I am fascinated by life stories. Give me a good origin story Marvel Universe style and I am hooked. I am not sure whether it stems from a deep desire to truly know and understand people or the desire to connect with others in a genuine and meaningful way. פרשת נח, Parshat Noach, is full of deep and insightful storylines. Yet, I believe it is in the more mundane elements of this week’s Torah reading that we gain its deepest insights.
At the end of last week’s פרשה we are guided along a journey from the children of אדם, Adam, all the way to נח. From generation to generation, the Torah recounts the direct lineage of our Jewish story. We see this stylistic approach repeated at the end of this week’s פרשה where we connect the end of נח’s life to the beginning of אברהם, Abraham’s, life. I also wondered why so much space was filled with what could have just been a simple one line time jump. Time and again the phrase ״ויהי אחרי ימים״, and after many days, is used to fast forward a year or more in time. Would that not have been sufficient to connect these three stories together? Is there something bigger at play?
When I was in high school, the study of תנ״ך, bible, was not emphasized all that much (and certainly not as it is today). It was only when I went to yeshiva in Israel that I begun to get exposed to text based, in depth study of the books of the Torah and the vast lexicon that follows. As I am currently embarking on the completion of in depth תנ״ך learning, I have found myself connecting most deeply with elements of the text that ground us to a larger story, community and identity.
This past week, as our school was celebrating the Astros World Series birth (GOOOOO ‘Stros!), I walked into Lower School Hallel, the prayer we say on ראש חודש, the days commemorating a new month and new moon cycle. I listened as the students sang the words that דוד המלך, David the King, wrote in תהלים, Psalms. Many of the paragraphs connect with our relationship to Hashem and דוד’s journey from young pasture boy, to son-in-law of the king, to being on the run from his own father-in-law, שואל, Saul, and then finally being crowned king. I wondered if our students realized that they were repeating the very same words that depicted דוד’s personal prayers to Hashem, the challenges in his life and his journey as king.
This past Wednesday, our Kindergarten students had the pleasure of a visit from Barry Tobias, an RMBA parent, as he shared with them the work he and his team are doing on Artemis at NASA. What blew me away was the picture he shared with the class that Bob Hines, took on the Space Station for our students before his return trip. The picture showed a poster that read “Reach for the stars! Go RMBA Stars! From your friends on the ISS.” Yes, we have friends in space.
As I held these two moments in my mind, I came back to the two seemingly benign events in last week and this week’s פרשה. They do have value and are not just a space filler. They show the Jewish present that they are part of something bigger than themselves, we are part of a larger Jewish entity that spans space (literally) and time. We exist in that we stand on the shoulders of those that came before us and before them all the way till the time of אדם and אברהם. Their choices, their journeys and their descendants had a role beyond themselves. They were a piece of the chain that links our future to its present and all the way back to its past.
The stories of the book of בראשית, Bereishit, are not simply cute children’s fables. They are full of a plethora of identity building, community forging and meaning in our current day and time. If we attune ourselves to it, even the benign can sing the sweetest of melodies.