Noach: Overcoming Our Internal Mabul

Arriving at only the second parsha in the Torah, we read of the complete destruction of the world through powerful waters: the waters of the flood. Ever since that utter destruction and the subsequent rebuilding of the world through Noach, Hashem promised that He would never again bring a flood upon earth to destroy it. As Jewish women, it is not external floods and torrential rains we are battling with on a daily basis. Rather, it is our own internal mabul, our private torrent of strong, sometimes devastating emotions which threaten to overwhelm and drown us, pulling us away from Hashem. We will use Parshat Noach as a template for how to navigate what can be the mabul of our minds. 

A joke is rarely uttered about the Jewish woman without a reference to ‘Jewish woman’s guilt,’ apparently a long-standing feature entrenched in all of us. But this characteristic is not limited to tropes and jokes. The Torah¹ tells us that women are prone to feelings of heaviness and hormonal lows. By Hashem’s design, emotions can overtake us, submerging us into a flood of negative, overwhelming thoughts which drag us down. Rebbetzin Esti Hamilton² refers to one such pattern as ‘circling the drain’ where we notice something amiss, such as a neighbor not wishing us good morning and before we know it, we are blaming ourselves for not having sent over a meal when she had a baby or the like. We are wired by Hashem, Rebbetzin Hamilton explains, to constantly take the ‘emotional temperature’ of our relationships and when things do not measure up, we are quick to blame ourselves. So how do we overcome this element of our nature?

Mrs Sara Blau³ explains that it is our mission to not allow these dark thoughts to invite negative emotions. We are allowed to notice our failings, the dark parts of us, yet, we should not become afraid of those aspects of ourselves or feel shame when confronted with them. Whether we lost our temper with a child or spent too long on the phone, we shouldn’t feel guilty for our shortcomings, we should not allow our mind to downspiral into an emotional mabul. We are simply expected to admit the wrongdoing to ourselves and commit to doing better, immediately introducing a spark of light into what could be a never-ending trail of dark thoughts. Mrs Blau quotes the Zohar which records that our neshama will be asked after 120 “which soul turned darkness into light and bitter into sweet?” This seemingly cryptic question can easily be answered by each one of us. When we transform our heavy, negative, dark emotions and experiences and elevate them into springboards for greater, lighter, sweeter moments of growth, we are moving ourselves, and our soul, ever closer to perfection. 

We see a number of strategies in our parsha to help us convert these dark moments into light. Hashem commands Noach ‘make for yourself a teiva,’⁴ a commandment to build the physically protective structure to allow him and his family to survive the flood. However, this commandment can apply to all of us on an allegorical level too. Constructing a teiva is an injunction to each of us to carve out a sacred space, a spiritual and emotional shelter to process our feelings. In his soul-stirring song based on the Sefer Chareidim, Rav Yitzchak Hutner zt’l wrote ‘Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh,’ ‘in my heart, I will build a temple.’ Somewhere deep inside our internal world, each Jew must find a safe haven for their innermost thoughts and feelings, their highs and lows, and be able to reserve that space purely for themselves and Hashem. This will help us process, accept and validate our thoughts before they can spiral into an overpowering mabul. We could have a physical space, such as a quiet park we go to or we could write it down in a journal. But somewhere, we need to have a designated room carved in our hearts to work through our feelings together with Hashem. 

We see a number of strategies in our parsha to help us convert these dark moments into light. Hashem commands Noach ‘make for yourself a teiva,’ a commandment to build the physically protective structure to allow him and his family to survive the flood. However, this commandment can apply to all of us on an allegorical level too. Constructing a teiva is an injunction to each of us to carve out a sacred space, a spiritual and emotional shelter to process our feelings.

Rabbi Shaul Yosef Leiter⁵ leads us to a different angle, focusing on the words ‘mei Noach’ ‘waters of Noach.’ This name for the flood is phonetically similar to the word ‘menucha’ meaning ‘rest.’ Perhaps this sounds like an oxymoron to us to liken a flood destructive enough to wipe out all of existence with the notion of peace, yet Rabbi Leiter suggests that this is exactly the point. Although the waters of the flood were indeed destructive, they were purifying. Unleashing their powers on the world cleansed the world in a way that has never happened before (and we are promised, will never happen again). Rabbi Leiter explains that when our mind fills with worries, which he calls ‘mei noach,’ waters that threaten to engulf us, that flood of worries leads us to the truest place of menucha. This can only be achieved through the words of the pasuk ‘come… to the teiva.’⁶ Although one translation of teiva is ark, another meaning is ‘word.’ The words of tefilla. When we pour out our worries, drenching the pages of our siddur, that prayer converts our dark thoughts (mei noach) into true comfort (menucha), cleansing us of the surge of our negative feelings. 

The rainbow is the ultimate symbolism for all this. The Lubavitcher Rebbe⁷ explained that before the flood, the clouds were so thick that light could not shine through them and therefore it was impossible to sight a rainbow. Only after the flood purified the world did the clouds lose their thickness and the sun could now shine through, producing the beautiful light of the rainbow. The rainbow is a sign both for us and Hashem that the world is pure and cleansed and does not need to be destroyed. This was only achieved by the heavy rains of the flood. In our own lives, our personal floods can be viewed as ways of purifying ourselves so that one day, the very waters, the emotions which threaten to overwhelm us can be refracted and revealed as the glorious rays of the rainbow. 

Parshat Noach is full of images which represent both the outpouring of negative emotions, and the positive results when they are harnessed well. Rebbetzin Smiles⁸ explains that the rainbow is one such stunning example; combining water and light amidst ominous clouds represents rachamim mixing into Hashem’s powers of din. Like the light we can find our dark emotions, the sweetness we can see in our bitter ways, the rest we find after a raging flood, the cathartic tears of prayer from a well of overpowering emotions. The Zohar writes⁹ that when you see the rays of the rainbow, look for the feet of Mashiach. The rainbow reminds us on both a personal and national level to do teshuva, to cleanse our inner worlds and in turn, the outer world, readying us for the ultimate purification of humanity. 

1. Rabbeinu Bachya on Bereishit 3:16 ↩︎
2. In her Mesilat Yesharim series on Torah Anytime ↩︎
3. In her talk through ‘The JAM drop’ ↩︎
4. Bereishit 6:14 ↩︎
5. In his article: https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/380142/jewish/Noah-Brought-Us-the-Rainbow.htm ↩︎
6. Bereishit 7:1 ↩︎
7. Quoted by Rabbi Leiter, as above ↩︎
8. Naaleh Torat Imecha newsletter, Vol 8 No. 34, Rainbow Rays  ↩︎
9. Quoted by Rabbi Leiter, as above ↩︎