Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back for this week's episode of the Practical Parasha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohon, and I hope you are, well, getting into the swing of things after the holidays. I hope you enjoyed last week's double, uh, hitter with Parashas, Vezosa, Bracha and Bereshias.
[00:00:19] And now we're getting into the swing of things of the Book of Beratius, the book of Genesis, and each one of the parshios, each one of the Torah portions is just so much to gain, so much to talk about, and God willing, I look forward to going through the Book of Bereshas together with you on this podcast.
[00:00:42] And as always, before we begin this episode, and just if there's any new listeners out there for this cycle, you know, some of you already are familiar with my spiel, but for the new listeners who have just joined the Practical Parsha podcast, this cycle, for this cycle of Torah portions, first of all, I thank you for joining. And number two is you should know that you could always reach out. My email address is Rabbi Shlomo kon k o hnmail.com and I'd love to hear from you. This week's parsha is Parshas.
[00:01:20] Now, just to give a quick overview of the parsha, the parsha discusses the story of Noah and his generation.
[00:01:29] Now, as many of you know, the generation of the flood was a very evil generation. Now, the midrashim tell us explicitly what sins they did and how low they had fallen.
[00:01:47] But the point is that humanity was sliding, sliding and sliding and got to a place where Hashem, God told Noah to build an ark, to build a boat that would save him and his family, as well as, um, the different creatures that merited to be saved.
[00:02:11] And, and Noach, when he was building this Teva, uh, warned the population, warned the people, that in X amount of years, Hashem God is going to bring a flood to the world. If you do not do Teshuvah, if you're not going to repent, and he's going to destroy the world.
[00:02:27] And the people of a generation did not heed the warnings of Noach, uh, and in fact made fun of him as he was doing this. And I believe the commentary tells us that it took NOACH, uh, approximately 100 years to build the teva, to build the ark. And people saw him day in, day out building the ark. And yet they didn't heed the warnings that Hashem, uh, had given the generation.
[00:02:54] The parsha continues to tell us about the actual flood that the Command comes from Hashem to Noach for his family to enter the ark along with the animals and the birds.
[00:03:06] And they enter. And at that point it starts to rain.
[00:03:10] And the people realize their mistake and try to prevent Noach from getting on the ark. G D miraculously makes it that Noach, ah, enters and the world is destroyed.
[00:03:22] Now the parsha continues with the flood subsiding and the story of the dove leaving the teva, leaving the ark to find dry land, and the subsequent story of Noah's rebuilding of the world. The world started again right from Noah and his family. God makes a covenant with Noah to never bring a flood upon the world again. He gives them the rainbow as an eternal covenant, that he will not bring a mabal, a flood, to destroy the entire world. That's the sign that we have. Hashem, uh, will not do that to us again.
[00:04:02] Now, the parsha also tells us about the descendants of NOACH and the 70 nations that come out from him. And finally, towards the end of the Parsha, the parasha tells us about King Nimrod, who ruled over, I guess the, um, uh, ruled over the people.
[00:04:23] And the story of the Tower of Babel.
[00:04:28] Not sure if it's Babel or Babel. Tower of Babel.
[00:04:33] How a not shortly after the flood, about 340 years later, the people who all spoke one language, who all were in one area and seemed to be set up for success, to serve Hashem, to know what to do, to do the right thing, they had the correct role models. It's even brought down that Noach and his children were still alive at that point.
[00:04:58] They decided to get together, to use their unity, not to serve Hashem, um, but to go against him. They didn't learn their lesson so close to the flood, and they decide to work together to build a tower, to go up to heaven, to wage a war against Hashem. Now, it's an interesting idea. How did they, what were they thinking exactly? Wage a war against God to be victorious.
[00:05:24] And we're going to take a look at that a little bit today.
[00:05:29] Finally, the parsha concludes with the 10 generations from Noach to Avramavinu to Abraham, which will lead us into next week's Parsha, God willing, about the story of Avramavinu.
[00:05:43] Now, the first idea I wanted to share with you today takes us to the story of the flood.
[00:05:50] Now, in other years, I've discussed about Noah, he himself, his personality.
[00:05:57] And it's interesting how the sages, you know, talk about Noah. There's a lot of praise about Noah. There's also some criticisms of Noah, and you can look in last year's episode to really get some more information on that. But what I want to focus on this year really, I think, ties into current events a little bit. Don't worry, I'm not going to get political, but I just want to give maybe an outlook, uh, a hash kafa for us to have going into next week. Next week, as most of you are listeners on this, uh, podcast live in the United States, there's a lot of you who live outside the United States. But for those of you who live outside the United States, next week is election day, November 5th, and there's a lot of discussion. You know, it seems to be a very tight election.
[00:06:45] Which side will win?
[00:06:47] Which side is better for the Jews? Now, I don't want to go there right now. I'm not interested to do that. But what I want to do is I want to just talk about a perspective. And I think it really ties into our Parsha, a little bit of perspective that we can have, um, in general, maybe that sort of ties into the weekly parsha and the upcoming year US Elections. Now, in the beginning of Parshas Noach, after the flood and the waters recede, Noach and his family come out of the Teva, the ark, and they restart humanity.
[00:07:22] And the parsha goes through the series of events that happens.
[00:07:28] And the first thing that noach does is he brings an offering to Hashem. He brings a sacrifice to Hashem.
[00:07:35] And the posseq tells us something very interesting. It says in verse 21, chapter 8, Vayorach Hashem Esriach hanihoach vayomer hashem elibo lo osif lekal od ESA adama baavor ha' adam um kietzer lev haodom ran mini urav voy oisif oyd lahakois eskol chaikashir assisi. Hashem smelled the pleasing aroma. And Hashem said in his heart, I will not continue to curse again the ground because of man, since the imagery of man's heart is evil from his youth. Nor will I again continue to smite every living being as I have done.
[00:08:19] Hashem, uh, is promising not to destroy the world again. The posseh continues. 22 Oit kol yomei haaretzer ah vikor vichoyim vikayet vihorev v' yim velailah loy yishposu Continuously all the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.
[00:08:47] What hashem is telling us in the parsha is that he's not going to destroy the world again.
[00:08:53] The world. The cycle of the seasons will continue.
[00:08:58] Summer, fall, winter, spring, seed time, harvest time, day and night. The cycles will continue. You won't be disturbed again.
[00:09:10] Now, the chavitz chaim brings down in his commentary on the Torah a very interesting midrash.
[00:09:17] The midrash says, as in psikta derevkahana omrach alishborochu chivav tem le torosi veloi chakikem, uh, lemachusi.
[00:09:30] It says, hashem said, they desire my Torah of veloi. They're not waiting. They're not yearning for my malchus, for my kingship. Now, we're going to have to take a look at what this means and the lesson that the Chavez chaim is going to bring out for us and how this ties into the election.
[00:09:52] But what I really want to bring out right now is that if you look at the verse, the verse tells us that the year, the seasons, the day, the night will continue.
[00:10:06] And we know that if there's. If the sun rose today, you know, I know we all know that the sun will rise tomorrow.
[00:10:20] But if you think about it for a minute, just because something happened today, it's guaranteed that it should happen tomorrow. There's no guarantee. There's no guarantees in life. Nothing's guaranteed, right? And even if you'll tell me, oh, there's a. The world's, uh, you know, on axis, and there's a cycle, and there's a solar system, and there's a system. But who says the system will just stop, right?
[00:10:44] Why can't it just stop? Things stop, you know, Cars die.
[00:10:50] Buildings could fall. Plants wither away. We pass on to the next world. Why is it a, uh, guarantee? Why are we so sure that tomorrow the sun will rise again? Just because it happened today, it should happen tomorrow.
[00:11:04] And the answer to that is that the fact that we have that pitachon, that we have that belief, and that we know that to be true 100% is because of this verse.
[00:11:15] Because Hashem, uh, tells us that the cycles of the seasons and the sun rising and the day and the day and night, it will not cease. It will keep happening and happening and happening.
[00:11:29] And the chavatz chaim brings this medrash of which says, you love my Torah, but you don't desire my malchus, my kingship.
[00:11:44] What does this mean?
[00:11:46] How does it have to do with the parsha?
[00:11:49] And what does this have to do with current events.
[00:11:53] And the answer to that the Chavitz Chaim brings down is, is that, you know, sure, we enjoy learning Torah. There's a certain spiritual delight that we get when we study, um, Torah. We learn the weekly parsha, we learn gemara, we do a mitzvah, we do a good deed.
[00:12:12] There's a certain spiritual pleasure that we get, and it's good, we should do that.
[00:12:17] It's very important.
[00:12:19] And this is our job in this world. But there's another aspect also involved, and sometimes it gets overlooked because we're involved in our daily life and, you know, our need to survive and we try to thrive, and there's so much going on, but sometimes it could be forgotten, this idea of establishing or having this yearning for Hashem's, uh, kingship to be established.
[00:12:47] And the answer to that is that, when is that going to happen?
[00:12:51] When will Hashem's kingship, Malchusi, when will his kingship be, um, put back?
[00:12:58] Right now we're in exile. Where the Jewish people are in exile. The Beis Hamikdash, the temple was destroyed. It'll only be when the Beis Hamikdash is rebuilt, when Moshiach, um, comes, that Hashem will reign in his full glory in Tsion in Israel.
[00:13:15] And that is this meaning over here of this midrash, that, sure, we love the Torah and we love doing mitzvahs, but we also need to have this yearning to go home, to be under the. And I say go home. It should be that Hashem's kingship should rule doesn't mean the modern state of Israel, you know, it means that when Hashem will be Maloy cha kalalam kulai, that he will rule. And his idea, the Torah ideals will be, uh, uh, what the world will look up to.
[00:13:49] And this is something which is another.
[00:13:52] It's important for us to have in the front of our mind and to not forget. And this is actually one of the ikrim, one of the main focal points or points of faith that a Jew needs to have that obviously we believe in Hashem, we believe in Torah, but we have to believe and we have to know that, uh, Hashem, at a certain time, that Mashiach will come, that the Messiah will come, the temple will be rebuilt, and the world will get to its point of true perfection.
[00:14:24] Uh, and this is animamim be' muna shalima Mashiach. We have to believe. It's one of the animams. We have to believe with a full heart that Mashiach can come at any moment. And the example that the Chavitz Chaim gives to help us understand this is that if a king had a son, he had to exile from the kingdom.
[00:14:41] And after, you know, a certain amount of years, his exile is up, and he knows that he's coming on this day. So surely the, you know, the parents, you know, the go, you know, they go to the train station to greet him, to get ready for him, because they know he's coming on that day. And even if he doesn't come on the first train, he's coming on the next train or the third train, they're waiting. They know every day is coming.
[00:15:08] And that's, you know, this is this, um, yearning that we need to have as well. So it's loving the Torah and also having this yearning to get to this point, that humanity needs to get to this point which will happen, knowing it will happen, believing it will happen. And the way it ties into the parsha is because just like we believe and we know that tomorrow, the day the sun will shine, so too we have to have just a strong, um, emunah, just a strong faith when it comes to knowing that Hashem will rule at the right time. When he decides is the time he will. And it's coming, it's coming, it's going to happen. And we have to implant that in our heart. And the way that this ties into current events is that, you know, there's so many. There's so much going on and not here to get into politics. I'm here to give people an escape from that. We all know we get bombarded with all the information about who you should vote for, and people get very passionate about it.
[00:16:07] You know, who to vote for, who's better for the Jewish people, what's better for Israel, what's better for the country as a whole. And obviously, we live here, and the, you know, you know, it's our civic duty and responsibility to do our part to vote, to look at, uh, the candidates and make the best decision for ourselves. Obviously, it's not in our hands, it's not in our control who wins and what the leaders do. But we have to do our part. But the point is that even if we want our candidate to win the election, what we really should want is, is that. Not that our candidate should win is that Hashem should be the one who should rule. And that should be, you know, in our mind, in our heart, in the forefront of our mind, that as much as we have to do our part and to vote and to, you know, to, uh, daven that things should be good for the Jewish people in our hearts of hearts. We should remember what we really want is Hashem to rule. You know, and the way that it's, uh.
[00:17:12] I think sometimes it can help us understand this is that, like you give a kid, a kid cries sometimes for a lollipop. But, you know, us as adults, we look at the child and saying, you're crying about a lollipop. It's so petty. It's so small.
[00:17:29] Sometimes in life we have our lollipops that we cry over.
[00:17:35] And we have to realize that it's, you know, think of ourselves as the adult looking at the child, that the things sometimes that we cry over are really those lollipops. And what's truly important is, you know, obviously fulfilling the Torah and this idea that Hashem will be recognized as the ruler of the entire world. The next idea I want to share with you today takes us to the end of the parasha about the story of the Tower of Babel.
[00:18:06] Now, the story of the Tower of Babel, Migdal Bavel, is that shortly, a few hundred years after the flood, the world rebuilds.
[00:18:20] It's becoming repopulated again.
[00:18:23] And everyone has the same language, living in the same place.
[00:18:29] And they hatch this idea.
[00:18:32] They decide to build a tower to wage a war against Hashem, to wage a war against G D.
[00:18:41] And what happens is that humanity comes together, united, to build this tower. And they start building, building.
[00:18:53] And the midrashim tell us different, uh, phenomenon about this tower.
[00:18:58] And finally they're waging. They're trying to build it to wage this battle against G D.
[00:19:03] And G D defeats them.
[00:19:08] He changes their languages that until now, everyone spoke lashan hakodesh, the holy tongue.
[00:19:15] And after the Tower of Bave el Hashem, uh, makes it that everyone has different languages and the people can't communicate with each other.
[00:19:26] And since they can't communicate with each other, fights break out, and the tower ultimately gets destroyed and the people get dispersed. Now, if you look at the end of the parsha, at the verses that describe the story of the Tower of, you'll see something very interesting. The verses read as Vayom r isha reu hava ah nilbena levenim vinishrapha le srephot vitihi lehem halaveina loewen vahachemar hoyolohem la chomer. They said to one another, come, let us make bricks and burn them in fire.
[00:20:04] And the brick served them as stone. And the Lime served them as mortar.
[00:20:10] Vayomru.
[00:20:12] The verses continue. Vayomru havonivna lanu irdal v' roishu bashemayim vinasse lonu sheym penofutz alpenei cholharetz. And they said, come, let us build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed across the whole earth.
[00:20:36] That they were telling each other, they decided with each other, they decided with each other to build this tower to battle against Hashem. So he shouldn't be able to disperse them again if they decide to do, uh, whatever they want. And God can't punish them and disperse them if they wage war against him. Now.
[00:20:56] And the first question that's really asked here is if you look at the verses, it should be flipped around.
[00:21:07] We see that the verse reads that first they said to each other, let's make bricks.
[00:21:12] We'll make bricks. And, uh, we'll put them in a fire, and we'll have the. You know, that will be instead of stone, and we'll have lime, and that will be the mortar to put the bricks together.
[00:21:22] And then the next verse says, after they figure out about making these bricks, it says, uh, let us come build a city, and we'll build a tower that goes to the heaven, and we'll wage war against God. It should be the other way around that first they should have had this decision to build the city, to build this tower, to wage the war.
[00:21:43] And they.
[00:21:44] After they make that decision, the Torah should tell us that they made these bricks and they figured out how to do it, and that was going to be their plan, to build the bricks instead of stone to get to this tower. Why does it tell us about the bricks first, which really don't seem to be part of the equation at this point.
[00:22:03] And then afterwards the parsha tells us about their plan to wage war. It should be the opposite way around. This is a question that Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld asks. And there's a, uh. There's a very important lesson I think that we can learn out from. And it's brought down that, um, from El Yermeir Bloch, he writes that, what does it mean that they wanted to wage war against Hashem? They wanted to have a battle against God. They wanted to, like, build a tower. Like, what did they think they could build a tower so high that they could find God and do battle with him? And he explains this to mean that what they wanted to do is they wanted to show that they are breaking loose from the divine providence of God, from the Hashkachah, that they wanted to show that they're in charge now that we don't have to live our lives, we're strong enough to make our own decisions. We can overpower God.
[00:22:57] And that was the battle that they proposed. To rebel against the authority of Hashem, the authority of God.
[00:23:05] And based on this, we can understand Rabbi Sonnenfelder, Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, that the reason why the verses are the way they are with, uh, the parasha, with the Torah telling us about the bricks first and then afterwards about the city, is because only after they figured out how to make bricks, they invented it. That until now, mankind was using stone, which was, you know, it's something which is dependent on Hashem, the stone, having stone, finding stone. That this, this natural, um, material is totally dependent on God. But when it came to this new way of building this, making these bricks, which was their own invention, which they thought of themselves, they didn't need the stone anymore. It was almost as if they felt they didn't need God anymore. So therefore, they had the chutzpah to. And the temerity to go against Hashem to wage his battle against God. And that's why the verses tell us first about the bricks and then about this, uh, rebellion. It was because of the, you know, their own inventions, their own accomplishments, which gave them that feeling of, you know, we don't need God, we're good on our own, we're gonna fight against them. If it would have, they never have got to that point. They would have been using the stone. They never would have made those bricks. They never would have had those innovations.
[00:24:34] They never would have decided to rebel against the divine authority. And I think this idea is very, um, you know, it was appropriate.
[00:24:44] This idea was.
[00:24:45] Affected the people then. And I think certainly during our generation, when we live in a time of so much advancement, um, medical advancement, food advancement, uh, everything. Advancement. There's so much advancement every different area. People are living longer, people are healthier. There's so much more. We have microwaves, airplanes, spaceships.
[00:25:04] So much advancement, medicine.
[00:25:08] It's amazing.
[00:25:09] And this is all from mankind that didn't just pop into the air. It was through the mind, the ingenuity, the determination of mankind.
[00:25:22] So it's very easy, uh, for a person to think to himself, ah, uh, I don't need G D anymore. We have ourselves to rely on ourselves.
[00:25:34] And the Parsha tells us this story of the Tower of Bavel teaches us that it's the other way around that we have to be careful from this behavior to not fall into that trap. Because even with all our smartness and all our advancements, we always need Hashem. And he's the one who gives us that knowledge. And. And he's the one who gives us that success.
[00:25:55] And that's the lesson that we need to internalize and remember to never let that, you know, the power that we have when we do something, we accomplish something, get to our heads to think that we are doing it. We are the ones who do. You know, it's us, Qaychem va' oitzim yadi asadi yasakhailaza. That it's our strength and, um, the power of our hand that got us to this point. We have to always recognize God, always recognize Hashem.
[00:26:24] And especially with all the things that we do, we're able to do, God willing to recognize it's from him through Him. And when we do that, we'll always have the proper outlook to serving Hashem in the best way possible. So with that, I'm going to finish with today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, please feel free to send me an email at rabbi shlomo kon kynmail.com.
