Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing some perspectives on the arc of the Genesis narrative leading to Abraham and how some of its eternal truths and enduring challenges might speak to us in our contemporary context. As we complete a summer that was the warmest on record, the emergency of climate change becomes even more apparent. The Genesis stories serve as one more reminder of our responsibilities to our planet’s wellbeing and the security of the generations that will follow us. (If you are starting to read these texts midweek, you may want to start from Monday’s Kavanah for context.)
Bereishit – Stories of Destruction
There are three stories of cataclysmic destruction in the book of Genesis. The first is the flood that restarts creation. Distraught over the evil that has overtaken the world, God erases it all and renews creation with Noah and his descendants. Only a few generations later those descendants pledge to build a tower to the heavens. The problem, says Franz Kafka, is not that they built it, it’s that they climbed it. Human hubris leads once again to the mistaken notion (in a redux of Adam and Eve consuming the forbidden fruit) that we can become Godlike in our power. And so, God quashes humanity, confounds their languages, and asserts that without a common language we’ll be less likely to overreach. And then…there’s Sodom and Gomorrah. Once again, God gazes into the world and sees a society worthy of destruction. This time God consults with Abraham—not for permission—but as a reminder: “This is what I do when a city abandons justice.” The cities are destroyed because there’s not one righteous soul to be found.
As the Torah tells it, God seems to believe that destruction will solve the problem of humanity. Of course, this conclusion is flawed. We are resourceful in our propensity to overreach. Whether we speak the same language or different ones, we can find common purpose—we can destroy and we can build. And here is the lesson from the stories of destruction: we can build arks, we can build towers, and we can build cities. We can do miraculous acts of good and universal salvation and we can overreach. These times demand that we refrain from overreaching, rather that we create and build, and invent, and restore, preserve, and protect. Our children and our children’s children are counting on us. Can we rise to the occasion and avert a climate emergency?
— Rabbi Ron Stern