Parashat Noach feels increasingly sobering in our time. Each year, as the Torah cycles back to this story of the flood, we find ourselves living through new versions of it—floods, fires, droughts, and disasters that remind us how fragile creation has become in human hands.
This past summer alone, wildfires swept across Hawaii and Canada, filling skies thousands of miles away with smoke. Torrential floods devastated towns in Vermont, while heat records were shattered across Europe and the American South. Scientists tell us that 2025 was one of the hottest years on record, yet the deeper story is not simply about temperature, it is about responsibility.
It’s about the ways we have chosen to live on this earth, and the systems we have built that allow us to forget we are caretakers, not owners. The floods and fires may not be divine punishment, but they do echo a truth that Scripture has always known: when human beings lose sight of their covenant with creation, the world itself groans in response.
The biblical recounting of the great deluge tells of a generation that ignored the warnings for more than a century. Humanity had grown irredeemably violent and corrupt. I do not claim that today’s natural disasters are acts of divine judgment—but they are signs of covenant failure. They testify to our estrangement from God’s design for creation and one another.
Before the Deluge
In the opening chapters of B’reisheet, humanity is given two sacred responsibilities. First, to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and master it” (Genesis 1:28). Second, to “serve and guard the garden” (Genesis 2:15).
The first command gives us dominion—the power to shape and steward the world. The second gives us devotion to care for and preserve it. Together they form the rhythm of godly life: mastery joined with service, sovereignty balanced by humility.
To rule as God rules means to rule benevolently. Dominion was never meant to justify exploitation. As image bearers of God, we are called to exercise our power as the Creator does—by giving life, protecting the vulnerable, and ensuring that creation flourishes.
Today, scientists speak with prophetic urgency about the consequences of our choices: rising seas, collapsing ecosystems, and the displacement of millions. These warnings have echoed for half a century—yet too often they’ve been met with the same shrug that met Noah’s hammering.
How we treat the planet reflects how we regard one another, and of how we regard God. And as with Noah, there are lessons to be learned once the waters recede—lessons from dry ground.
Lesson 1: We Can Rise Above Our Circumstances
“Noah was righteous in his generation.” (Genesis 6:9)
The Midrash (Tanhuma 5:4) asks: what does it mean to be righteous “in his generation”? One opinion says Noah was only righteous compared to the corrupt world around him—like a silver coin among copper. Another says his goodness would have shone in any age—like perfume that spreads its fragrance wherever it’s placed.
Both are true. We are all shaped by the age we live in, but we are not bound by it. We can rise above the norms of our culture. When cynicism and division define an era, integrity and compassion shine even brighter.
In a world that often rewards greed or apathy, righteousness may mean something as simple as planting trees we will never sit under, repairing what others throw away, or extending care across boundaries of race, nation, and creed. To be righteous in this generation is to keep faith with the future.
Lesson 2: The World Was Not Created in a Day—Nor Will It Be Rebuilt in One
Noah’s ark took 120 years to build. That long delay, the sages say, was mercy—a chance for repentance. But not a single heart was changed.
Still, Noah persisted. Board by board, day by day, he built the vessel that would preserve life. The rabbis note that Noach spelled backward is chen—favor. “Noah,” says the Talmud (Sanhedrin 108a), “had a death sentence sealed against him, but he found favor in the eyes of God.”
In our own work of repairing the planet, rebuilding trust, or restoring justice we too must move slowly, steadily, board by board. The ark of renewal is not built in a day. It is built by faith, by grace, and by the patient conviction that even one small act of righteousness can hold the floodwaters at bay.
Lesson 3: Our Best Will Arise Out of Our Diversity
The rainbow, God’s covenant sign, embraces all colors of light. Sir Isaac Newton observed that white light contains the entire spectrum. So too, the light of God is refracted through the diversity of humanity.
Later, at Babel, God scattered languages and peoples across the earth—not to curse them, but to fulfill the original blessing: “Be fruitful and fill the earth.” Diversity is not a punishment, it’s a gift. It teaches us that no single voice, culture, or perspective holds all truth.
Today, in a world divided by ideology and fear, the rainbow reminds us that covenant means connection. We are called to reflect different hues of the same divine light—to bring our varied strengths, professions, and passions into one harmonious song of creation.
After the Deluge
It has been twenty years since Hurricane Katrina reshaped the Gulf Coast, and yet the patterns of inequality and neglect it exposed remain. Fires burn longer, floods rise higher, storms grow fiercer. But still—there are rainbows.
In every city rebuilding after disaster, in every community planting trees, in every young person marching for climate justice or teaching compassion, there is a glimmer of that ancient promise: that destruction will not have the last word.
From the ark of survival, may we step again onto dry ground—not to resume life as before, but to begin anew.
These lessons remind me of the lyrics of the rather prophetic song Before the Deluge that Jackson Browne recorded almost forty years ago. Here are the lyrics of the last verse and chorus of the song:
Some of them were angry
At the way, the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the delugeLet the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that’s lost within us reaches the sky
It is time, once again, to reclaim our identity as tzelem Elohim—image bearers of the Creator. To tend and to guard the garden. To rise above our age, to build patiently, and to celebrate the diversity of life as covenant partners with God.