Parshat Noah

"All the fountains of the great deep burst apart, And the floodgates of the sky broke open." Reads like a recent "Breaking News" headline scrolling across the CNN screen, doesn't it? In fact, The Flood occurs "in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month" in the life of this "righteous man...blameless in his age...". Noah, whom we never hear speak yet who is blessed enough to hear the voice of G-d, follows the Lord's instructions to the letter. He builds an ark of "gopher wood" and, along with just his own family, fills it with animals, "of every pure animal you shall take seven pairs...and of every animal that is not pure, two...". The world is destroyed, but those inside the ark are saved. And the covenant between Noah and the Lord--despite how many natural disasters we have witnessed lately--remains. "Never again will I doom the earth because of man,'" G-d swears. "'...nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done.'" And so we pray. Shabbat Shalom!