Regret, Repair, & Floods (Noach)

There were a few things that really struck me this week when reading the Torah portion.

First, that though God believes that Noah is the only righteous one of his generation (I guess that includes his family, because he saves them all), God regrets the destruction God has wrought on Earth. Even after God concludes that pretty much only evil lurks in the hearts of men.

My response is, so should we regret all the destruction that war causes, even as we may hold the belief that all the people being killed or maimed or deported or imprisoned or whatever, hold evil in their hearts. It’s right there in the Torah.

God plegdes never to do such a thing again.

And so should we.

The next thing is that God tells Noah to make sure that he bring all, I mean all, the animals onto the ark. Specifically, God says, those that are pure and impure, those that we are allowed to eat and those we are not.

This implies that all living things and people are equally valuable and have a place on this earth.

We should take these messages to heart and begin to live by them.

May it be so, and Shabbat Shalom.