Parashat Noach: When The World Refused To Listen

I remember the world before the waters rose. Fertile lands, abundant harvests, cities growing by the day. People had everything — except restraint. They mocked morality, legalized depravity, and corrupted justice. The powerful took what they wanted — including the wives of others. The world was full of robbery, arrogance, and cruelty.

G-d told me to build an Ark — and gave me 120 years to do it. I hoped, perhaps, people would see the warning in the wood, the rebuke in the hammer’s ring. When they asked what I was doing, I told them plainly: The world has become too corrupt. If we don't change, a Flood will come. But they laughed. “We’ve lived like this for centuries! Let Him try to stop us.”

They did not believe it until the skies opened.

But after destruction came rebirth. G-d told us, “Be fruitful and multiply… I have given you everything.” For the first time, we were allowed to eat meat — but with boundaries: Do not eat a limb from a living animal. This, along with the command to establish courts, to not murder, not steal, not commit immoral acts, not worship idols or curse G-d, became the foundation — the Seven Noahide Laws for all humanity.

And as the waters receded and we stepped onto a cleansed earth, G-d made a covenant with us — with all humanity — to never destroy the world again. But we must uphold our part.

Centuries later, kings like Sancheiriv worshipped a log from my Ark. Explorers climbed Mount Ararat to glimpse its remains. But the greatest evidence is not wood — it is memory. Across cultures, continents, and tribes — even those untouched by each other — legends of a great flood remain.

I did what I could to save the world. I held on to faith when no one else did. And in doing so, I became the root of all who came after — not just my sons, but every righteous person who chooses to walk with G-d when the world laughs in their face.

By Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber, zt”l, Founder, LaMaalot Foundation