How would Hollywood portray the Great Flood? I picture them casting Noah as a haggard man with dark rings under his blue eyes, his gaunt face framed with a flowing white beard. I see him staggering from cubicle to cubicle, vainly trying to feed growling lions and calm anxious parakeets as his creaky vessel pitches violently in the turbulent waves. The Ark is dim and stuffy, an overstuffed menagerie of baying, howling, screeching creatures. Noah’s sons carry bucketloads of refuse to the ship’s bowels, and Mrs Noah is perpetually seasick. Lightning flashes briefly illuminate the chaotic scene as resounding thunderclaps remind the voyagers that their tumultuous journey is still better than the fate suffered by those who never made it on board.
I assume that most people have a similar mental image of life on board history’s most famous floating zoo.
Jewish tradition paints an altogether different picture.
G-d, as we know, commands Noah and co. to enter the Ark as soon as the first raindrops fall. None of them was running to spend a year holed up with hundreds of animal species on a windowless vessel. We are unsurprised that Hashem had to tell them to get in.
What is unexpected is that He had to tell them to leave. I would have been out of there in a flash. When his boat scraped the top of Mount Ararat, Noah must have reached DEFCON-2 cabin fever. His family would have been spring-loaded to fly through the exit the second it opened. An El Al passenger scrambles for their hand luggage before the pilot turns off the seatbelt sign. Can you imagine the urgency the passengers on the Ark felt?
Noah and his family were unhurried. They stayed put until G-d greenlighted their exit. If their stay on the Ark had been half as bad as we imagine, they should have bolted as soon as the dove flew in with the olive leaf. Why linger?
Firstly, Noah appreciated that he was on a Divine mission and could not abort until Mission Control authorised it. You may be surprised to discover that life on the Ark was tranquil. It was so peaceful that nobody wanted to leave. Noah’s year on the Ark was the closest thing to the Messianic Age anyone has experienced. Isaiah tells us that the wolf will lie with the lamb when Moshiach comes. That’s how it was in the Ark. Contrary to popular perception, life on the Ark was serene. There was no chaos, stress or fear. Impalas slept soundly alongside leopards, as the streamlined vessel smoothly sliced through the churning water.
Imagine living in a peaceful cocoon while everything around you is in utter chaos? If we could master that, we could thrive in 2025.
The Torah shares the Flood story to help us navigate our overwhelm. No narrative recorded in the Torah is there for curiosity or dramatic effect. Torah means instruction, and every chapter in the Torah is a guide for life.
When you decode how Noah survived the Flood, you learn how to thrive in tough times. When you unlock the secret of living Moshiach-level calm amidst a global maelstrom, you appreciate that you can enjoy peace of mind even when stress and anxiety swirl around you.
What was his secret? The Baal Shem Tov finds it in Hashem’s “all aboard” instruction. Hashem tells Noah, “Come into the Ark”. In Hebrew, an Ark is a “Teiva”, which is the same Hebrew word for “word”. As He guided Noah to survival, Hashem hinted at how we can stay sane in a crazy world.
“Get inside the word”. Judaism offers us words of prayer and of study. We all say those words. We pray daily, and we study Torah regularly. Noah would not have survived riding on the Ark’s bow. He needed to shelter inside. We need to immerse ourselves in the words of our prayers, not just say them. We should contemplate the words of our Torah study, not just flip pages. The more we live within the holy words, the more tranquil our lives become. The world might stir up a tempest, but we can remain stoic and secure in the embrace of Torah wisdom and meditative prayer.
