Parshas Noach - the flood and the ark in today's times

00:00 5717. Around Cheshvan, Cheshvan–Kislev, there was a short war in Eretz Yisroel. It was not a major war, but it was a war with Egypt, and there was great fear. It is called the Sinai Campaign, or Operation Kadesh. There was a war, and Jews were very afraid. What had happened, and what would happen next? People were deeply alarmed. That Shabbos, Shabbos Parshas Toldos, Shabbos Mevorchim, the eve of Rosh Chodesh Kislev, the Rebbe held a farbrengen and delivered a maamar of Chassidus. The maamar opened with the words, “Many waters cannot extinguish the love.” The Rebbe delivered a long, profound maamar, but began it with a Midrash. As chassidim who were there and heard the maamar relate, the Rebbe delivered it with great vitality, repeating the words of the Midrash with strong emphasis. The chassidim there did not even know what was happening. When they learned that his words related to the events in Eretz Yisroel, they understood what the Rebbe had been speaking about in this maamar. Through the maamar, the Rebbe accomplished something: he addressed the situation as it was, and through that, great things were brought about. What is more, just a few days later, the Rebbe prepared the maamar for publication and edited it.

01:52 Even then, in those years—as is well known, in the early years of his leadership—the Rebbe almost never edited maamarim. He delivered maamarim but did not edit them for publication. This was truly one of the first maamarim he edited. The Rebbe began preparing it for publication and editing it. As soon as it was printed, it was sent to Eretz Yisroel in connection with the events there. Later, the Rebbe also sent letters to chassidim with the maamar enclosed, so that they would publicize and study it. He explained that he had delivered the maamar specifically in connection with those events, in the hope of arousing great mercy and bringing deliverance and rescue to the Jews. In the maamar, he dwells on the verse from Shir Hashirim, “Many waters cannot extinguish the love.” King Shlomo says that the waters, the many waters, cannot extinguish the love, “nor can rivers wash it away.” Even all the waters rushing in waves and rivers cannot stop, wash away, or extinguish the love between the Jews and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jews. On this, the Rebbe cited the words of the Midrash. And we are now living in days when the words “the righteous live and endure forever” give us strength and encouragement. This is what the Midrash says on the verse: “Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to the Children of Israel”—

03:26 Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to the Jews: “If all the nations of the world gather together”—even if all the peoples of the world, many nations and peoples, come together. “Many waters”: the Midrash explains that the “many waters” are the peoples of the world. And they all gather because, rachmana litzlan, they stand against the Jews—“they cannot extinguish,” G-d forbid, “the love” between Me and Israel. There is no way they can extinguish the love between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jews. The Midrash continues: Even if all the kings, the kings of the earth and their ministers, vast and numerous forces, gather together, they cannot, G-d forbid, erase them from the world. Even if they want, rachmana litzlan, to erase the Jewish people, they cannot do it. The Midrash goes on: “If a man were to give all the wealth of his house for love.” If a Jew devotes himself during the exile to acquiring Torah, I promise to repay him twofold in the World to Come; and all the spoils and plunder, all the wealth gained from the war of Gog and Magog, I will give to the Jews who devote themselves to Torah study in the difficult times of exile. The verse continues: “We have a little sister.” We have a little sister. The Midrash says that when those times arrive—the difficult times of the darkness of exile, of Gog and Magog—the heavenly angels will deliberate. The angels in heaven will speak and debate among themselves. And they

05:08 will say that she is a small nation among the nations of the world, and that she is lacking in mitzvos, rachmana litzlan. What shall we do for the Jewish people, who are lacking in mitzvos? “What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for?” When the nations of the world speak of wanting, rachmana litzlan, to erase the Jewish people from the world, what shall we do for our sister? What shall we do for the Jewish people? “And Michael, the great prince, will answer.” The Midrash says that Michael, the great prince, the guardian of the Jews, will come and say: “If she is a wall”—if the Jewish people stand like a wall among the nations, do not assimilate among other peoples, hold firmly to their faith and the Torah, and serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the one Hashem—then “we will build upon her a silver turret.” And the nations will not be able, rachmana litzlan, to do anything to them. But more than that: “And even if she is a door”—even if the Jewish people are poor, rachmana litzlan, lacking in mitzvos and possessing few merits, we will nevertheless ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu for mercy. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu will remember the merit of the Torah studied by young schoolchildren, engraved on the tablet of their hearts. For that merit alone, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will save the Jewish people. And the Midrash on Tehillim says that the nations of the world come and argue before Hakadosh Boruch Hu: We do sin, but the Jewish people sin even more.

06:43 Why do You have mercy on them? And Hakadosh Boruch Hu will reply to all the nations and tell them: The Jewish people are “our little sister”; they are My little child. As we see with a young child, a little child: even when he does something wrong to his parents, they do not get angry with him, because he is a little child. So it is with the Jewish people. And so the Midrash concludes: Know that, whether you like it or not, you will see My people. Know that even if, rachmana litzlan, the Jewish people mix with other nations and cry out, “The house of Israel will be like all the nations,” know that this will not happen. “Not by might, nor by power” [unclear]. And so it says, “to teach how beloved Israel is before Hashem.” In all this we see the tremendous love and affection that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has for the Jewish people. After the Rebbe spoke at length and explained in depth this entire matter of how beloved Israel is, the meaning of “one nation on earth,” and the meaning of “the Jewish people and Hashem are one”—the bond between the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“You have declared Hashem to be yours today,” and “Hashem has declared you to be His today”—that is what the Rebbe meant in everything he spoke about that day, praising the Jewish people and their service of Hashem. And the Rebbe concluded the maamar by saying that after all this, we can understand

08:17 the whole point of the Midrash, and the certainty that “they will prevail.” The Rebbe ended with the words that the Jews will receive all the spoils from the war of Gog and Magog, because “they will prevail,” speedily in our days, through our righteous Moshiach. These are the words of the righteous, the words of the Midrash, words of Torah—words the Rebbe spoke at that moment, a moment of concealment, a moment of darkness, a moment of war. They were words of comfort, confidence, and faith, so that the Jews would know that the whole matter is just the opposite: that [unclear] will come of it, and that “they will prevail.” The Rebbe sent the maamar to Eretz Yisroel. The Rebbe wrote a number of letters and said that the entire purpose of this was to illuminate the souls of Jews. And it was plainly evident that it did. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were stirred to teshuvah, and he urged that this favorable time be used to invigorate and strengthen every aspect of spreading Judaism and spreading the wellsprings of Chassidus, to bring Jews closer to Judaism and prepare them for the complete Geulah. “Today is very” [unclear]; we are now living through days like these. And the essence of this Midrash, the essence of the fire burning in every Jew’s heart, is that—

09:43 To our physical eyes, the darkness facing the Jewish people may [unclear]. And all those nations that want, rachmana litzlan, to erase them—there are many who want to erase the Jewish people. Although the Jewish people are a minority and find themselves in a state of smallness and humiliation, Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself nevertheless prevails and leads. And He says that “with a mighty hand,” Hakadosh Boruch Hu will reign over us, and He will reveal His kingship over the Jewish people. That will indeed be the victory. And the verse “Many waters”—as is well known, there is a well-known maamar of the Mitteler Rebbe in one of the series on Parshas Noach. The maamar in Torah Or, Parshas Noach, begins with the words “Many waters cannot extinguish the love.” There the Alter Rebbe explains the entire weekly parsha in terms of serving Hashem, based on this verse. And the subject is directly relevant to our own time, both in our service and in the situation we now face in the world, and particularly among the Jewish people, and particularly in Eretz Yisroel, when we need a great deliverance—the complete Geulah, immediately, right now. The Alter Rebbe explains, opening with a simple question: At first glance, it is not understood why Hakadosh Boruch Hu had to bring the Flood in that way. After all, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu was angered because “the earth was filled with violence” and because of everything that had happened, He could have wiped them out in a single second.

11:06 The whole world was created [unclear]. In a single second, He could have wiped them out. Why did He have to go through this whole process with the Flood, with the forty days, and then what followed—[unclear]—and the waters rose, and it all lasted an entire year? Noach had to sit in the ark and endure a whole year there. Only after a year, when the waters dried up, could he come out. Why was this whole process necessary? In a single second, He could have wiped out all the wicked and left Noach and [unclear]. The Alter Rebbe explains that, in fact, the Flood was not simply a punishment for the wicked. The Flood was a form of purification. The Flood was a mikveh. He cites the verse in Yeshayahu, chapter 54, verse 9, read in the haftorah of Shabbos Nachamu: “For this is like the waters of Noach to Me.” There, Yeshayahu speaks about exile, about the flood of the darkness of exile. And Yeshayahu the prophet says, “For this is like the waters of Noach to Me.” In other words, the entire Flood is a matter of “the waters of Noach.” And just as Hakadosh Boruch Hu swore that He would never again bring the waters of Noach [unclear]. That is the point: the Flood is “the waters of Noach.” And here a simple question arises: What does it mean that the Flood is “the waters of Noach”? Surely the Flood is the opposite of Noach. Noach was saved from the Flood. Because...

12:31 Why is the Flood called by Noach’s name? Simply because it happened in Noach’s time. Noach lived then. But what was Noach’s fault? Precisely because he was a good person, is a catastrophe like the Flood named after him? Here we come to the heart of the matter, to the richness and depth of this story. The Torah tells us that the entire story of the Flood is really about “the waters of Noach”—Noach in the sense of naycha, rest, as the Zohar and the Midrash say: rest in the upper realms, rest in the lower realms; rest above and rest below, in every respect. “Noach, Noach”—Noach twice. In other words, when we look at the Flood on the surface, we think it was a punishment. And then it is unclear: Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu make the punishment so complicated? He could have done it instantly, all at once, and punished them. But the real reason is that it was not only a punishment. It was a mikveh. Forty days corresponding to the forty se’ah of a mikveh. That is what a mikveh does: a person enters impure and emerges pure. A non-Jew immerses in a mikveh and converts, becoming a Jew. A mikveh has a remarkable power: it takes a person from impurity to purity and transforms a non-Jew into a Jew. In the same way, the forty

13:48 days of the Flood purified the world and made it a pure world. And Noach—“he saw a new world”—was able to make the world a dwelling place for Hashem. That is the true purpose of the Flood. The Alter Rebbe explains that this is the meaning of the “mighty waters” that every Jew encounters. Like the Flood, which outwardly is a torrent: waters pour down and surge, sweeping everything away and destroying the whole world. But that is only how it appears on the outside. Inwardly, it was precisely through the Flood that the world became a pure world, a mikveh, a mikveh of purification. Noach, naycha derucha—rest for the spirit: the world reached an exceptionally elevated state, in which it was ready for Avraham Avinu to come, for the giving of the Torah to take place, and for it to become a Jewish world, a world of Torah, a world of Geulah. The same applies to every Jew on his journey. This is what King Shlomo says in the verse: “Mighty waters cannot extinguish the love.” What does that mean in the life of every Jew? In the Alter Rebbe’s words: The soul has a love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The soul has a love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a love whose “flashes are flashes of fire, a flame of Hashem”—a flame, a burning love that the soul has for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Then the animal soul comes

15:08 and throws mighty waters into it. The animal soul, the yetzer hara, throws mighty waters into a person: stray thoughts, confusion, worries and preoccupations. The Alter Rebbe speaks about the worries of earning a livelihood and explains that worries about livelihood do not mean [unclear]. What troubles a person is the worry that “perhaps he will lack bread”—that he does not know what tomorrow will bring. He is anxious, preoccupied and confused. A person may even have troubles, G-d forbid, but he knows that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with him. He knows that “Hashem your G-d will bless you in all that you do,” that Hakadosh Boruch Hu sends the blessing. He knows that “Hashem is my shepherd; I shall lack nothing,” and therefore he is not anxious. Even when difficult times come, he knows that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with him. “Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me”—he knows that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with him in every situation and circumstance, and therefore he is not anxious. But when a person is preoccupied, confused and worried, he feels the exile within himself. That is the Flood in a person’s soul: mighty waters come and seek to extinguish the love, to cool a person’s [unclear] and extinguish his love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The verse tells us that, in the story of Noach’s ark, you must know that “mighty waters cannot extinguish

16:29 the love.” All the preoccupations, all the worries, all the exiles, all the concealments, all the difficulties and all the doubly redoubled darkness that occurs in the world, in the world of exile, cannot extinguish a Jew’s love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Why not? The verse explains: because its “flashes are flashes of fire, a flame of Hashem.” A Jew’s love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not an artificial love. It is not a love that comes from the intellect. If the love were only an intellectual love—Hakadosh Boruch Hu is so good to me, so I love Him; Hakadosh Boruch Hu is so good, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is so great, and because I understand His greatness I love Him—if the love were founded only on the intellect, then sometimes, when the intellect could not sustain it, the love would go out. That is a love [unclear]. A Jew’s love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu is “a flame of Hashem,” a Divine love. Divine love cannot be extinguished. It is a love that flows from the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves a Jew; that is the source of a Jew’s love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And just as Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s love cannot be extinguished, so too, love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu cannot be extinguished. That is what the verse says. But that is not yet the Alter Rebbe’s novel insight. The Alter Rebbe comes and explains, in Likkutei—in a maamar in Torah Or, and says that you must know even more: not only can a Jew’s love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu

17:45 remain unwashed by all these mighty waters. On the contrary, it is precisely through the mighty waters that one reaches an even deeper love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. How does that happen? Precisely through the preoccupations, precisely through the things that alarm him, a Jew is not only not swept away; on the contrary, they fan the flame even more, the burning love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and bring it to an even greater depth. How can that be? That is a novel insight! It is not just that the waters do not sweep him away. That is what King Shlomo says. What does it mean? The Alter Rebbe explains that the love becomes even stronger. And here the Alter Rebbe explains the underlying principle: the entire purpose for which Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the animal soul, for which He created darkness, is so that light should have an advantage when it comes from darkness. Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the kelipos, the sitra achra and the animal soul so that a Jew would overcome them and thereby reach the first level, the first level of love of Hashem. As explained at length here in the maamar, the animal soul’s source is even higher than the source of the G-dly soul. Without going into the whole lengthy discussion of Tohu and Tikkun: the G-dly soul’s source is in the world of Tikkun, the world of Atzilus. But the source of the animal soul and the kelipah is in a higher world. “The higher something is, the lower it descends,” as the Maggid of Mezritch reveals. That means that the higher something

19:11 is at its source, the lower it falls. That is why the realm of Tohu, the kelipos and the sitra achra contain extraordinarily great sparks. The animal soul, too, comes from a very high world. “These are the kings who reigned before a king reigned over the children of Israel.” This refers to the world of Tohu, which is higher than the world of Tikkun. These are abundant lights that fell below through the breaking of the vessels, as explained in Kabbalah. When a person [unclear] understands the entire purpose—why Hakadosh Boruch Hu brings this upon him, why Hakadosh Boruch Hu allowed such a thing to happen: so that a Jew will overcome it. “When one man rules over another, it is to his own detriment.” In other words, the whole reason Hakadosh Boruch Hu allowed exile to exist is so that a Jew will stand firm against it, through his actions, through his [unclear], and thereby transform everything on the opposing side. On the contrary, this is how he reaches an even deeper love, a love of “with all your might,” a love without end. This is the greatest love, which breaks through all the concealments and transforms the concealments themselves, until darkness turns to light. That is the point explained at length in the maamar; that is the idea. And that is why the Flood is called “the waters of Noach”—naycha derucha, rest for the spirit. On the contrary, the Flood brings the greatest rest, the greatest satisfaction, because through the Flood one reaches from

20:29 The first day [unclear]. And this is what the verse in our parsha says: “The waters prevailed.” There is an abundance of water—concealments and obstacles, confusion and worries, darkness upon darkness, and a flood sweeping over the world. “The waters prevailed.” But we must know that the ark rose above the waters, higher than the mountains. What is a teivah? The Baal Shem Tov tells us, on the words “Come into the teivah”: a teivah is a word of Torah; a teivah is a word of prayer. A Jew, in the midst of exile, in the hardest times, has something to draw strength from: “Come”—enter with all your strength and warmth into the letters of Torah and the letters of prayer. Learn with vitality and daven with vitality, as the Baal Shem Tov says. And when we learn and daven—“Come into the teivah”—then “Make a window for the teivah” is fulfilled, and we have the power to turn a tzarah, a hardship, into a tzohar, a window. This is one of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings, which was given in a dream and is explained at length in many places: “Make a window for the teivah.” There is hardship. “It is a time of trouble for Yaakov, but from it he will be saved,” says the Baal Shem Tov. From the hardship itself, we make a window. “It is a time of trouble for Yaakov”—tzarah, tzohar, rotzeh, “wants.” When a Jew illuminates his will through prayer, davens with vitality and learns with vitality, he has the power to turn hardship into a window, until there is light, for all the Children of Israel without end. And this is the lesson, this is the point

21:55 that we must take from our parsha as guidance for these difficult times. We must know and remember that the entire purpose of this darkness is for Jews to grow stronger in their faith. As we see these days, Jews are growing stronger in their faith in a way we have never seen before. The warmth, the enthusiasm, the Ahavas Yisroel, the unity among Jews, and the way Jews are strengthening their commitment to Torah and mitzvos. We must make use of this awakening, grow stronger and stronger, and illuminate the world. And when Jews stand firm in these days, they turn hardship into a window and illuminate the world. Then we truly see it with our own eyes. And it is by Divine providence that Parshas Noach always falls in Cheshvan. When we reach “And Yaakov went on his way,” we enter precisely the time of the mighty waters, as we go out into the world and face its various worries, with the darkness upon darkness prevailing in the world added to those worries. We must know that, on the contrary, “And Yaakov went on his way” is with joy and a glad heart. Yes, we must throw ourselves wholeheartedly into serving Hashem and know that the entire purpose of the darkness is for Jews to grow stronger in their faith. To grow stronger with ever greater vigor, to make use of every minute in the final moments of exile, to engage in Torah and prayer—“Make a window for the teivah”—to bring more Jews close to Torah, more

23:13 Jews to mitzvos, more Jews to the study of Chassidus, to illuminate the world, and may we merit to see with our own eyes the true and complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu. And may we merit that “Didan Notzach” for which we are waiting. Amen, so may it be.