Surely one of the most well known of the Torah’s stories involves Noah and the flood. A righteous man living in a lawless and violent age, Noah is commanded to build an ark and to gather representatives of all the species of animals into the ark so they can survive a flood that will wipe out errant humanity and allow mankind to begin anew through Noah. As the rain waters fall and the floodwaters storm, Noah, his family, and his herds are safe inside. For weeks and weeks, they float across the undifferentiated surface of the water, and then, says the Torah: “God remembered Noah and every living thing, and all the beasts that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth and the waters subsided.”
Rabbinic Judaism wasn’t troubled by the philosophical issues raised by the claim that God remembered (as though God had previously forgotten!). The sages of Talmud and Midrash weren’t even bothered by the claim that God remembered Noah. After all, it was commonplace to assert that God heard the prayers of the righteous. Indeed, Rashi summarizes both sides of this assertion when he explains that God remembering implies that God transformed his virtue of judgment (middat ha-din) into the virtue of mercy (middat ha-rachamim) through the prayer of the righteous. And the wickedness of the wicked turns the virtue of mercy into the virtue of judgment.”
Okay, so God listens to the prayers of a tzaddik like Noah and stops the rain out of compassion for his chosen servant. But what drew the attention of the ancient rabbis was the Torah’s insistence that it was not only Noah, but also every living thing that was the object of God’s recollection. God remembers cows?!?
In exploring this daring assertion, the ancient Midrash Bereshit Rabbah quotes the book of Psalms: “The Lord is good to all, and God’s tender mercies are over all (145:9).” Yes, indeed, say the ancient rabbis, there is biblical precedent to support that God does care for all living things, not only for humans! But then the rabbis take an interesting, and paradigmatically Jewish twist: “Rabbi Joshua said in the name of Rabbi Levi: The Lord is good to all, and God inspires mankind with his compassion.” In other words, what matters most is not God’s objective traits, not God’s essence, but how God’s essence takes form in human behavior. God’s goodness channels through human hands. We perceive a religious obligation to model God’s virtues in the world. Human beings are the ones who must make manifest God’s compassion. When we allow ourselves to be inspired and directed by God’s mercy, then – and only then – is it true that God’s mercies are over all.
What is it, then, that God “remembered?” According to the Midrash, God didn’t remember Noah (the person) or even the living things (the animals). God remembers ethical action: “What did God remember in Noah’s favor? That he provided for the animals the whole 12 months in the Ark.… ‘God remembered Noah’ and the spirit of justice approved it.”
One of the distortions of human mortality is that our eyes see things but do not see deeds. God’s “eyes,” as it were, don’t suffer from our blindness. Instead, God’s vision focuses not on status but on doing – acts of care, acts of kindness, acts of justice – these are the data that fill the divine vision and stimulate divine memory.ar
If you want to be recalled before God’s memory, then lift up your hands and do. Reach out to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to clothe the homeless. By caring for each other, for humanity, and for all of God’s creatures, we make ourselves worthy to come to God’s attention and we give substance and form to the claim that God is, after all, merciful.
Shabbat Shalom.