When Do We Enter The Teivah?

I spent part of this past week in New York for my niece's Bat Mitzvah. It was wonderful to be with family, and I also had a chance to catch up with some old friends and colleagues.

Inevitably, many of our conversations turned to what is happening in Israel, the rise of antisemitism, and the state of American Jewry. One old friend, who is psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, told me that he tries to attend every pro-Israel rally at the university that he can. Another friend, a lawyer working in corporate law in New York City, told me that he now takes off his kippah at work, something he had not felt the need to do in the past. These two conversations captured for me the two very different ways we can live as Jews today in the world.  

The Ishbitzer Rebbe, in his Mei Hashiloach, finds surprising guidance for precisely this question in the story of Noach. He describes Noah’s teivah as protection during ימי הזעם, “days of rage,” and suggests that the teivah teaches us how to protect ourselves when anger and evil flourish around us. And it certainly feels as though we are living through our own ימי הזעם today. The Ishbitzer quotes the Gemara from Pesachim 113b:  

שלשה הקדוש ברוך הוא אוהבן: מי שאינו כועס, ומי שאינו משתכר, ומי שמעביר על מדותיו. God loves three: one who does not become angry, one who does not become intoxicated, and one who is forgiving. (Pesachim 113b)

The Ishbitzer argues that Noach utilized these three different methods in order to survive during the days of rage he was experiencing while in the teivah. First, Hashem instructs Noach -   עשה לך תבת ,sulfur, something that burns ,גפרית build the teivah from gofer. He connects gofer with ,עצי גפר representing the need to contain our anger. Second, not becoming intoxicated represents maintaining יישוב הדעת, our clarity and composure, even when the world around us has lost its own. This Noach did by creating order in the teivah amidst all the chaos. And third,  מעביר על מדותיו asks us to go one step further, not only controlling our anger outwardly, but learning to let go of the resentment we carry inside. This is captured in the pasuk -  אותה מבית ומחוץ בכופר Noach –וכפרתsealed the ark with tar, but וכפרת can also mean to forgive. The Ishbitzer does not spell this out directly, but perhaps Noach forgave the sinners of his generation.

I take from this Chassidic interpretation the following lesson. On the one hand, we cannot retreat from the world. Jews need to defend ourselves, fight antisemitism, and not relinquish our place in the public square. I worry that there is a danger of Jews beginning to take off their kippot, hide their Israeli flags, and make themselves less visible. We cannot simply disappear. We must stand up for ourselves proudly and unabashedly.  

But we also do not have to fight every fight. We don't need to respond to every twitter post, read every comment, or engage every person who hates us. Sometimes protecting ourselves means stepping away, preserving our yishuv hada'at, and not allowing the anger outside to consume us. Perhaps that is why the story of Noach contains two Divine commands: בא אל התבה, “come into the teivah,” and later, צא מן התבה, “leave the teivah.” Sometimes we need to enter the teivah, to focus on ourselves, our families and our communities, to look within and strengthen what we have built. And sometimes we need to leave the teivah, go out into the world, and fight the fights that need to be fought. Perhaps the challenge of living through our own ימי הזעם is knowing which of those moments we are in. What is your coping mechanism? How do you weather the storm in your own life?

Shabbat Shalom,

Rav Ben David