Noah and November 9th

Noah has been on an ark for months with his immediate family and lots of animals and insects. Think about that. Tight quarters with my inlaws is bad enough for a few days, weeks would be impossible, and months? Fuggetaboudit! Add a couple of elephants and a few hundred flies, mosquitos and other biting, flying insects to that mix? It would be enough to drive even the most sane person crazy!

As the waters settled and it was time to step out of the ark, Noah must have wondered, “What now? Do we just start over? Pretend it never happened? How do we relate to one another, we ‘survivors’? Who will we be now ... after the flood?” The Flood was a defining moment in Noah’s life, and a defining moment in the books we call the Torah.

Sometimes this Torah portion affords us the joy of singing about the “floody floody,” but sometimes, we are reminded that this is a story of devastation and trauma. The world as they had known it had ceased to be. And Noah now needs to figure out what he’s going to do.

The past many months for our country have been very painful. We have witnessed waves of hatred and deep discord, escalating racial tension and acts of unthinkable violence. What happened on November 8th is, of course, critically important. But perhaps more so, is what happens on today, November 9th.

For Noah, in the days after the Flood, there was devastation all around him. The land destroyed, his heart broken, his world as he had known it all gone. These were deep cracks and rifts tearing his soul apart.

We, too, have unearthed deep cracks in our nation’s foundation, cracks which were previously in the shadows, but have now come out into the light of day. And, like Noah, out of our feeling of trauma, we, too, need to figure out,  “What now?” What should we do with these cracks which have emerged, with the great fractures unveiled between people, now laid bare, seething with anger, suspicion, blame and mistrust?

November 8th was a big day, but November 9th, after the flood, we have to decide who we will be as people of hope, and what we will do, what should we do, about these cracks that have been revealed.

The Torah says: vayachel Noach ish ha’adamah, vayita karem – Noah, a man of the land, a tiller of the soil, began to plant a vineyard. After the flood, Noah plants. He sows the grape seeds and puts the shoots of the grapevine into the earth. He uses the barrenness and earlier devastation of the land to create something beautiful. He doesn’t cover over it, or run from it, or stamp it out – he plants and waters and nurtures and hopes, and out of a naked land barely recovered from a devastating flood, Noah makes something grow from it.

If our text stopped there, we’d have a beautiful packaged answer. But it doesn’t, and we don’t.

The very next verse says: vayesht min hayayin vayishkar. Noah drank of the wine from his vineyard and became drunk. It goes on to describe a Noah who, in the trauma of his experience, drinks himself into a stupor so he can forget it all. Here, he does run from it, paints over the cracks, tries to escape from all the ugliness that has been unearthed.

Perhaps seeing that life was not the same, nowhere close to the same as it had been prior to the Flood, had been too shocking.

Maybe he missed his best friend, Fred, who had lived down the street. Sadly, Fred had “missed the boat” so to speak. Maybe Noah realized how hard it would be to start completely over, with almost nothing. Maybe he was so tired of working so hard, and now, here he was, starting over again.

In either case, in these verses, we are offered two paths for how we can choose to be after the flood.

We could drown out the pains that have come to light, drink or eat ourselves into oblivion, and pray to just somehow get through the next few years of political nightmare. We can hope that the media cycles run out and go dark and pretend that the rifts between people are a passing dilemma. Like Noah, we can drink from our vineyards until we forget.

OR… we can acknowledge the cracks that have emerged and admit that we have deep fractures in our society. We could take our trauma and the discord between people, and plant something there. We can work hard to rebuild a land devastated and torn apart by hatred. We can choose to be the change we so desperately need. We can stand as guardians, so that what rights have been put in place are not taken back, and to continue to fight and work forward for the changes that still need to be made. We can plant a vineyard.

This day, will I choose to plant a vineyard and tend a young shoot with the hopeful expectation that something of this ravaged earth can still be beautiful and nurturing? Do I continue to do my part to ensure the freedom and equality that is so easily bantered about but so difficultly put into practice, or do I throw my hands into the air and give up, thinking that perhaps in four years we can make it right again? Do I choose to keep hope alive, or do I choose to give up?

Today would be the very day to give up and walk away, and pray like hell that in four years we can have a reset. Today would be the very day to ask what the hell am I doing, and who the hell do I think I am that I can make a difference by working so hard to make something good of my life. Today would be the day to give up, to eat and drink into oblivion, to put myself into the deep fog of surrender, wondering if there is even a reason to make it through the next few years.

Or today would be the very day to recognize that I must continue, I must go on, I must still fight the good fight, even though it will now be that much more difficult.

Today would be the very day to squeeze more hope out of the word hope than hope ever knew it had.

Today would be the very day to remember that MORE THAN HALF OF THE VOTERS elected a woman president. MORE THAN HALF THE VOTERS made the better choice. MORE THAN HALF THE VOTERS stand with me. MORE THAN HALF THE VOTERS are feeling as stunned and devastated as I am.

And MORE THAN HALF is the majority.

We can and we will, and we must not let go of that tiny thread of hope. We must stand united and continue onward. We must plant that vineyard. We must till and water and nurture and bring forth beauty from this devastation we feel. We must never let the devastation, the darkness, the hatred, the negativity win. We must keep alive the most important thing we have left: hope.

We must plant a vineyard of hope and courage, and if we are to get drunk, let us then get drunk on the wine of hope and courage. Let us be giddy with hope and deliriously courageous!

November 8th was a day I never hoped to see, but November 9th is the day we link hands and stand strong together, knowing that MORE THAN HALF stand strong with us. And together we will plant vineyards of hope!