Parashat Noah: Going Out and Coming Home

By: HaRav Menashe Sasson
Reporting from Jerusalem, Israel
​Published in the U.S.A.

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Jewish tradition teaches that the world, as we know it, will exist for no more than 6,000 years  As the Talmud teaches:  “The world is destined to exist for six thousand years.  The first two thousand years were of nothingness; the second two thousand years were of Torah; the third two thousand years are the days of Mashiach.”  T.B., Masekhet Sanhedrin 97a.
 
The first 2,000 years (1-2000 (3761 B.C.E. to approximately 1761B.C.E.)), the years of “nothingness,” were the years before the Torah.  The second 2,000 years, the years of Torah, were the years in which Torah flourished, a period which closed with the ending of the Tannaic era (2001-4,000 (1762 B.C.E. to approximately 238 C.E.).  The third 2,000 years are the years (4001-6000) during which it is possible for Mashiach to come.  (Dates on the Christian/Gregorian calendar are inaccurate, and thus unreliable, due to internal discrepancies in that system of calendaring.)
 
On 9 Av 3831 (July 23, 0071), Roman emperor Hadrian destroyed the Second Temple; banished Jews from Yerushalayim; destroyed the city, and, on top of the rubble, built a pagan city which he named Aelia Capitolina, in honor of himself (“Aelia” was Hadrian’s middle name) and in honor of the “god” Jupiter, whose temple was located on Capitolene Hill, in Rome.  Hadrian also renamed the land “Philistia” (Palestine), after the extinct Philistines, an enemy of the Jews who once occupied the area.  The name “Palestine” was revived by the British in 1917, when they conquered the Ottoman Empire.  Lands west of the Jordan river, as well as the country of Jordan, which the British later created in 1923, were renamed “The British Mandate for Palestine.”
 
Thus began a long history of Jewish galut ([גלות] exile).  During galut, Jews have settled in many countries and, to varying degrees, have been persecuted in, or expelled from, each of those countries.
 
Parashat Noah contains an allusion to not only to the exile, but also to the fact that a Jew can never find permanent safety and security in the lands of galut.  As it is written, “[Noah] sent forth the dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from the face of the ground.  But the dove found no rest for the sole of her feet, and she returned to him, into the ark. . . .”  Bereshit 8:8-9.
 
Regarding the pasuk:

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Then he sent out the dove from him to see whether the waters had subsided from the face of the earth.  But the dove could not find a resting place for the sole of its foot, and it returned to him to the Ark, for water was upon the surface of all the earth.  So he put forth his hand and took it, and brought it to him in the Ark.

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Bereshit 8:8-9,
 
The Midrash teaches:

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He sent out the dove. . . , but the dove could not find a resting place. . . .  Yehudah bar Nachman said in the name of Rabbi Shimon, “Had it found a place to rest, it would not have returned [to the Ark].  Similarly, [Yisra’el] dwelled among the nations; but found no rest.  [Ekha 1:3.]  Had Yisra’el found rest, they would not have returned [to Eretz Yisra’el].

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Bereshit, Midrash Rabbah 3:6.
 
The lesson is that, in order to ensure that the Jewish people return to Eretz Yisra’el, HaShem has decreed that Jews will never find “rest,” that is, safety and security, in galut ([גלות] exile).  Although there are many historical examples of this truth, perhaps the two most glaring are the Exodus from Egypt and the Shoah (Holocaust).  In both of these examples, a large number of Jews chose to remain in galut, instead of at least trying to make their way to Eretz Yisra’el, a decision which, unfortunately, ended in tragedy.
 
One need only read the news to know that antisemitism is alive and well in the countries of galut ([גלות] exile).  Come home, dear Jews; come home to the land that HaShem has given you as an inheritance, an inheritance which Medinat Yisra’el protects with its Right of Return law.  The year 6000 is rapidly approaching, which means that Mashiach could come at any time.  Come home, dear Jews, before it is too late.  You need Eretz Yisra’el and Eretz Yisra’el needs you.
 
שבת שלום
Shabbat Shalom!

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