Noach, נֹחַ "Noah" Genesis 6:9-11:32

Noach - The Land Just Around The Corner

Poetic notes on parashat Noach*

Every human

is born with a question in their DNA

A Jew is born with both a question

and an answer in their DNA

What is Adam

that You are mindful of them?

What is a child of Adam

that you come to visit them at their home?

A Jew is born

with a rainbow anointing of their DNA

by the word of God,

the question and the answer,

the promise of Adam’s redemption

in their Israelite chromosomes

There is one tree of human chromosomes

The DNA that is anointed

with a full spectrum of light,

a rainbow of double the expanse of Noah’s

A double rainbow anointing one family tree

that the whole world might see

the glimmering of the hope

of the covenant promise that God

made to Abraham and Sarah

Slowly, through the cracks

there began to be seen colourful rays of hope

Hope bred hope that the world would repent,

repent of fearful, dark desires and despair

Yet hope remained just hope

It seemed like for endless generations

And now the world,

after so many generations,

has become mesmerized,

hypnotized, by the logic of hatred,

through the pride of judgment

and the envy of appearances

The world has aged, become an elder

Its hope became heartburn in its gut

Still it wrestles with a self based hope,

while having a petulant child’s defiant courage

The world struggles on and does not repent

There is a Raven of hope that never returns

The shadow of the dark, wonton hunger

born before the flood

crept through the old skies and into the new,

crept from the dark skies of the flood

into the skies of the rainbow

and claimed to be born anew

That reborn ray of light and darkness

began to stir again dreams of pride

to fabricate plans in the human heart,

to be free of the fear of God

In time the steel hard grip

of that dark shadow’s coldness

took hold on Adam once again,

and bred enmity

between the tree of the anointed DNA

and the tree of the wide array

of all the other human DNA

The story had started long before

Beasts clean and unclean

never before eaten

came out of the ark

Some clean beasts in time were ordained

to be sacrificed,

as the flooded world had been sacrificed

But blood should never be eaten

The soul is in the blood

and the soul is protected in God's care,

as the soul of the flooded world

was in God's protective care

But if Adam should slay Adam,

within Adam,

accountability for Adam’s blood would remain

If the children of God fall

into captivity to a kingdom of blood,

they would have no one but themselves to blame

With the old and new truth,

Noah stepped into the ark and out of the ark

Now in the end of days we see

that the war between

North Babylon and South Babylon

is a war that mocks the simple faith of Noah

and consumes souls

and denies the eyes of God

It is not north nor south,

but the war itself

that seduces souls,

that mesmerizes and captures souls

It is the lying tongue of the war itself

that seduces and tempts souls

to idolize false and illusionary gods

of military power and technical might,

That lays claim to the wealth of all the earth,

while breeding souls that cannibalize souls

But from the time Noah set foot outside the ark

Adam was required to judge Adam on the earth

Adam must account for the blood of Adam

For Adam was made

to be the image that reflects God’s protective care

to all of His creation

Adam cannot sacrifice Adam

If the witness sacrifices the only judge

or if the judge sacrifices the only witness

no soul remains to judge or to witness judgment,

no soul remains to learn the truth of righteous mercy

Then the world would have been flooded for naught

Then the rainbow

would have been placed in the sky for naught

Therefore Adam must judge and restrain Adam

And if Adam ever sacrifices Adam,

Adam must repent

Since the generation of Noah,

Adam has known it was so

Still Adam deeply mistrusted Adam

“Come, let us invent a technique to fabricate harmony,

to fabricate stones, to fabricate a city

with a tower of great technique

Let us fabricate a Tower of Technique,

to be ever more refined with precision and efficiency

Let us fabricate a great Technique

and make ourselves a name”

But God towered above their tower

and put an impediment in their tongue

He wrote confusion into the invention of their technique,

to save them from infinite fabrications of their heart

It is a side-effect of confusion

that the truth is sometimes told

Tempers broke faster than the speed of sound

Vengeance returned like the speed of light

Then the anxiety of anger

and the loneliness of hatred

churned up a new hunger for dreaming lies

Instead of God’s smiling skies of spiritual rain,

watering eyes of pain and the unremovable stain

of Adam’s disdain for Adam remained

There are even doves of hope

that at first do not return

Melchizedek was just around the corner*

Melchizedek, mystic son of Noah,

God's ambassador from the ark of Noah

He came as the housekeeper,

to announce Abraham's royal entry

into the fortress that God had chosen

the place God chose to take His stand

Melchizedek, the forerunner,

who went ahead

to prepare and keep the fortress grounds

for Sarah and her offspring,

when they should come to occupy

God’s royal land

This was Abraham and Sarah,

with the tree of DNA having the question

and anointed with the answer

Melchizedek, the prophet of God,

would be just around the corner from Noah

waiting at the corner of Abraham and Sarah,

to pave the way for Israel,

and the rejoicing of the nations,

by blessing Abraham,

when he understood it was now

the only way of blessing God

This was the way Melchizedek

ordered the words of his blessing

This was his testimony

This would be the order of the words of Melchizedek

And so he quietly waited there at Salem

for Abraham to arrive

At Salem, where all of time and eternity

was about to unfold, so foretold

the dove who returned

with the twig of life

from the land that was

just around the corner

Noah laid asleep in his tent

Six hundred years of tears…

For Noah’s whole life

he had seen human thinking

wrestling itself free of the thinking of God

What would the difference

in science and society be

in the world that he would re-father?

He had gown a grapevine and had fallen asleep

He dreamed of Ravens and doves,

towers and tongues

He dreamed of human science

both old and young,

and the mysteries of Israel’s calendar to come

In his nightmare he saw

the world’s knowledge come

completely into captivity

to an irresistible imperative

of imperial calculations

to fabricate a Global Tower of Technique

Children of Japheth and Ham

would worship the Great Technique

Science itself would fall

into captivity to Technique

Then his nightmare resolved

His sleep began to turn to peace

Some children of Shem

would worship

only the one true God

He saw them standing

on a mountain

the mountain of Jerusalem

Noah awoke and his secret

was kept by Shem

In the end of days

The select descendants of Shem knew full well,

if they were going to bring human science

into the promise of the liberty

of Jerusalem’s ultimate Festival

— the children of Jerusalem knew,

and those in the nations

who followed the logic of Melchizedek knew —

if human science was to be brought by them

back into the logic of Israel’s calendar,

that they would have to first overcome,

the logic of hatred between them

They would have to overcome

all slavish obedience to the judgments of fear

For they themselves were still in captivity

to hatred without a cause

Long ago, when it was still in its infancy,

the Tower of Technique had fallen

When God had divided the nations

into seventy tongues,

according to the number of the children of Israel,

making Israel the target of their confusion

From the soil of confusion

hatred had grown in profusion

In time, the beautiful, subtle

technique of unholy Fabrication

had reappeared,

nakedly flirting with all the world

enticing the world

to fabricate the Tower of Technique once again

“Come,” they said,

“Let us fabricate a Tower of Technique,

a tower of precision and efficiency,

able to touch the moon and tap the stars”

The children of Jerusalem knew,

those who followed the logic of Melchizedek knew,

they would have to be quiet and listen

and speak and hear one another

In their company,

Adam would have to take responsibility

Adam would have to accept accountability

for Adam’s blood and soul

Those who followed the order of Melchizedek

Would have to once again bless Abraham

as their way of blessing God

And the seed of Abraham

would have to humbly accept their blessing

and, like Abraham,

not judge them for being out of order*

Somewhere a whisper was heard,

“Broken people save broken people”*

The whisper carried over the waters on the wings of a bird

Corporate repentance had begun

at home with the people of God

Only then did human science close its eyes

And listen to hear the thoughts of God

recorded in the language of the sun and moon and stars

in Israel’s calendar

Only then did the final Tower of Technique fall

Only then did science once again know liberty

and bow the knee in God’s Temple

Only then did all of Adam’s DNA

come into possession

of both the question and the answer

*These poetic notes are in large part a reflection on a Rohr Jewish Learning Institute Torah portion lesson on parashat Noach, as delivered by Rabbi Baitelman of ChaBaD of Richmond, B.C., Canada. Neither Rabbi Baitelman nor the JLI have reviewed or approved of the content of this post.

*Melchizedek — Melchizedek does not appear in the Torah until the next parashah of Lekh Lekha; but that is just around the corner, from where the dove returns with the twig of life in its beak.

*being out of order — In the Talmud it is explained how that God intended to give the priesthood to Shem but because he gave precedence in his blessing to Abraham over God, He brought it forth from Abraham.” Furthermore, Psalms 110:4 is explained to mean that God said to Abraham, “You are a priest forever after the order [of the words of] Melchizedek” — because with the order of his words Melchizedek gave Abraham prominence. [See ArtScroll’s Bereishis 1a page 496]

*broken people — A line from the motion picture, “Guilty,” with Jake Gyllenhaal.