Mem Moment | What Happens After
Parashat Noach
What happens after your world as you know it changes? When you, as you know yourself, radically shift?
Parashat Noach is a story about what it means to live after everything falls apart. Noah sees the world destroyed – everything literally flooded. And then, somehow, he has to learn how to live again.
Most of our lives don’t change because of a literal flood. But we do have experiences that divide time into before and after. Sometimes they are joyful; sometimes they are painful. Sometimes, like the High Holidays, they are experiences we choose to enter because we hope to come out a little different.
When the flood ends, the Torah offers a surprisingly plain promise: “So long as the earth endures – seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night – shall not cease” (Bereishit 8:22).
The flood disrupts; the world after it finds a rhythm again – days and nights, planting and harvesting, seasons changing. Life becomes ordinary again.
Noah struggles with what comes next. He leaves the ark, plants a vineyard, drinks too much, and becomes exposed. Returning to life, it turns out, takes some getting used to.
We spend the holidays thinking about who we want to become, and then, they end. The sukkah comes down, we return to our regular schedules, and we have to go live that life we thought about so deeply. Parashat Noach reminds us that transformation continues in the days that follow, as we figure out how to live into what has changed in us.
May we be blessed to let what changes us change the way we live.
