Planetary Casualty (Noach)
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. -Adlai Stevenson
The Generation of the Flood was pretty bad. They were so bad that God regretted creating them. However, instead of wiping the slate clean and starting completely from scratch (as the Midrash states happened multiple times before), God famously saves Noah and his family, as well as a male and female of every animal on the ark, which Noah was conveniently commanded to build. God subsequently drowns the rest of humanity, the animal kingdom, and the world in what most ancient civilizations referred to as “The Flood.”
The Bechor Shor on Genesis 6:13 wonders as to why the rest of the world needed to suffer if it was primarily man who was guilty of doing evil in God’s eyes? Why did almost all of the animal life on the planet need to be destroyed? Why was the earth ravaged by the destruction of the Flood? Why not just punish man exclusively?
The Bechor Shor explains that the rest of the world, in fact, the entire planet, has only one reason for existence: Man! The world was created for man. The world was created to support and provide sustenance, shelter, and resources to man; and man was enjoined by God to eke out a living from the earth, to cultivate the earth, to develop it, to conquer it, to mine its riches and build himself and civilization (as so eloquently articulated by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik when describing “Majestic Adam” in his monumental “The Lonely Man of Faith”).
As such, when God punishes humanity, the devastation of the world is merely collateral damage. The planet along with all of its minerals, flora, and fauna, has no reason to exist without man. Therefore, when man is punished, the planet suffers as well.
As much as man needs a healthy planet, the planet needs healthy man. It needs an ethical, moral, spiritual man who will remain worthy of the planet’s munificence, but who will also not overexploit its bounty. Man who will not pollute and toxify its air and water resources, who will not mine and dig and drill and blast without a care as to the repercussions, be it to the land, the animals, as well as to the native human populations.
May we enjoy the beautiful planet God has created for man, responsibly.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ben-Tzion
Dedication
To the speedy recovery of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu among all those in need of recovery.
