Nov 5/05 - Shabbat Noach: Floods and Children

Commentary by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles

We’re all familiar with the timeless story of Noah and the Flood. Having just created humanity, God is horrified to see just how depraved, how violent, and how lawless we can become in the short span of a few generations. Frustrated beyond restraint, God decides to wipe out humanity and to start anew, with a particularly promising family, that of the righteous man, Noah.

Precisely what was the sin responsible for the flood? Different authorities have proposed a variety of possible explanations, but the one that I would like to explore this week is offered by Sefer Ha-Yashar, a pseudepigraphic work generally dated to the 11th or 12th Century (or the 16th Century). The Sefer Ha-Yashar, a traditional history of the world from Creation through Adam to the Exodus from Egypt, suggests that the reason for the Flood was the failure of one and all to value children.

An example of that under-appreciation of children is that Noah refrained from having his own children until he was five hundred years old. He rationalized his choice by saying “Why should I bring children into a world that will likely be destroyed?”

Think of the striking parallels between Noah’s generation and our own. There was a lack of role models, a lack of truly righteous men and women for young people to aspire to imitate. Violence was rampant and random. Sexual depravity—pleasure taken through force or through anonymity—assumed the aura of normalcy. And in that horrible world, there were sensitive souls like Noah who felt it would be an act of cruelty to bring an innocent baby into such a world.

There is certainly some merit to Noah’s feelings. By no means should everyone have children, nor is life empty and valueless without having children. Yet, the bias in favor of having children is so firmly rooted in the Torah and the biblical tradition that it virtually defines happiness. Certainly everyone should be encouraging and supporting the raising of children, even if not one’s own offspring. As a society, we ought to make it as easy as possible for willing adults to raise children to be healthy and compassionate adults.

Like the generation of Noah, ours seems not to value children very highly. Oh, sure, there’s lots of rhetoric about how precious the young ones are, and at election time candidates fall over themselves to be seen as pro-family, whatever that means.

But raising healthy, confident children takes more than rhetoric and good wishes. A serious commitment to children requires a serious commitment to providing parents with the knowledge and skills they need, equipping schools, synagogues, and other public institutions with the resources necessary to be truly helpful to the families themselves.

Is that the kind of society America has become? Rather than truly providing for our children, we have millions of them on the streets, homeless (many of them runaways). We make affordable, decent childcare almost impossible, thus making it difficult for parents to afford the children they are encouraged to rear. We don’t provide decent family leave time for illness, we don’t provide adequate health security for kids (or their parents), we throw ideological hoops in the paths of our public schools, doing everything in our power to prevent our teachers from educating their students. And we bombard our children—through television, music, and movies—with a glorification of ignorance, addiction, and violence; precisely those values least capable of nurturing their better selves or providing a better future.

In contrast to Noah’s age, in which children were so insufficiently cherished, our tradition offers another model as well: That of the generation who merited to leave Egyptian slavery. There too, things looked glum—violence and poverty abounded. Yet the Midrash tells us that the women of Israel refused to sublimate the birthing and raising of children, regardless of any other factor. For them, children came first. And because of their stalwart advocacy of the children, we merited freedom from slavery, we were given a Promised Land—a gift that counts on children, otherwise it’s not worth very much, is it?

The value of children is admirably captured by the dean of Israeli poets, by Yehuda Amichai, of blessed memory. In linking children to rain, and rain to floods, he brings us back to where we began. A healthy, godly society is one that demonstrates its love of children by providing them with what they need to thrive: Housing, education, knowledgeable and fulfilled parents, access to health care, and love, lots of love.

On the day my daughter was born, not a single person died in the hospital, and at the entrance gate a sign said, “Today, kohanim are permitted to enter.” And it was the longest dayof the year In my great joy I drove with my friend to a hill overlooking The Old City of Jerusalem.

We saw a bare, sick pine tree, nothing on it but a lot of pinecones. Zvi said, “Trees that are about to die produce more cones than healthy trees. And I said to him, “That was a poem and you didn’t realize it. Even though you are a man of the exact sciences, you’ve made a poem.” And he answered: “And you, even though you’re a man of dreams, have made an exact little girl with all the exact instruments for her life.”

A child is something else again: on a rainy spring day Glimpsing the Garden of Eden through the latticework Kissing her in her sleep Hearing footsteps in the wet pine needles. A child delivers you from death. Child, rain, garden, fate.

Shabbat Shalom.