Dear Friends,
I’m really into this verse from Parshat Noach right now. It comes up after the flood, after Noah and his family get off the ark, but before they start the rebuilding process. They make an offering to God, and that’s when we get the first covenant in the Torah. It says,
“Adonai smelled the pleasing odor, and Adonai resolved: ‘Never again will I doom the earth because of humankind, since the devisings of the human mind are evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done.
So long as the earth endures,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
Day and night
Shall not cease.’”
(Genesis 8:21-22)
Here’s why I love these verses:
- There’s something about the lines in the Torah where it talks about pleasing odors to God that really gets me. It’s funny, because I don’t love using gendered pronouns for God, for example, because I don’t believe for a second that God has a [single?] gender. It feels super ancient, earthy, and tactile, which I love, but implicit within it seems like a nod to the notion that God doesn’t actually have a body like a human. It’s not like they’re *feeding* or *nourishing* God. It’s just a pleasing odor. (I know I know you need a nose to smell. Maybe this is Stockholm Syndrome from spending way too much time with Leviticus in rabbinical school and looking for something to love, idk, but I like the pleasing odor stuff!)
- I am not necessarily a fan of the language used here with “the devisings of the human mind are evil from youth,” but I do appreciate later interpretations of it. It’s saying that once we’re born, we all have a yetzer hara – literally an “evil impulse,” but the ancient rabbis explain that it’s just the opposite of an altruistic impulse. It’s the drive we have to succeed, to eat, to experience physical pleasure, to survive – it’s healthy, it’s normal, and it’s important and even good (when balanced with our yetzer hatov, our impulse to do good). And it’s just true! We are all partially selfish. That’s normal, and that’s fair. We have to be mindful of it, account for it, and be mindful of how it impacts others. We have to set up social safeguards, communal expectations and covenants, rights and responsibilities. Which is what brings us to…
- God’s commitment in the covenant with Noah is not to hook us up all the time (or ever). It’s our job to make our lives and the lives of others a better place. God’s commitment in this covenant is that nature will always exist. The world will be a thing. There will always be a setting for teshuvah – for improvement, for repair, and for growth – because the world will always exist. Nature persists. Teshuvah is one of my favorite concepts, in Judaism and in life, and so this covenant really speaks to me.
- I’m also really into changes in formatting in the Torah, and just like we have the words in verse 22 on different lines above, that’s how it looks in every Torah scroll. It draws my eye and it makes me really think about these cycles and their beauty. Come see it in person tomorrow morning. <3
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Hannah
