As Lucy explodes her brother’s essential understanding regarding the Great Pumpkin she also introduces an important idea about how our language and usage impact on our understanding of the nature of God.
Our Torah portion presents us with a variety of images of God using human terms of reference to describe the Infinite and bridge the distance that separates us from the Holy One. The parasha opens with an expression of parental pride by God who is proud of Noah for Noah’s devotion and commitment to doing good. At the same time God is deeply disappointed by the rest of Creation, human and animal, for their betrayal of their best selves, preferring behaviors destructive to themselves, others, and the world.
Divine disappointment leads to anger, judgement, and consequences. God still cares about Creation and instructs Noah how a remnant is to be saved and thus begin the human experiment anew. The Divine – human relationship continues with God gaining a greater understanding of the nature of human beings. With the Tower of Babel narrative, Divine anger recurs but is tempered in its response.
Parshat Noach, exemplifies the Torah’s ongoing struggle to discern the nature of God, to describe our multifaceted experience of God, which also includes discomfiting images, and emphasizes that all these images, like pieces of a puzzle, are only a small part of the nature of God.
As Lucy suggests, one model of God is too limited for the infinite reality and nature of God; we need all of them, especially unexpected ones, to help us draw closer to the Divine.
Shabbat Shalom –
Rabbi David M. Eligberg
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