OCTOBER 31 • 2024 | 43

Re-Discovering Hope
A

t a time of endless 
adversity and anxiety 
about the future, it is 
helpful to reflect on the thread of 
hope that has pervaded the Jewish 
Weltanschauung (worldview) since 
its inception millennia ago. 
Noting the maxim schver 
tzu zein a yid / it is hard 
to be a Jew, one finds an 
ever-present current of hope 
that tenaciously refuses to 
succumb to the challenges 
of being Jewish. Simply put, 
Judaism is inherently and 
emphatically hopeful.
The story of Noah is 
no exception. Beyond the 
moral failure, not only of 
humanity but even the 
animal kingdom, emerges 
a new possibility for life to 
get better and living beings 
to be better. This possibility is 
built into the ark itself; the specs 
of the ark include the instruction 
to fashion a tzohar in the roof 
of the ark, which the Midrash 
understands to be either a window 
or a prism. As commentator 
Abraham Ibn Ezra explains, it is a 
“passage through which light can 
enter [the ark].” The ark includes 
a ray of light, in other words, a ray 
of hope when things have hit rock 
bottom. 
Later, after living in the ark day 
after day, submerged in an endless 
rain and ubiquitous darkness, 
Noah opens the window as the ark 
comes to rest on Mount Ararat. 
The late 12th-century 
commentator David Kimchi 
asks why Noah waited until the 
ark settled rather than when the 
rain stopped months earlier. His 
answer: Noah was still fearful 
lest the current of the water enter 
through the window. 
Finally, Noah rediscovers a sense 
of hope — a turning point in the 

story. He opens the window and 
sends out a raven and a dove. Once 
the latter returns with the olive 
branch, hope has returned fully; 
and he and everyone else in the ark 
return to and reengage with the 
world. 
The Torah’s choice of words 
here is telling: The dove 
returns not with an olive 
branch that has passively 
come to be in its teeth, but 
taraf be-piha, that is, a branch 
that the dove has actively 
seized captured in its teeth. 
Regaining hope in the face 
of adversity is not something 
that just happens; rather, 
it requires a person to be 
willing to fight for and seize it 
when the possibility arises.
God’s new offer of 
a hopeful future with 
possibilities is as vast as the 
rainbow itself. To be sure, this 
new offer is conditioned on a new 
sense of moral responsibility. God 
agrees not to annihilate the world; 
humanity agrees to act with respect 
for all creatures. 
From this point on, the stories 
and teachings of the Tanach follow 
this template: Slavery is followed 
by redemption from slavery; 
the difficulties of wandering in 
the desert lead eventually to the 
Promised Land, which the Children 
of Israel must actively conquer and 
build. Even the dour exhortations 
of the prophets are followed by a 
promise of redemption and a better, 
even utopian, future. The path from 
adversity to hope is not always 
easy; but for Jews it is always there 
awaiting our willingness to begin 
the journey. 

Dr. Howard N. Lupovitch is a professor of 

history at Wayne State University and director 

of WSU’s Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic 

Studies.

SPIRIT
TORAH PORTION

Howard 
Lupovitch

Parshat 

Noach: 

Genesis 

6:9-11:32; 

Numbers 

28:9-15; 

Isaiah 66:1-

24.

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