A Mid-Autumn Night's Stream (of Consciousness) This is what most people imagine when they think of the story of Noach and the flood. (Show toy animals, and picture of the ark and a rainbow.) This is what I think of. (Put animals into a container, and pour water into it)
Parashat Noach describes how God nearly destroyed all flesh, a mere ten generations after Creation (7:21-22). "The waters swelled and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark drifted upon the waters. When the waters had swelled much more upon the earth, all the highest mountains everywhere under the sky were covered. And all flesh that stirred on earth perished - birds, cattle, beasts, and all things that swarmed upon the earth, and all mankind. All in whose nostrils was the merest breath of life, all that was on dry land, died."
The story clearly depicts the scope of the devastation, but blanks on details that my imagination has since filled in. In my mind's eye I can see the many human and beastly bodies violently contorted by the gales and torrents. The water carries limbless figures with bloated bellies; people with gaping eyes and open mouths, who give entry to the waters as the boundaries between person and sea diminish. In the beginning lovers, still cling to each other in lifeless desperation as the waters rise around them. Some struggle to fight the powerful currents and pounding assault from above. Like a child willing immortality they plead to God, their hands enlarged from grasping for safety and assistance, only to close their shivering fingers around the wind. And the birds, which live their lives winging through the heavens, are forced down into the depths of the rising waters. After the forty days and nights, after the unleashed elements have erased the last traces of humanity and bestiality, lonely bodies float peacefully under the cloudless darkness, rhythmically following the lead of the waves.
What is the significance of God choosing water to be the tool of destruction?
In Parashat Bereshit, the only element of the world not created by God in the six days of creation was water. Chapter 1, verse 2 states, "the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water." On the first day God separated light from dark, and named day and night. It wasn't until the second day that God created an expanse called "sky" to separate the waters below from the waters above. Because water pre-dates creation, rain takes on significance beyond its role as the nurturer of soil and supporter of life on earth. When it rains it is as though the world is returning to an existence that pre-dates our conceptualization of God. The waters from above and below reunite. Sometimes this is gentle and pleasing: a drizzle, a sun shower, the first rain after a prolonged hot and dry spell. But sometimes the process is chaotic and violent: lightening, thunder, sleet, hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, and flooding of the lands which supply us with our food sources, homes and livelihoods.
Another way of perceiving the flood waters can be found in an oceanic metaphor by contemporary theologian Richard L. Rubinstein, "God is the ocean and we are the waves. In some sense each wave has a moment in which it is distinguishable as a somewhat separate entity. Nevertheless, no wave is entirely distinct from the ocean which is its substantial ground." This metaphor enables us to view the flood story as an allegory of humankind merging with God to the point of being unrecognizable, until, like the wave, it again distinguishes itself.
This is how Rashi illustrates the beginning of humankind, "For the purpose of creating man, the depths released a vapor that seeded the clouds and moistened the dust, so that when man was created - like this baker, who adds water to his dough and then kneads it! So here, first there was a moistening and then, 'God formed man.'" Rashi translates the word, emheh, which God uses for destruction (6:7), "He is dust, so I shall bring water upon him and dissolve him." According to Rashi humankind was created from the combination of dust and the cosmic waters of pre-creation, formulated like clay. Before clay has been fired, when it is still in its natural state, objects created from it are especially fragile and easily broken - vulnerable to ruin from exposure to water. These unfinished products are called green ware, with reference to their humble, earthen origins.
A physical manifestation of the pre-creation waters that continues from biblical times to the present is the mikvah, also referred to as mayim hayim (living waters), referring both to the preferred state of natural waters, such as an ocean or lake, and the man-made version which is required to contain a minimum of 200 gallons of rain water. In order to enter the mikvah one must remove all physical barriers to the water: cosmetics, jewelry, perfume, dirt and sweat. One becomes like an infant who first enters the world from her primordial womb-pool. The act of submerging in the mikvah is meant to result in the cessation of individual ego, and reunification with God - Adonai Echad. For those of us who are fond of our egos, this could be experienced as a destructive and scary process. Through immersion in the mikvah we merge our dust-life, or clay-self, with the source of life, and symbolically disintegrate in the water, and then emerge spiritually renewed.
The flood could be viewed as the ultimate mikvah, returning the earth's residents to the water that pre-existed descriptive life, or following Richard Rubinstein's metaphor, a wave indistinct from the ocean who is God. If the flood was the ultimate mikvah, then it logically follows that it also might have been experienced as the ultimate destruction because of the great terror it engendered in the many egos who attempted to stay afloat and separate.
I viewed my fortieth birthday, which took place almost seven years ago, as an appropriate time to return to making art integral and central to my life. I wrestled with finding time and space for making art during my years of birthing and nursing, which were activities that I initially experienced as creative. I witnessed internal squabbles of my primal urges to engage in messy practices against the solid, rational voices which said," make money, be a responsible member of society," and the damning voices that whispered, "No, no, no. You can't do that."
I ignored the voices and set before me the task of making a drawing every week about an aspect of that Shabbat's parashah. When I came to Parashat Noach, I asked myself, "What did this destruction look and feel like?" I drew dead bodies floating in water with heavy rains beating them down deeper, like a hammer to a nail into soft wood.
I quit this project before I even reached the story of Joseph. My children needed me, there were too many other demands on my time, and I grew tired of the frustration of squeezing in these art explorations like a vise between carpool, part-time teaching and my occasional venture at cleaning - not to mention moving my drawing materials from one end of the dining room table to the other.
Then last June I finally had the audacity to rent a studio and begin spending significant, if somewhat insufficient, amounts of time creating and making messes. Alone in my new studio, I faced the empty space. I was treading deep water without the presence of a lifeguard and no shore in sight. I found a life preserver and attempted to fill the bareness with something familiar; I returned to my question about the destruction of the flood that I had asked six years before in that frustrating and futile art-making attempt, "How did the destruction of the flood look and feel?" Maybe I was exploring the possibility that my artistic soul had died after years of neglect, drowned in a sea of suburban expectations to fit in. After all, I used to panic at the completion of every painting I had ever made, thinking that I could never do that again. I knew that my choice was the adage, "sink or swim."
This is where the ocean current is taking me. What if the flood story compels me, not because of destruction, but rather because of the possibility of rebirth and immersion with God? Like most opposites, destruction and creation are two sides of the same process. We build, and then we take away. Or we take away, and then we build. The potter puts the clay on the wheel and forms the pot, continually removing the excess clay. The painter makes love to the canvas and then sweeps away an entire day's work with the palette knife. The writer edits out whole paragraphs in endless rewrites. God makes the world, and then retreats to allow space for us to shadow the Divine through our own creativity. We cannot take an eraser to our mistakes, or pull out a fresh sheet of paper to replace the ones we are constantly soiling. But there is always God's promise for us to do teshuvah, to return to the essential source.
Art, like all passions, is similar to what I imagine to be the experience of drowning. I have visualized the figures of the flood story with their gaping orifices, freely admitting the seas into their bodies, boundary less with the waters. I have spent the day painting; only to wonder where the hours went, lost as I was in the doing. I think of a person who is drowning in sorrow as emoting with passion. Drowning in one's own tears is a salty reversal of the flood, as the pre-creation waters pour out from the body, melting the dry, unfired clay of one's earthly reality. Perhaps in passion one swallows whole the metaphoric primordial waters, intermingling with the Eternal.
The danger of drowning is, of course, drowning. Isaac of Akko wrote, "Now you my child, strive to see supernal light, for I have brought you into a vast ocean. Be careful! Keep your soul from gazing and your mind from conceiving, lest you drown. Strive to see, yet escape drowning." And so we are warned to balance passion with judgment, to heed our mortal constraints, and against contemplation of God beyond our moral capacity.
The outer garments of the flood story show us a sinful people who are punished for these sins by total annihilation. Peering beyond these garments one can see God's compassion. Water is liquid breath. It is the medium that God uses to embrace the souls on earth and breathe spiritual life into them. In these post-Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur days, the story of the flood reminds us that teshuvah, cannot be willed or controlled, but is ultimately an act of surrender to our desire to be one with our God, who is One.
Connecting to Parashat Chaye Sarah - Abraham sends a servant to the land of his birth in order to find a wife for Isaac. The servant decides on an extraordinary test for this purpose, to sort the worthy and the suitable from the unworthy and unsuitable. He brings his camels to the town well and asks a woman (not just any woman - Rebecca!) to draw water for himself and his camels. There are ten camels, each of whom may require 25 gallons of water after a trip in the desert. (By way of comparison an average bathtub holds approximately 50 gallons.) Rebecca passes the test with flying colors. This can be interpreted as a mark of her kindness and generosity, or her strength and determination. These certainly are qualities that she appears to possess. But just like the destruction by rain we read about in Parashat Noach, the central role that water plays in this test is significant.
As the Torah tells us, water traces its ancestry to before Bereshit. Water is not only life sustaining for our physical beings, but also for our spiritual beings, of which there is ultimately no separation from the physical. Abraham's servant and Rebecca make a contract at the well. What does the servant ask, and what does Rebecca agree to? He appears to ask for obedience and kindness, but he receives so much more. On a physical plane the water is necessary for the life and health of the travelers' bodies, establishing Rebecca's abundant capacity for nurturing and love. On a spiritual plane, Rebecca is expressing great passion and devotion to God. With a pure soul, she demonstrates her worthiness and ability for divine service. The earthly waters below echo the heavenly waters above. With water as her medium, Rebecca's act of generosity, resolve, and selflessness must reverberate throughout the heavens.