AND THE FLOODGATES OF HEAVEN BROKE OPEN: MIDRASH, COVID, AND GRIEF

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.  So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”  But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. (Genesis 6:5-8) 

The Book of Genesis tells a dark story about God condemning humanity except for one family who is locked in a boat for over a year. They ride out a terrible forty-day storm which encompasses the globe and then they wait until the water has subsided and it is safe to return to land. They check daily to see if levels have gone down and dry land has emerged. When it is finally safe, they leave the boat, make sacrifices of gratitude, plant crops, build new homes. Humanity is restored. God sends a rainbow as a pledge never to destroy life on Earth again.  

As dark as the story is, the original version is even more bleak. In this telling, God warns Noah of a cataclysmic storm and calls him to build a fleet of arks vast enough to hold all humanity. The storm is terrible, but most are able to stay safe inside. Yet once the heavy rain has passed, some grow restless and build cook fires on deck. The fires spread, consume, and sink their vessel. On other boats, some demand more space for themselves and throw their weaker companions into the ocean to drown. Still others believe that certain vessels are sacred, crowding aboard to make ritual sacrifices. They sink as the sea swamps their overloaded boats.  

Only Noah’s family survives. When it is finally safe, they leave the boat, make sacrifices of gratitude, plant crops, build new homes. In time, one of Noah’s descendents decides to record their grandfather’s story of the deluge. Noah forbids it. It is too terrible to tell, too awful to recall how so many died needlessly in the storm and its aftermath.  

Noah climbs a holy mountain to make sacrifice and asks God how to tell the awful story. God’s heart is broken by the devastation humanity has wreaked on itself. “It would be kinder,” God says, “If the act of destruction were mine. Write that I condemned the world. Tell them I am to blame.”  

יואל אברי, תרגמה שושנה מיכאל צוקר  

ספר בראשית מספר סיפור אימים על אֵל אשר גזר מוות על כלל האנושות זולת משפחה אחת. משפחה זו ננעלה בתיבה לשנה ואף יותר. הם שרדו סערה כבדה מאד אשר מחתה את כל הקיום אשר על־פני האדמה. ואז המתינו עד שתֵראה היבשה. יום יום שלח האיש היונה לראות אם קלו המים מעל פני האדמה. כאשר ראו כי ניתן לצאת בבטחה יצאו מן התיבה, הקריבו קורבן תודה, עיבדו את האדמה ובנו בתים חדשים. האנושות התחדשה ואלהים נתן קשת בענן לאות ברית והקים את בריתו שלא יִכּרת עוד כל־בשר מעל פני הארץ. 

אכן, סיפור אימים, אך האמת הייתה מפחידה עשרת מונים. וכך היה: אלוהים צווה לנח לבנות צי-תיבות, מספיק לכל באי-עולם. הסערה הייתה איומה עד מאוד אולם לרוב בני-האדם היה שלום בתוך התיבות, עד אשר נסכרו מעינות תהום וארובת השמים. ואחר הדברים האלו, רוח פזיזות נחה על חלקם, והם הבעירו אש לבישול על סיפונם. הלהבות התפשטו, ושרפו את התיבות אשר טבעו על יושביהן. אחרים, בני-בליעל תבעו לעצמם מרחב רחב ידיים והטילו אל הים עמיתיהם אשר תשש כחם. תיבות מספר נחשבו כמעין מקדשים וקהלים בהמוניהם עלו על סיפונן כדי  להקריב קורבנות.  צפופים עמדו וכובד משקלם הורידם למצולות. מקץ ימי המבול רק נח ובני ביתו נשארו לפליטה. הם יצאו מן התיבה, הקריבו קורבן תודה, עיבדו את האדמה ובנו בתים חדשים. 

עברו שנים. אחד מצאצאי נח, ביקש לכתב את זיכרונותיו של סבא נח, מימי המבול. נח אסר עליו לעשות זאת, כדי שלא לזכור את אין ספור הנפשות שמתו לחינם בסערה ובמבול.  נח עלה על הר קדוש להקריב קרבן ושאל את אלהים איך לספר את הסיפור הנורא. לבו של האל נשבר כשזכר את החורבן שבני האדם המיטו על עצמם. "אתה יודע," אמר האל, "יהיה נאה יותר אם ידי היא שהביאה את החורבן. ככתוב שאני גזרתי את דינם. אמור להם שכל האשמה עליי".  

  Trans. Shoshana Michael Zucker 

On a lunch break in mid-May, I posted this piece on Facebook. Friends commented and shared, expressing sadness, anger, or appreciation. A response that surprised me came from a rabbi friend of mine who shared the post and called it “modern-day midrash.” In my re-telling, he heard an echo of the Jewish tradition of meditating on the Torah by reading carefully, noticing absences and posing questions, and then re-imagining, amplifying, and multiplying the story to better understand the original.  

Hebrew Bible scholar, Dr. Vanessa Lovelace, notes that “midrash, which derives from the Hebrew root d-r-sh (“to seek”) is a Jewish mode of interpretation that not only engages the words of the text, behind the text, and beyond the text, but also focuses on each letter and the words left unsaid between each line.” Midrash is written to pose new questions to the reader, to split the text’s fissures into full-blown gateways for understanding.  

I did not seek to write midrash. Exhausted by the government’s false and confused efforts to address the crisis, I had given up trying to argue friends and family into taking precautions to keep each other safe. Instead of entering another argument online, I sat down to read and find some solace from the pandemic destroying my city. I stumbled across a reference to the story of Noah. This accidental encounter opened me to the grief I harbored in my body.  

I don’t want to grieve. I want to blame. Grief feels like an admission of defeat, an admission of loss, and I don’t want to lose. I don’t want to admit that there is suffering in the world when there doesn’t have to be. So when faced with suffering, I blame poor leadership, arrogant men, oppressive systems. I try to convince people close to me to pay attention, to look out for each other, so that this disaster won’t happen. But this disaster is happening.  

Grief admits what is happening. That the terrible storm has come. The pandemic has devastated our country, and we have not acted with compassion to protect each other. Lives and livelihoods have been lost, and my refusal to grieve blocks me from anything close to genuine compassion.  

Anger and frustration are often my first responses to grief. I avoid feeling sadness if I can. I push back, hard, try to set things straight, make things ok. I pile on. I make arguments, shame those close to me into seeing things my way so they will take the action I think is needed. My arguments gain no converts and end no pain. In my efforts to erase my grief, I plant suffering in its place. And suffering blooms spectacularly.  

So I stopped making arguments, and sat in silence with my grief. Next thing I knew, I was writing. My life was seeking story. A different story than the one I had been told. When I think of this in terms of midrash, I consider my grief to be what came before I came to the text. My experience is part of what is behind and beyond the text. My life slips in between the letters and they, in turn, imprint on my heart. When I told the old story again, I told it in a way that let me hear it speaking to my life today. Channelling Borges, I imagined a story behind the story that would speak to my story. My rabbi friend called it midrash.  

Soon my post was circulating among my friend’s Jewish community. The form of the story resonated with them, as did the grief I expressed. A translator in Israel offered to render a Hebrew version. My re-working of this ancient story was itself re-formed.  

I did not expect any of this, but it seems to me that when I stopped seeking to guard against my grief through argument and anger, something new and living blossomed. Through story, I came to know my grief.  

Genesis tells us that God regretted creating human beings and that God’s heart was grieved. In this story, I wonder if God grieves with us or because of us. Does God embrace humanity or wish to blot us out? What story does God’s heart seek?