A Flood of Holiness: The Secret the Rebbe Revealed About Our Era | Parshas Noach

00:00 I want to share with you today a wonderful explanation I was privileged to hear from the Rebbe at a farbrengen around forty years ago, at this time of year, in 5746. It was Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan. The Rebbe held a farbrengen that night, the night of Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan. That was not usual, but it was precisely the transition from Tishrei to Cheshvan, and the Rebbe held a wonderful farbrengen to give us the tone, the strength, and the way to leave the month of holidays and festivals—the seventh month, which is, as our Sages say, “sated and satiating” with all its festivals and holy days—and enter the ordinary weekdays of Mar Cheshvan. It is a very sharp transition. The Rebbe’s wonderful explanations give us the right perspective on how a Jew should live at such a time. The point we will discuss today is also connected with the weekly parsha, Parshas Noach. Around Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, we always come to read and study Parshas Noach. This is the time to learn about the Flood. Sometimes we wonder what message there is for us in reading about the Flood specifically on these days, as we move from Tishrei to Cheshvan. The Rebbe spoke about this often, with different explanations each year, and I am sharing what I was privileged to hear from the Rebbe that year, in 5746. The Flood, especially as described in the Midrashim, opens a window that helps us understand our own time much better: both this time of year, the transition from Tishrei to Cheshvan, and the times we are living through in the world. We are in a period that could be called a kind of flood. Sadly, given the state of the world and all that we have been going through over the last two years, that expression has also been used in a far from positive way: the flood that swept over the Jewish people

02:37 and the Land of Israel. But what the Rebbe said forty years ago completely changes our perspective and allows us to see things positively. The Flood itself, the story in Parshas Noach, can be understood in its plain, outward sense. When a person first reads the Torah’s account, he naturally sees the Flood as something negative. But when we look at the Midrashim and the inner dimension of Torah, especially the teachings of Chassidus, our entire view of the Flood changes, and we see it positively. We can do exactly the same on these days. Looking at everything the Jewish people have been through in recent months and years, we can see it with our own eyes, in what you might call a superficial view, and see a flood—a flood that, sadly, is not positive. At the same time, with the right perspective, which Chassidus opens our eyes to see, we can look at our time and see a positive flood, a wonderful flood of holiness. That is what we will discuss today, and it is what I was privileged to hear from the Rebbe back then. It is all based on a truly wonderful Midrash in this week’s parsha. In the weekly parsha we learn about the Flood. When we read about it, we see what the Torah says: “All flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.” The conduct of the generation of the Flood was corrupt by every measure: “For the earth was filled with violence,” with all the interpretations of that verse. Then Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “The end of all flesh has come before Me.” As it were, He was saying: I have had enough of this whole state of affairs. I want to erase the evil, the impurity, and the darkness brought about by the people of the generation of the Flood. I will make a new world, a cleaner world, a more refined world, a purer world. That was the purpose of the Flood. As is well known, the Flood was not

04:52 only a punishment, but also a kind of purification, bringing purity to the world. That is why it lasted forty days, like a mikvah, which contains forty se’ah, along with various other explanations and interpretations. The point was to purify the earth. But there is a puzzling Midrash in the weekly parsha that says something wonderful. It asks: Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu choose water? Why bring a flood of water upon the world? If Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted to punish and erase the generation of the Flood, He could have done so in entirely different ways. Why did it actually happen in this particular way? The Torah explains at length how rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and how afterward there was a flood and the waters rose, and so on—all the details of the story that the Torah tells us. The Midrash says something wonderful. Before the creation of the world, which we learned about last week in Parshas Bereishis, the world was filled with water, as it says, “And the spirit of G-d hovered over the surface of the waters.” In the words of the Midrash, the world was “water within water,” and the praise of Hakadosh Boruch Hu rose from the waters. In other words, all the praise and song that Hakadosh Boruch Hu received came from the waters. As it were, it was the waters that sang and praised and extolled Hakadosh Boruch Hu before the creation of the world. Then Hakadosh Boruch Hu moved the waters aside, brought forth dry land, and created the world upon it. When the generation of the Flood sinned, with all that had happened, Hakadosh Boruch Hu said: I am going to return the world to its previous state. Just as before creation the world was water within water and the praise of Hakadosh Boruch Hu rose from the waters, I will restore the earlier state. Now, too, I want to restore the

07:00 state in which the waters continue to praise Me. The praise of Hakadosh Boruch Hu will rise from the waters, and so He brought back the rain—the water that had been there before the creation of the world. When we look at this Midrash, it turns our thinking upside down. How can we say this about a flood of water that came to punish, erase, and wipe out the evil in the world? The Midrash comes and tells us: No. We are talking about waters that praise Hakadosh Boruch Hu, about His praise rising from the waters. This helps us understand that every story in the Torah is not merely a story, and that the same is true of everything that happens in the world. The Torah is a book of instruction that teaches us how to view the reality of creation. Every event we see in the world, just like the Flood, has its outward, superficial, shallow appearance. Yet within that very situation, at that very time, things are also happening on a deeper level. The things that appear negative from the outside also have a positive, deeper aspect. As we know, Chassidus speaks about this a great deal in connection with various negative things we find in the Torah, such as the curses mentioned in Parshas Bechukosai and Parshas Ki Savo. From the outside, we see them as negative, but inwardly, on the contrary, they contain hidden blessings, lofty blessings. There are well-known accounts about this. The Gemara tells of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai sending his son to receive blessings from great Sages, from the Tannaim. Some of them said things to him that sounded very unpleasant, and he came back in tears. What happened here? Instead of blessing me, they cursed me! Rabbi Shimon told him: On the contrary, those were the loftiest blessings, clothed in that form. This tells us that every

09:05 In everything in the world, there is an outward way of looking at it and an inward way of looking at it, and both are present at the same time. The same is true of the Flood. On the simple level, yes, as we said, the Flood came to remove the darkness and evil from the world. On the deeper level, the Flood came to bring the world to a state like the one before creation. Before the world was created, there was no existence that opposed Hakadosh Boruch Hu—there was no world, no creation, nothing in which opposition could exist. On the contrary, there was only Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “The whole earth is full of His glory”—except there was not even an earth. Or, in the familiar expression, before the world was created, there was only He and His Name: so to speak, Hakadosh Boruch Hu and His light, and nothing besides Him. So the whole of existence cries out, “There is nothing besides Him.” In its inner essence, the Flood was meant to bring the world back to that place. That is what made the world ready for Noach to come afterward and begin anew. As the Midrash says, “Noach found a new world.” So to speak, he found a cleaner, purer world, because the waters had filled the earth and praise of Hakadosh Boruch Hu rose from the waters. The world became permeated with G-dly light, and then Noach could come and bring Hakadosh Boruch Hu into the world. Later came Avraham Avinu, the giving of the Torah, and all the revelation of G-dliness in the world. It all began thanks to the waters that filled the world at the time of the Flood. And the message of the story of the Flood reaches us too, in our own time. On the one hand, there is a flood: the evil and darkness we have seen recently, things that are simply beyond comprehension. Especially now, when we hear from the captives, the hostages, as they tell us

11:09 harrowing things about what they went through in captivity, in the places where they were held. Things you cannot understand at all. How can such a thing be? Predatory beasts, darkness and evil. And yet, at that very same time, especially in recent months and years, while we see this kind of evil and darkness in the world, with antisemitism growing on every side and in every place, we also see the world filling with water—the waters of knowledge. The Rambam, speaking about the days of Moshiach, quotes the verse, “The earth will be filled with knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.” Recently, we have seen how thirsty the world is to hear Torah, how thirsty it is to hear the inner teachings of Torah. All the barriers have come down. Wherever a person goes in the world, people want to hear a word of Torah. People want to hear a word of the inner teachings of Torah. Their light is spreading everywhere in the world: “The earth will be filled with knowledge of Hashem.” People want to know. There is a thirst to know Hakadosh Boruch Hu. There is a wonderful passage in the Rambam’s Laws of Mikvaos. The Rambam says that a mikveh brings purity to a person who enters it. A person enters the mikveh in a state of impurity. Of course, a mikveh is not ordinary cleaning or washing, because impurity is not an ordinary physical thing; it is spiritual. So a person enters the mikveh, immerses in forty se’ah of water, and his entire body is covered by the water. Through that, he goes from impure to pure. What, the Rambam asks, does the mikveh allude to? A person immersing himself in “the pure waters of knowledge,” in the Rambam’s words. The waters of knowledge—Torah, which is knowledge. To know Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to learn

13:24 about Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to want to understand the greatness and wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Those are the waters of knowledge, which purify a person of all harmful views and improper character traits, as the Rambam writes at the end of the Laws of Mikvaos. So that is the positive message of Parshas Noach. According to this Midrash, the Torah tells us that when we want to bring purity to the world, when we want to bring purity to a person, there must be a spiritual flood—the waters of knowledge—until the world is surrounded by water on every side. We are witnessing this spiritual flood, the spread of Torah, especially recently. So much light, so much wisdom, so much Torah is available everywhere in the world, including through all the technological means that reach those places: Torah classes in every kind of format and every possible way. Today, everyone has an opportunity, with the greatest ease, to understand, to delve into, to absorb and to enjoy the light of Torah and the light of its inner teachings. That is what it means to bring the world to a state of being surrounded by water on every side: “The earth will be filled with knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.” That is the message of Parshas Noach: a flood of holiness. To bring a person into the waters of knowledge, so that he is entirely immersed in the waters of Torah and lives by it fully. But then the question arises: Why, in the end, did Hakadosh Boruch Hu tell Noach, “Leave the ark,” rather than remain amid the Flood? And why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu swear that He would never again bring a flood upon the world? If the Flood is something positive, why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu make a covenant not to do it again? This brings us to the more important message: true, the Flood is something positive, but remaining in the Flood is not the goal either. The goal is to bring the light of Torah and the light of its inner teachings into the reality of the world. Precisely onto dry

15:26 land. Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Noach, “Leave the ark.” There comes a time when a person must go out into the world and bring the light of Torah and its inner teachings into the reality of creation, into the practical laws of Torah and the life of this world. He must live in the world, and within the world’s reality be permeated with the waters of knowledge, with Torah. That is the transition we spoke about, from the month of Tishrei to the month of Cheshvan, and that is the wonderful thing about Parshas Noach. We always read it during these days of transition from Tishrei to Cheshvan. The month of Tishrei is a pure flood, a holy flood. We are surrounded by festivals. Especially this year, we went from Shabbos to Yom Tov, from Yom Tov to Shabbos, and from Shabbos to Yom Tov. A person’s entire existence is permeated with holiness, purity, celebration, joy, rejoicing, light, the shul, and the Torah scroll. Throughout Tishrei, we are in the midst of a flood of holiness, the waters of knowledge. Then Tishrei ends and we enter Cheshvan—Marcheshvan—an entirely ordinary month, a weekday month with no festivals or special occasions. Now comes the transition: bringing the light of the waters of knowledge onto dry land, into everyday life, making the physical world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is our message at this extraordinary time in our history. We see everything crumbling and fading away—all the evil, all the darkness. Little by little, the darkness is breaking and the light of the Geulah is bursting forth from every side. This is the time of “Behold, he stands behind our wall, looking through the windows, peering through the lattice,” as the verse says, as the prophet says. May we merit to see it with our own eyes. For our part, we must do our work today: devote ourselves, both for our own sake and for the sake of other Jews, to bringing the light of Torah and the light of its inner teachings; to fill

17:31 the world with knowledge, with knowledge of Torah and its inner teachings, and to bring that into life on dry land as well. That means allowing there to be a world. Not running away from the world, not shutting ourselves off from it. On the contrary: “Leave the ark.” Enter the world. Come into its reality, into everyday life. “Let all your deeds be for the sake of Heaven”; “Know Him in all your ways.” Bring Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the inner teachings of Torah into everyday life. In this way, may we merit, speedily in our days, even at the beginning of Cheshvan, what the Midrash says: that the dedication of the Third Beis Hamikdash will take place in Cheshvan. As is known, the Midrash says that Cheshvan complained because the dedication was not celebrated when King Shlomo finished building the Beis Hamikdash in Cheshvan. Hakadosh Boruch Hu promised the month that the Third Beis Hamikdash would be dedicated in Cheshvan. May that indeed happen this year. May we merit to see the building of the Third Beis Hamikdash and its joyous dedication, and may we also merit to see “the earth filled with knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.” Amen, may it be His will.