Thanks to Hazon friend, Devora Kimelman-Block for sending us her d’var Torah on last week’s parsah, Noah.  You may recognize Devora as the woman who pioneered a Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA at her shul, Tifereth Israel, or for her quickly-growing reputation as a “kosher, free range meat” pioneer.  Check out the “Meet your Meat” shabbaton Tifereth Israel is hosting at the end of the month.

In the story of Noah and the flood earth had gone to ruin and was filled with lawlessness and corruption.

“An end of all flesh has come before me and the earth is filled with wrongdoing through them; here, I am about to bring ruin upon them, along with the earth.” (6:13).

What constituted this lawlessness, corruption or wrongdoing is not specified. What did the pre-flood world look like? It seems that there was massive chaos and disorderliness in a number of ways.

In the beginning of Genesis, God creates (or orders) the world. The creation of the world really seems to be about putting things in place. First there was chaos, waters, darkness. God puts separates the light and dark, the waters above from the waters below (which enables land), God sets up a light for ruling the night and a light for ruling the day and so on. God also during this time makes “all green plants for eating” (1:30). Notably the green plants were the only thing that animals, birds, fish and human were assigned to eat. God perhaps hoped that setting all these things in place would be structure enough for the world. By the time of the flood, however, chaos and corruption reined.

By the time the flood came what did the world look like? Although this corruption and ruin is not specified, some possible scenarios can be suggested…

 • First, Jerusalem Talmud suggests the “lawlessness” to mean people no longer believed in the government and slipped into anarchy.
• Second, “all flesh” (human and animal) was implicated this corruption.  The animal kingdom along with humankind had become ruined which the (Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin) says is a result of the intermating of species which illustrates a breakdown of order.
• Third, a result of this corruption is that there was something wrong with the physical earth itself. One commentator suggests that the topsoil had to be washed away in the flood suggesting that it was somehow ruined. A ruined earth doesn’t have to contribute to chaos, but it is plausible that living things who are supposed to be eating green plants might get pretty desperate if there are no green plants to eat.
• Lastly, the lead up to the flood story is defiantly one of the oddest passages in Genesis.

“When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the divine beings saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and took wives from among those that pleased them – The Lord said, ‘My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years.’ – It was then, and later too, that the giants appeared on earth  - when the divine beings cohabitated with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.” (6:1-4)

This passage speaks of divine beings and giants having sex with female humans who then bore children. This passage’s origin and oddness has been much written about, but it is unarguable that it clearly shows breakdown of hierarchy and boundries. Where is the separation between the divine and human? This passage’s placement immediately before God decides to take action on Noah’s generation suggests that these divine/earthly match-ups may have been a last straw for God.

So by the time that God became (6:7) “sorry that I made them” there was complete lawlessness and corruption. People having sex with the divine, anarchy, animals interbreeding and a ruined earth.

Then the flood. The waters from above and the waters from below returned to their pre-creation, pre-Genesis state.

In (6:11) “then burst all the well-springs of the great Ocean and the sluices of the heavens opened up. The torrent was upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.”

Reboot. Then God seems to change and feel pretty bad about destroying all of creation. In a beautifully poetic section, God says,

“I will never again strike down all living-things as I have done; never again, all the days of the earth, shall sowing and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night ever cease.” 

It is clear, however, that if the world is to remain uncorrupt, more structures/laws need to be put in place. So following the beautiful “never again” verse, God adds structure. (9:2)

“Fear of you, dread of you shall be upon all the wildlife of the earth and upon all the fowl of the heavens, all that crawls on the soil and all the fish of the sea - into your hand they are given. All things crawling about that live, for you shall they be, for eating, as with the green plants, now give you all.
However: flesh with its life, its blood, you are not to eat!
However, too: for your blood, of your own lives, I will demand reckoning – from all wild-animals I will demand it, and from humankind, from every man regarding his brother, reckoning for human life. Whoever now sheds human blood, for that human shall his blood be shed, for in God’s image he made humankind.”

Before the flood, there was no hierarchy, not order, no boundaries. Divine having sex with humans, anarchy, all life eating who knows what. The initial way God maintains order is to solidify the hierarchy. God above humans above animals.

But how to maintain the hierarchy? First, all beasts dread humans because now we eat them and they are our prey. Secondly, so that humans don’t get too big headed and start trying to be divine, we are not allowed to eat the animal’s blood. The flesh may be eaten, but not the blood. In ancient times, people thought that they could renew their vitality through eating blood. Blood is the symbol of life and belongs to God alone and does life itself. God gave all life life. So we may eat the flesh, but not the blood. This practice is a constant physical reminder that above us is God.

The last command given is that humans may not kill humans. The placement of this command is interesting. It comes immediately following laws about what and what not to eat. Could it be telling us not to eat each other? Implying that in the corrupt pre-flood days, humans ate humans? In any case, this commandment puts all humans on equal footing with all other living things below us on the hierarchy and God above.

There is a second way in which this hierarchy or order is established. Immediately upon leaving the arc, the first thing that Noah does is an animal sacrifice to God. In ancient times for an Israelite to eat an animal meant that it needed to be sacrificed. And sacrifice was the ancient Israelite’s form of religious worship. You kill animals so that you can be raised to God. So God maintained the hierarchical order through the establishment of worship.

If this hierarchy is maintained (through what humans do and don’t eat and through the establishment of worship by animal sacrifice) then hopefully it will provide a basis for the order needed in the world and God will never again have to destroy the world. Later in the Torah God adds to these first laws, but these laws are God’s initial attempt at lawmaking.

God’s new laws are a result of accommodating for the weakness of forgetting our place in the hierarchy. This breakdown of order was so severe that it led to anarchy, corruption and lawlessness so complete that the earth itself became poisoned and all life had to be destroyed. In today’s modern age we have again forgotten our place in the order and that like in pre-Noah times, we are stretching above, or more likely forgetting, the divine.

From biblical until recent modern times ago this is how our people obtained their beef. Cows were raised on pasture. They lived lives that we picture cows living; spending most of their days wondering around eating grass and chewing their cud. One day they’d head off to slaughter which would be done by someone relatively local. Today this kind of meat is an exception.

Now most Americans don’t want to think about the meat we eat. We don’t want to know that the life our cows or chickens led was more akin to a cog in a mass producing machine than a cow or a chicken’s life. We like that meat is so cheap that we can eat it everyday, but we don’t want to think about the process that makes it that cheap. These animal’s life experiences are reflected not only in the taste and quality of the meat. If you would like to read more about our meat, I recommend The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.

From the time that God allowed meat to be permissible for human consumption until recent modern times this was your life: You spend a minimum of 60% of your time feeding yourself. You plant crops on part of your acreage. You raise chickens, cows and other animals on another part. The cows eat pasture, the chickens eat bugs found in cow poop. Chicken poop fertilizes the pasture (as does the cow poop – but chicken poop is better). Cows get milked, eggs get gathered. The cows help harvest the harvest and the next spring everything shifts pastures. The people plant in a new nicely and pooply fertilized part of their acreage and the cows and chickens move to new pasture. If all goes well it is a simple, very sustainable, cycle.  Of course, many times all did not go well.  There was too much rain and there was too little. There was disease. There were pests. And then came industrialization – the cure to all these problems.

In ancient times, humans overall treated their animals well. They invested financially, emotionally and physically in the animal’s well-being. They cared for them and in doing so had a connection to them. Humans also needed them to be their plows and egg and dairy providers. Protein was mainly eggs and dairy. And a couple of special times a year (festivals, weddings, and such) humans would slaughter one of the older not-so-productive animals. The decision to slaughter an animal was a big deal since it meant that you were destroying your plow. Until modern times meat consumption was rare for most people which is easy to forget when it is now easily available to us at every meal.

It is sad that it takes an investigative reporter to go undercover to tell us where our food comes from. What is it doing to our planet, our bodies, the people who are working in the factories, the animals.  Perhaps progress is not so positive.

At the end of the flood story for the first time in the Torah God makes a brit or covenant. In Gen. 9:12 God refers to the first rainbow and says,

“This is the sign of the covenant which I sent between me and you and all living beings that are with you, for ageless generations; My bow I set in the clouds, so that it may serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

Is this a brit between God and humans? Not at all, the covenant is between God and humans and all living beings and the earth. In case you didn’t catch it the first two mentions, God continues,

“It shall be: when I becloud the earth with clouds and in the clouds the bow is seen, I will call to mind my covenant that is between me and you and all living beings – all flesh; never again shall the waters become a Deluge, to bring all flesh to ruin.”

And then God repeats it a final time,

“When the bow is in the clouds, I will look at it, to call to mind the age-old covenant between God and all living beings – all flesh that is upon the earth. God said to Noah: This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”

How many times in this brit does God say the word all or “kol”?  7 times! God is trying very, very, very, very, very, very, very hard to make us remember that the covenant is for all, all, all, all, all, all, that’s right – all. All the earth, all the living creatures all that breathes and all humans. Perhaps God used “kol” so many times out of worry that in our arrogance we might forget that this covenant is not only meant for us. The state of the world today is proven evidence that God had good reason to worry that we might forget about the “all”. By treating the animals that we eat like they are not living creatures at all, and by disregarding the earth, we hijack this covenant. My hope is for us to make sure that all creatures and all the earth are sustained under God’s rainbow covenant and that we no longer pretend it was only meant for us.

Purchase Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma here.