THE JEWISH NEWS
A Toast
To Jewish Living
Bad Things Happen To Good People: Noah's Drunkenness
By RABBI WILLIAM GERSHON
One of the most familiar and
often quoted portions from the Torah
is the story of "Noah and the Ark."
When most people recall this story,
the flood, the ark and animals
immediately come to mind. Very
little attention, however, is given to
what happened to Noah after he left
the ark.
The Torah tells us that Noah
became a tiller of the soil and
planted a vineyard. He drank of the
wine, became intoxicated and
uncovered himself, only to be
discovered by his son Ham. Noah,
who had saved God's creatures,
finds himself in disgrace and
-shame.
From the text of the Torah, we
do not learn why Noah suddenly
became a drunkard. After all, the
Torah describes him as ish tzadik
bedorotav — a righteous man in his
generation. The rabbinic midrash
Tanchuma, searching for a reason
for Noah's intoxication, portrays
Noah as justifying his drinking with
a phrase from the Psalms: Veyayin
y'samah levav enoush — wine
gladdens a man's heart.
This midrash raises yet another
question: why should Noah,
endowed with a blessing, a
covenant and a new world order,
need wine to make him happy? I
believe we can find an answer by
viewing Noah's life as a whole.
According to the Torah, the first
six hundred years of Noah's life
were uneventful, except for the birth
of his sons. Every day was like the
day before. He neither experienced
nor expected anything out of the
ordinary.
Suddenly, God gave Noah a
mission. The life of a man who
never needed a calendar became
filled with dates.
While in the ark, every day was
not like the one that preceded it.
For the first time in his life, Noah
experienced fulfillment. He was
saving humanity and through him,
the animal kingdom was to be
preserved. He could see that the
future of God's creation depended
on the care he gave daily to his
family and the animals.
When Noah left the
environment of the ark, he was left
high and dry physically and
emotionally. After the peak
experience of his journey, the Torah
records no more dates in his life.
His daily experience apparently
returned to the same state as it had
been before the flood. But Noah
was not the same man. He longed
for the ark experience — the feeling
that there is a goal and a purpose
in life, that life is more than the
routine of the ordinary. He tried to
recapture this sense of purpose
through intoxication. And while he
may have felt that he was again
rising above the world, his illusory
happiness ended in shame.
None of us has been through
the experience of saving a world,
but as Ben Azzai, a talmudic sage
declares, "Every individual has his
hour" — be it achieving something
extraordinary in a career, getting
married, graduating college,
becoming bar or bat mitzvah,
celebrating the passage of one's
children into adulthood — all of us
have peak experiences. At such
moments in life, we are raised to a
level of personal triumph. Our
hearts overflow with fulfillment and
pride.
Unfortunately, there are many of
us, who, like Noah, become
disillusioned with life because we
can't find constant highs or sustain
peak experiences to keep us going.
Continued on Page 60
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