- Clergy
- Shabbat
When I moved from New York to Los Angeles this summer, one of the first things I did was register to vote. Living in a world in which so much feels and is beyond our control, registering in my new home felt like an important, if small, bit of agency.
This week, we read of someone who exhibits a strong sense of agency over his own future in the face of forces beyond what he can control. Not long after God has created the world, corruption and lawlessness filled the earth. So God decides to send a flood to destroy it all, save for Noah, a man “righteous in his generation” (Genesis 6:9), along with Noah’s family and two of each animal.
God instructs Noah: “Make yourself an ark” (Gen 6:14). The Torah goes on to describe the details of the construction of the ark, a structure larger than a football field! But if God is powerful enough to create the world and powerful enough to destroy the world, then surely God could devise a supernatural way to save Noah and the other creatures that God deems worthy of saving. Why is Noah “making” anything, let alone a massive wooden ark, in order to be saved?
Notably, the root word for “to make” (in Hebrew, עֲשֵׂה - aseh) is repeated seven times here. After reading the story of the seven days of creation only last week, we are especially attuned to the number seven, recognizing that this specific word must play a critical role in our story.
Perhaps the text repeats the word “to make” seven times to highlight Noah’s agency in his own salvation. God could have chosen to save Noah with no initiative on Noah’s part aside from living his life as a righteous person as he always did. But that would have been a very different story. Rather, Noah is chosen for his past behavior and he is also called on in his present moment to be an active participant, securing and “making” his own protection, his own future.
In just a few days, our country will call on us to take that same initiative, to be those active participants. So much is beyond our control, but voting is our way of contributing to - of “making” - our own future, the future of our country and our world.
On November 5, let us answer the call as Noah did, not waiting for salvation, but making it instead.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Leah Fein