Where there's a Will... - Noach 5786

The Great Flood had happened.  Noach and his family were back on dry land, and in appreciation, Noach offered sacrifices to Hashem.  The Torah tells us Hashem’s reaction (Bereshit 8:21): “G-d [figuratively] smelled the appeasing fragrance (i.e., He acknowledged Noah’s appreciation), and in response, G-d said to Himself, “[I hereby swear that] I will never again curse the soil because of humanity, for the inclination of a person’s heart is [challenged by his] evil [inclination] from his [earliest] youth. Never again will I strike down all life as I have done.” Because the evil inclination challenges us from our youth, Hashem will be merciful and never again destroy all life.

Now, let’s take a look at a remarkably similar statement in last week’s Parsha, and the end of Bereshit (Bereshit 6:5):  “And the L-rd saw that the evil of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil all the time.”  Therefore, "I will blot out man, whom I created, from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them."  So the fact that we have an evil inclination is a reason to destroy all life.  How does this work?

Chassidus discusses this concept at length.  Just to touch briefly on the surface, intellect and logic can go in various directions.  The same idea can be interpreted in opposite ways if left to the mind.  (We are of course not talking about the human mind here, we are talking about the Divine "thought process.”  But since we are created “in Hashem’s image,” the workings of the human mind are fashioned after the way the world was created.)

To explain: Hashem’s energy comes to the world through various “attributes,” primarily chessed and gevurah - kindness and judgment.  The same concept that is expressed in Gevurah as a reason to judge and punish, is expressed in Chessed as a reason to refrain from punishment.  What determines how it will be interpreted?  That is known as Ratzon - the will.  The will drives all the attributes, and they can all be used to further the will.  If there is a will to do something or to approach something a certain way, the intellect and emotions will follow the will.

Let’s bring this into the human experience.  Things happen around us.  How do we interpret them?  It’s all about our will, or perhaps I can say our attitude.  It is remarkable in today’s society how two people will see the same thing and hear the same facts and interpret them the complete opposite of each other.   This is true in politics, in the modern antisemitism, and in many other areas of life.

This is also true of how we judge one another.  We see someone doing something, and we interpret it a certain way.  We won’t even entertain the possibility that there is another interpretation of what happened or what the other person is thinking.  

This is because we have a strong will, and our mind and thought process is bent in the direction of our will.  It happens all the time.  It doesn’t matter what the other person thinks, my way is right, and I can give you 100 arguments why it’s so.  Then another person can give you 100 arguments why it’s the opposite, and both are 100 percent sure that the other is wrong, because they are smart and intellectual.

I have been told by people “I am not religious because I like to think.”  Never mind that the most brilliant minds ever - the scholars of the Talmud - were deeply religious.  I think, and my brilliant thinking proves to me that there is no G-d or whatever else their logic leads to.  But as we see from this week’s Parsha, logic and intellect are driven by our will.  If I have made up my mind that the Torah is made up by humans, or that the left or right political perspectives are the correct ones, or that Israel does or does not have a right to exist, (does the US have a right to exist? China? Hungary? Qatar? Why doesn’t anyone ask that question?) then I can use my mind to argue my case convincingly, at least to myself.

So how do we get to the truth?  We start with humility.  We recognize that no matter what our mind tells us, we have been thinking in a particular framework.  We have a will that drives our thinking and emotions in a certain direction.  Our Sages taught: “Do not judge your fellow until you reach their place.”  When we approach life with humility, we understand that there are other perspectives and other interpretations, and we are open to accepting that maybe our own understanding is not always correct.

When we submit to the will of the Creator, we look at the world through the lens of Torah, and we open our minds to Hashem’s Presence and Will.  In other words, if we really think, we follow Hashem’s will, and there is harmony and peace between people.