Lessons from the Flood
FINANCIAL WOES
The Flood described in parshat Noach served not only as a punishment but also as a spiritual cleansing for a world that had become spiritually contaminated. This is why the waters of the Flood are called “the waters of Noah,” meaning “the waters of [Divine] pleasure and satisfaction [from the Hebrew nachat].”
Inasmuch as spiritual defilement is associated with the concept of death, spiritual purification is a form of rebirth. This is why the flooding lasted for forty days and nights, since the number forty is related to purification and rebirth: it takes forty days from the time of conception for a fetus to become completely formed. Similarly, the minimum amount of water that must be present in a mikveh (a ritual pool used for spiritual cleansing), through which a person becomes spiritually “reborn,” is 40 se’ah. (Indeed, precisely due to the fact that immersion in a mikveh is an experience of rebirth, many Jews have the custom to immerse themselves in a mikveh before Shabbat, since on Shabbat we become “new” people. Similarly, immersion in a mikveh is an integral part of the process of conversion, in which the convert becomes a “new” person.
Metaphorically, the floodwaters correspond to our financial worries, which likewise serve to purify us spiritually. In fact, the parallel between financial worries and the mikveh goes much deeper.
The waters of the mikveh represent Divine awareness. When immersing ourselves in these waters, we are meant to envision ourselves submerging in Divine awareness, such that our normative awareness becomes swallowed up and submerged in Divine consciousness. (This relationship between immersion and self-nullification is alluded to by the fact that the letters used to spell the word for “to immerse” [taval] can be rearranged to spell the word for “to nullify” [vatal]).
This is why a mikveh is required to contain a minimum of 40 se’ah: this is the amount necessary to ensure that the entire body is immersed in it at once. In other words, immersing oneself in a mikveh means to transcend oneself and thereby rise to a level in which one is able to become receptive to holiness.
This is also the reason why G-d gives us financial worries. True, they temporarily distract and confuse us, but they simultaneously also break down our walls of self-assuredness, thereby enabling us to go beyond our ego. It is then that we become receptive to holiness.
Since the true purpose of financial woes is not, G-d forbid, to punish us but rather to deflate our inflated ego, this can be accomplished in one short moment: if we quickly extract the inner message hidden in the financial worries, thereby enabling us to transcend our egos, we no longer need the financial worries to rectify ourselves, and can henceforth enjoy nachat (pleasure and calm), both physically and spiritually.
Seeing Everything in its Pristine State
G-d tells Noah to take kosher non-kosher animals into the ark. But instead of referring to the non-kosher animals bluntly as “ritually impure,” G-d refers to them indirectly, as “those that are not ritually pure,” thereby adding eight seemingly superfluous letters to the Torah. This teaches us that we, too, should go out of our way to use only clean speech and euphemistic expressions. True, the expression “ritually impure” (tamei) appears numerous times in the Torah, but in these instances, the Torah is stating a law, and a law must be stated clearly and unequivocally. Besides, the direct term is not considered negative in such contexts, since the issue is the law and not the impurity. However, in a narrative—even when the narrative serves as the basis for a legal ruling—the euphemism is preferred.
The Kabbalistic explanation of this is as follows: When G-d first had the thought to create the world, it immediately came into existence, but only spiritually. Afterwards, when G-d spoke the words of creation (“Let there be light,” etc.), the world came into physical existence. The state of the world as it exists spiritually in the realm of thought is called “rest” (menuchah). Noah’s ark also expressed the concept of rest, as alluded to in his name, Noah (Noach, related to menuchah, “rest”). Thus all the inhabitants of the ark existed on the plane of “thought,” which is why they lived peacefully together.
This is the reason that the ark’s non-kosher animals are not referred to as “impure.” When in the ark, each animal reverted to its spiritual root, where impurity cannot exist. For example, the terrestrial lion is a non-kosher animal, while its spiritual antecedent is one of the holy beasts of the Divine Chariot! This, then, is the deeper meaning of the instruction that one should seek to use a clean expression: one should try to see everything as it exists in its pristine state within its spiritual roots.
— Torah Chumash Bereishit
Gut Shabbos! Rabbi Yosef B. Friedman
on behalf of the Kehot Publication Society
