You are sitting in shul on Shabbat morning. Some people are focused on the prayer book. Several people are reading the weekly announcements. Others are talking to their neighbors. Suddenly, you hear a sound, a sound that causes everyone to stop what they’re doing and turn toward the noise. A baby is crying in her parent’s arms.
You are walking down the street, and see homeless people living on the sidewalk. You turn on the television and see people starving in Darfur. You pick up the newspaper and see pictures of people sitting dazed on the ground of their ruined villages in earthquake-stricken Pakistan. You keep walking, change the channel, turn the page.
Why is it that we are unable to ignore a baby’s cry – even when we know that our help is unnecessary – but capable of ignoring the cries of the hungry, the homeless and the oppressed? What does our tradition expect of us – how should we respond when confronted by suffering and evil? This morning I want to consider three different responses by God and human beings to evil and the outcry caused by suffering. I also want to consider how these responses highlight three different models of human-divine partnership or covenant.
The Torah describes a God who responds to evil and to the suffering of the innocent in a variety of ways. In our Torah portion, God responds to the evil that engulfs the earth by bringing absolute destruction to the earth.
Adonai saw how great was humanity’s wickedness on earth and how every plan devised by a person’s mind was nothing but evil all the time. And Adonai regretted having made humans on earth…. Adonai said, "I will blot out humanity … from the earth – humans together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them" (Genesis 6:5-7)
Only Noah and his family were spared this utter destruction.
Later, we see that God is able to achieve precise, pinpointed eradication of evil. Faced with the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, God chooses to destroy the two cities, but contains the destruction. Furthermore, God distinguishes between the evil inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and their righteous neighbors; the righteous are spared while the wicked are destroyed. The Torah tells us, "God annihilated those cities…. When God destroyed the cities of the Plain… God was mindful of Abraham and removed Lot from the upheaval" (Gen. 19:25, 29).
Still later in the biblical narrative, God afflicts Egypt with ten plagues. The evil displayed by the Egyptians is directed toward their Israelite slaves; following Pharaoh’s orders, the Egyptians enslave the Israelites and oppress them, beginning with the imposition of hard labor and culminating with the murder of all Israelite male infants. Unlike the stories of the flood and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the book of Exodus describes the actions that aroused God’s wrath. And, ironically, these specific acts of oppression and violence occasion a more careful and limited response on God’s part than the great evil that occasioned the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, evils that the Torah leaves to our imagination.
There is also a difference between God’s intent in bringing the flood and destroying Sodom and Gomorrah and God’s intent in bringing the plagues upon Egypt. In the first two instances, God’s only desire is the eradication of evil. God’s power is revealed through these acts, but there is no intended audience for that revelation. Furthermore, in neither case does God seek repentance; the wicked are given no chance to change; they are summarily destroyed. In contrast, while the ten plagues are destructive, there is no intent to kill human beings until the tenth plague (before the plague of hail – the only other plague said to have led to the loss of human life -- God tells Moses to warn the Egyptians to bring their animals and slaves inside to avoid injury). The Torah does not portray the plagues as acts of revenge or expressions of God’s anger. When God announces the various plagues, God makes it clear that the intent of the plagues is twofold: to force Pharaoh to release the Israelites and to impress upon both the Egyptians and the Israelites that Adonai is the power to be reckoned with in the world.
Just as these stories offer three models of Divine response to evil, they provide us with three human responses to evil. The first can be described as avoidance or denial of evil. Confronted with the wickedness of his neighbors and acquaintances, Noah retreats into the ark. He makes no attempt to intercede or influence God or his fellow human beings. While one midrash argues that God had Noah build the ark over a period of one hundred and twenty years, to invite others to question his work and thus learn of their impending doom, presumably so they could repent and be saved, our tradition does not imagine Noah pleading with God or urging others to turn away from evil.
Abraham offers a second model, a model of engagement or dialogue. Learning that God plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham tries to save the righteous by engaging God in dialogue. While Abraham’s bargaining succeeds only to a very limited extent in terms of human lives saved (and we can’t blame Abraham for the absence of ten righteous souls in those cities), it represents a positive approach to Divine anger, a call to hold God to the standards of justice that God Godself has established.
The final model available to us is the model of direct intercession. Unlike Noah and Abraham, who respond to evil when informed of its existence by God, Moses is able to recognize evil without Divine instruction. In addition, Moses’ instinct, when faced with evil, is not to turn to God for advice or assistance, but to act. Moses intervenes when he sees an Egyptian striking an Israelite, Israelites fighting, and the shepherds harassing Jethro’s daughters – three events that precede Moses’ first encounter with God at the burning bush.
These differences in approach from three biblical characters – Noah, Abraham and Moses – need not be seen as criticisms of one or more of these men. Rather, the differences highlight the evolution in the Divine-human partnership in our tradition. In each case, a human being is or will become God’s covenantal partner. But each of these individuals is the partner of a God working in a different way. In the story of the flood, God is an all-powerful executive God, a God who doesn’t need subordinates to carry out the Divine will or offer their approval. Noah is portrayed as the perfect partner for such a God – he is obedient and unquestioning. Noah doesn’t confront God, because the God of the earliest chapters of Genesis isn’t looking for engagement. God does not hear the cries of human beings who suffered as a result of the violence that characterized pre-flood earth. God only responded to what God saw when it was too late to intervene selectively; then God reacted globally. Noah is God’s chosen partner precisely because Noah won’t confront God; he simply retreats into the ark, justifying his lack of concern for his fellow human beings by "following God." Consider the limited terms of God’s covenant with Noah; having saved Noah to ensure the survival of humanity, all God asks is that Noah and his descendants refrain from murder – an act that threatens the repopulation of the earth.
Abraham partners a God who is willing to listen. This God hears the outcry in Sodom and Gomorrah and investigates the problem before determining an appropriate response. God invites Abraham’s intercession, allowing both to engage in a dialogue about what constitutes justice. Abraham is a suitable partner for this God, because he is willing to engage God and does not try to retreat (Abraham stands his ground – Gen. 18:22 -- and goes out to look upon the results of God’s work – Gen. 19:27-28). Both God and Abraham are engaged in a common cause. The covenant God initiates with Abraham reflects the relationship they have; both God and Abraham have active roles in sustaining the covenant described in Genesis 17.
Moses initiates his partnership with God. Moses goes out and sees his people’s suffering (Ex. 2:11). Looking around and seeing no one else who is prepared to intervene (and I would argue that the absent character here is God), Moses acts. This action can be said to have spurred God to act; God hears, sees, and comprehends the suffering of the Israelites only after Moses does so. Moses is the partner that God needs to intervene in a way that is primarily salvific; the plagues are not an end in themselves as the flood or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are, but serve as the means to free the Israelites and reveal God to the world. God cannot achieve these goals without the help of a human partner, one who understands the need to act in the face of evil. Moses is a great leader and the greatest of the prophets because he shares God’s intolerance of evil and is a passionate champion of the oppressed.
We are the heirs of the covenantal relationships between God and Noah, Abraham and Moses. We are God’s partners in tikkun olam, the onerous, endless task of repairing the world. And, as Yitz Greenberg teaches us, our partnership with God is an evolving one, one that continually demands that we take a more active role in the human-divine covenant. We are faced with various forms of evil and immense human suffering. Sometimes it is tempting easy to retreat into our arks, our gated communities, our private schools, our borders. It would be comforting, perhaps, to be like Noah, to leave everything to God. We might wish we could emulate Abraham and call upon God to act justly while we stand on the sidelines and watch. But today, neither the model of Noah or Abraham will serve, not because the God of our day is any less real than the God of the past, but because our covenant with God cannot be realized through blind obedience or a dialogue of words. We must emulate Moses and take an active role in our partnership with God. Like Moses, we must look at the evil in our world, recognize that it is our responsibility to respond, and then act. Only then can we claim to be worthy of being participants in God’s covenant.
"Kol demei akhikha tzo’akim" – the blood of our fellow human beings cries out to us on a daily basis from the earth that we share. How will we respond?
Shabbat Shalom.