In Hebrew, the central character of this week’s Torah portion, Noah, rolls off your tongue. Just two letters – Nun and Chet – it means “to rest” or “to be at peace.” In English it’s a whole other matter completely. The name expands by two letters and becomes awkward and cumbersome to anyone unfamiliar with it. But, if you look closely at the name Noah, breaking it down into its different parts, suddenly it comes alive with meaning. Pairing “no” and “ah” has a playful dissonance that shows the topsy turvy nature of the portion where humankind is nearly wiped out, only to find refuge by the grace of an olive branch tucked into the beak of a dove.
Someone recently told me that they like to catastrophize. By that they meant that they always imagine the worst in a situation, believing that if things can go wrong, they will go wrong. This is, I imagine, human nature. For as long as we have been able to tell stories, we have predicted the impending doom of our race through flood and pestilence, war and calamity, nuclear warheads and artificial intelligence. As creatures that can both build and destroy, we are forever caught in the cycle of visions of utopian and dystopian futures. So, back to Noah’s name in English, it is almost as if it is a marker of our experience of the portion itself. “No,” we say when God condemns the world to be wiped out through flood and then assigns someone with no credentials to save it. But, as it becomes clear, a hopeful future is possible, we let out a long extended, “ahhhhh.” It is a good reminder that as awful as things can sometimes feel, more often than not, we discover a solution that will lessen the blow of even the worst of our misdeeds. May it continue to be so!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex