chapter 6 – every plan devised by

his mind was nothing but evil all the time – becomes, in chapter 8 – the

devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth – the reason for not

destroying humanity again?

This

reversal was interpreted in various ways across the generations, but a large

number of explanations all share a salient common element: Despite the dangers

of anthropomorphism, most of the commentators dare to suggest that God really

did change His mind, or more precisely, His viewpoint. Would

it be too scanalous to propose that God was "in shock" from what had

happened? Only after He had personally experienced the holocaust that He

Himself had caused, seeing the destruction with His own "eyes," does

God gain the motivation and psychological readiness to think differently about

man – man whose nature did not and would not change. The commentators explain

that then, and only then, did God try to exonerate man. That change of

perspective allowed Him to swear not to destroy the world again. As the RaMBaN writes:

Since

He ascribes merit to men because by their very creation they have an evil

nature in their youthful days but not in their mature years. If so, …it is not proper to smite every living thing. The

reason for the prefix mem [which signifies from] in the word min'urav [from his youth] is to

indicate that the evil imagination is with men from the very beginning of their

youth, just as the Rabbis have said: "From the moment he awakes to go

forth from his mother's womb the evil impulse is placed in him" (Bereishit Rabbah 34:12). It is

possible that the verse is saying that it is from youth – meaning, on account

of youth – that the evil inclination is in man, for youth causes him to sin. (RaMBaN on Bereishit 8:21, Chavel translation)

God

is prepared to take responsibility for having created man "evil" – as

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, would clan many years after

RaMBaN – that evil is a part of human biology. Or: there is no permanent and

stable evil in humans – we are not born evil. Rather, evil is a function of "youth,"

of what happens to people at some stage or another of life. Evil is a product

of culture, education, and various learning processes (as the behaviorists would

claim). In either case, there remains room to judge people leniently.

If

God can change His mind (renounce the evil) then it must be that man,

who was created in God's image, can change his perspective as well. God started

out with a plan, He checked it through trial and error, and when He became

aware of the plan's destructive outcome, He was

willing to reconsider and changes His mind regarding an unchanging reality. And

when God changes His mind regarding reality, His relation to reality also

changes, and, as a result, reality itself changes!

God

changes His perspective, and so He calls upon us to be flexible and reconsider deep-rooted

assumptions of all kinds. Even if reality does not change, we can change our

perception of reality.

Even

if we agree that God changed his perception of the evil in man, one might still

ask how we are to understand God's explanation for promising not to destroy the

world again. How is a defense of man mounted on the basis of the devisings

of his mind being evil? What is being said here? That God will never

again curse the earth…, since the devisings of man's mind are evil from

his youth?

We

have seen that RaMBaN interprets the word ki (since) as relating

to the fact that man is evil – there is no point complaining about man, he just

does what comes naturally, biologically. Or, there is no point complaining

about him, since he has been trained from early youth to do evil.

It

is difficult to accept this deterministic doctrine. It contradicts the notion

that man is responsible for his deeds, and stripped of

responsibility and the freedom to choose between good and evil, man loses his

distinctiveness, his "divine image."

Rabbi S.R. Hirsch is conspicuous

for taking a unique approach to these issues. In contrast to the RaMBaN, Hirsch

views the fact that the devisings of man's mind are evil from his youth

as a cause for hope.

Before

the flood, God bases His decision to obliterate humanity on the fact that man's

heart was nothing but evil all the time. Now He is saying that man is evil

from his youth. Hirsch makes a connection between ne'urav

(his youth) and the verb lena'er, "to

cast off from oneself" (see, for instance,

Shoftim 16:2). Simlarly, ne'oret means "the

waste product of linen."

…young

human beings really want to grow out of themselves. Neither good nor bad

impressions cling very fast to them… they still regard self-control and

obedience to duty as an irksome yoke which their natures, striving up to

independence, "shake of." (Rabbi S.R.

Hirsch on Bereishit 8: 21, Levy translation)

Continuing

his lengthy comments, Hirsch explains that evil is only apparently evil. The

independence that youth gain in their youth at the developmental stage in which

they cast off the yoke of conformity to the adult world is the best guarantee that

they will stand firm in their independent judgment, that they will possess the "stiff-neckedness" that allows a person to withstand external

influences which are foreign to himself. Superficially, "youth," the

period of rebellion, looks bad. The truth is that the "evil" of

youth, the rebelliousness, and the casting off of the yoke, all ensure

perseverance and the ability to stand up for one's beliefs in later life.

As

in Rabbi Hirsch's day, we too see around us youths who appear to have rejected

our most sacred values. In his commentary, Rabbi Hirsch defends these youths:

what seems to be evil includes good within, good which will find its expression

in a later stage of life. One should not condemn youths for rejecting the

violence, corruption, and disregard for basic social values, which sometimes

characterize the adult world. Hope for the future lies precisely with those

youths who dare to reject the current order in order to forge new identities

for themselves. God was right this time, after the flood – and in contrast to

the past – when He decided to give the new generation a second chance, even

though the devisings of that generation's mind appear to be evil from its youth,

and perhaps precisely on account of that.

Joop Meijers is Head of the Department of Child-Clinical

Psychology at the Hebrew University and a member of Kehillat Yedidyah.

A Tower with its Head in the Heavens as a Project that Ignores Human

Beings

There were seven steps

to the tower from the east, and seven from the west. The bricks were brought up

on one side, and [the workers] descended on the other.

If a man fell and died,

no one paid attention to him, but if a single brick fell, they would sit down

and weep, saying, "Woe unto us! When will another one be brought up in its

stead?"

(Pirkei DeRabbi

Eliezer, 24)

Tribal Morality Contradicts Absolute Morality

If they complete the

tower, they will come to think that they must forcibly prevent people who

disagree with this opinion, and that involves murder, robbery which will completely

corrupt society. The fact that they are currently in agreement will not help. Thus

the Prophet Jeremiah cried out, how skillfully you plan your way to seek out

not catch them breaking in (2:33-4),

which means that they were unified in his day and would boast that they enjoyed

love and peace more than any other people, but the prophet disagreed, for on

their garments was found the blood of innocents – not because they had

committed any theft or such, but because they did not belong to their group. So

the groups came to murder, and there is no boast of peace in that, rather only

if they had been careful to do evil against those not in their group.

(Ha-Amek Davar and Harhev

Davar, Bereishit 11:6)

The Same Language, the Same Words

…when they said this