After the Deluge

This has been a harrowing week in Cape May County. We seem to be in a perpetual weather pattern that brings storms to our shore, always hoping that the next one won’t be the big one. Well, sadly this time the big one came and now all in our community are feeling the after effects of Sandy on our doorstep.
The concept of destruction and flood fills our minds as we Jews began reading the book of Genesis in October with the most famous section of Parshat Noah, the story of the flood.
The story of Noah and the flood is an essential tale in our biblical heritage but what is often not known is that there is a similar flood story in near eastern mythology called the Epic of Gilgamesh written around the time of our biblical story was told. The Epic of Gilgamesh is, perhaps, the oldest written story on Earth. It comes to us from Ancient Sumeria, and was originally written on 12 clay tablets in cunieform script. It is about the adventures of the historical King of Uruk (somewhere between 2750 and 2500 BCE).
The epic begins with the gods being angry at mankind so they sent a flood to destroy mankind similar to the Noah story. The god Ea, warned Utnapishtim and instructed him to build an enormous boat to save himself, his family, and “the seed of all living things.” He does so, and the gods brought rain which caused the water to rise for many days.
When the rains subsided, the boat landed on a mountain, and Utnapishtim set loose first a dove, then a swallow, and finally a raven, which found land. The god Ishtar, created the rainbow and placed it in the sky, as a reminder to the gods and a pledge to mankind that there would be no more floods.
This ancient near eastern story very much mirrors our own biblical story of God wanting to destroy the world but the moral is quite different. In the Gilgimash epic the gods want to destroy mankind because they are noisy but one god wishes to save them so they can continue to be servants to him. In our story of Noah we are told God was angry because of the cruelty of mankind and thus the righteousness of Noah saved him and humanity.
We see the idea of a flood story being central to these two faiths but one has a moral of kindness the other of a cruel nature. And thus looking at the morality of the story of Hurricane Sandy this past week we need to understand that floods and natural destruction is an essential aspect of life but how humanity deals with tragedy defines us in our compassion to our fellow man.
The rainbow that symbolizes the covenant between man and God placed before Noah listed the requirements of human’s response to suffering: we are to open our hearts and offer compassion to all living things at all times. Compassion is our response to the natural disaster that is put before us. That is what can offer us shelter in these difficult times.
As I ponder the difficult times ahead for those in our community digging themselves out of Hurricane Sandy I think of the lyrics of Jackson Brown in his song “Before the Deluge” and the prayer he offers at the end of these lyrics.
“Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge
Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
By and by–
When the light that’s lost within us reaches the sky.”
May our community find the strength and courage, the insight and judgment, the love of humanity to do their best to bring our wisdom and technology to alleviate suffering, to heal injury and to restore the services and infrastructure upon which our lives are built. And may we all find ourselves ready to give support, encouragement, love and gifts as needed. Let us pray that as we sift through this destruction we find the good that exists in our world and rebuild our community with the love and compassion we hope to reveal to the world.
Rabbi Jeffrey Lipschultz is the spiritual leader of Beth Judah Temple in Wildwood. He welcomes your comments at dvjewish@rof.net