Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] God sees that the world has become corrupt.
[00:00:04] So the question that comes if people do such a terrible thing that they deserve to be destroyed, the next time they do something similar, they should also be destroyed.
[00:00:17] If it is possible not to destroy people for doing these terrible things, then why weren't they the first time around? If there's no direct correlation, then why was it done the first time?
[00:00:28] Pretty straightforward question.
[00:00:30] And then the story continues that God said that he will give Noah a sign for this covenant, for this promise. What will be the sign? Rainbow.
[00:00:44] That rainbow indicates that God should have destroyed the world. God wants to destroy the world, but he doesn't. And that's why he gives us a rainbow. That's why, by the way, in the Jewish tradition, rainbow is not such a positive thing, because rainbow indicates that God really wants to destroy us. God would have destroyed us, but he doesn't because he promised.
[00:01:07] So in other words, when people misbehave, that's when rainbow appears.
[00:01:11] Anybody who knows even a little bit about modern science will say, Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, one second.
[00:01:18] Rainbow is a physical thing. Is a physical phenomenon.
[00:01:24] After rains, there's a higher humidity in the air. Particles of water stay in the atmosphere. And then when sun shines on them, the rays of sun that are going through these particles of water in the atmosphere, they create color separation. And that's how rainbow appears.
[00:01:47] So rainbow is a physical phenomenon. It has nothing to do with some godly reminder or something like that.
[00:01:55] This idea in the Torah seems to play very well into what many people say that, well, olden days people did not know the laws of nature. They did not study laws of nature, yet they did not know physics, they did not know science.
[00:02:12] And that's why they were attributing different natural phenomenon to something that God does. But we know the science already. Now we know why rainbow appears. So we don't need all of these bubble mices.
[00:02:26] We will find out today how whatever we know about science only reinforces what the Torah says about the whole idea of rainbow.
[00:02:34] What was different between the world before Noah and after him? There was a change that occurred with the flood.
[00:02:46] What was it that after the flood God gave us humans the ability to improve themselves.
[00:02:54] Before the flood, people were static.
[00:02:58] They did not have any plasticity in terms of growth.
[00:03:02] They did not have a chance to embedded themselves.
[00:03:06] Today many people do terrible things and when you confront them about it, they say it's not my fault.
[00:03:13] Well, what do you tell them? Today we know that you were born this way. Many people were born with many terrible Instincts. And our job is to overpower these terrible instincts.
[00:03:26] If you were born this way, doesn't mean you should stay this way. Well, before Noah, this was a very valid argument.
[00:03:34] So all of these self help books did not exist in Noah's times. I promise you, Stephen Covey and Brian Tracy did not do well in that market. Anthony Robbins didn't have anybody, went to the seminars.
[00:03:47] You know, this guy walks into a bookstore and he asks for a self help section. The clerk at the front says, well, if I'll show you where it is, it'll only defeat its purpose.
[00:04:02] And therefore, when people were born bad, they did bad things. God said, listen, this type of humanity cannot sustain itself, it cannot exist. People cannot continue living like this if they cannot improve themselves. If they do bad things, I have to destroy them because they have no chance of improving.
[00:04:21] After the flood, God gave humans the ability to work on themselves, to improve themselves.
[00:04:28] Now the world is completely different.
[00:04:31] Now if I were born this way in, you know, many times here in modern world, in Western culture, people, even educated people always say, well, if I was born this way, I need to be true to myself and live my true self.
[00:04:46] What do we tell them? Well, you have to analyze your true self.
[00:04:50] And if you don't like your true self, you could change your true self. You are not locked in whatever self you have. Now that's why the Torah says that a person was born with many bad tendencies and our job is to get rid of them.
[00:05:06] This is the idea of teshuvah, repentance.
[00:05:10] Just like it works in practical sphere, it works in spiritual sphere.
[00:05:15] I need to think about what am I doing right, what am I doing wrong? And if I see things that I'm doing wrong, I need to work on myself to change them. It's not going to be easy, but I need to do it. And then the book of Tanya speaks a lot about it, about how to work on yourself and the whole Hasidic culture. And many Hasidic books are focusing on how to work on yourself to become a better person.
[00:05:37] So now God says, one second, if a person does something bad, I don't have to destroy them. If a person does something bad, I don't have to destroy this person because he has a chance to become better.
[00:05:50] So the situation changed. God didn't change. God is the same God, but people are different people.
[00:05:57] The rules are the same rules, but people are now different people. That's why God doesn't have to destroy us.
[00:06:03] What does God need to do if we do something wrong?
[00:06:06] God needs to send us a message that we are doing something wrong. When our kids do something wrong, what do we need to do? We need to tell them that they're doing something wrong. That's the first thing what we need to do.
[00:06:17] So rainbow is this message.
[00:06:19] You'll say, well, but rainbow is just a physical phenomenon.
[00:06:22] Guess what?
[00:06:24] We know that water is in Jewish tradition compared to the Torah. Water is a metaphor for the Torah. And there are many levels how this metaphor can be seen. Because just like the world cannot live without water physically, world cannot live without Torah spiritually. And by the way, this is also why righteous people are compared to fish.
[00:06:49] Because all living beings need water.
[00:06:52] Mammals need water also.
[00:06:54] Fish needs water. What is the difference?
[00:06:57] Fish will never jump out of the water voluntarily. A human could go without water voluntarily to the point that he'll die.
[00:07:06] So humans don't feel this necessity for drinking water.
[00:07:10] Fish does.
[00:07:12] So that's why the righteous people are compared to water, because they live in the water and they feel their dependence on the water.
[00:07:20] They live in the spiritual world and they feel their dependence on spiritual worlds. But mammals, the ones that walk around on dry land, they don't feel this dependency.
[00:07:30] That's why they could die.
[00:07:32] People who are not righteous don't feel their dependency on spirituality.
[00:07:36] So also, by the way, it says that just like water is always going to the lowest point, the Torah is trying to get to the lowest point, to rejuvenate, to give life to the lowest places.
[00:07:47] That's why the Torah came down to this physical world, which is the lowest world.
[00:07:51] So if it rains, the water could just go through our atmosphere, go through the air, as if nothing happened.
[00:07:59] If I teach you the Torah, give a class on the Torah, whoever listens to me could have it coming into one ear, coming out of the other ear, walks out of the class. And nothing ever stayed inside. Nothing was retained.
[00:08:12] But sometimes particles of this Torah stay in the atmosphere. Something settles in, something stays there.
[00:08:19] What happens when these particles of water stay in the air?
[00:08:25] If sun shines on them, then this light is being reflected.
[00:08:31] What is the metaphor for sun?
[00:08:33] Sun is God.
[00:08:35] God is shining his light.
[00:08:37] So when God is shining his light, after we retain some of the Torah, this light is being reflected by us. In other words, it's not just going through without even being noticed, it's reflected.
[00:08:50] And after it reflects what happens, it breaks down into seven colors.
[00:08:56] Seven colors are seven sefirot, seven kabbalistic sefirot. It's shown seven hour emotions.
[00:09:03] By the way, each one of the Sefirot has its own color. We spoke about it before once, remember?
[00:09:09] So seven colors of rainbow are seven sefirot, through which G D is revealing himself in this world and through which also our souls are revealing the themselves in our bodies.
[00:09:22] We know that the way God relates to the world is the same way how our soul relates to our body. So we could study ourselves, understand how God relates to us. We could study how God relates to us, understand ourselves. It works both ways.
[00:09:34] So if this world is capable of retaining the Torah, then when God shines his light on us, we reflect some of stays here and it reflects breaking it into seven sephirot, which help us work on ourselves. That's how we work on ourselves.
[00:09:53] The Torah is telling us about our seven emotions, seven sefirot.
[00:09:57] Not because Torah likes studying psychology, by the way. It is a very interesting thing that the modern world likes to study human emotional anatomy.
[00:10:08] The modern world is very much into being emotionally educated, understanding where how your inner world works.
[00:10:17] Hasidus, specifically Hasidic tradition, does the same.
[00:10:21] It focuses on studying people's emotions and how we work inside.
[00:10:26] What is the difference?
[00:10:28] The secular world is studying emotions in order to help us serve our emotions better.
[00:10:36] The Hasidic world is teaching us about our emotions. It's in order to help us change our emotions.
[00:10:43] The secular world is taking our emotions for granted and we need to dance around them.
[00:10:50] The Torah is taking the truth for granted and we need to make our emotions dance around the truth.
[00:10:57] So now we understand that rainbow being a reflection of God's light, rainbow being a reflection of sun is metaphor for us becoming better people.
[00:11:13] And this is why what we know now from science about rainbow is only strengthening this metaphor.
[00:11:23] What we know today from science is only explaining better why rainbow is a sign for the time of flood and for the fact that God rain would want to destroy us if it would be before the flood. But now God does destroy us. In other words, thousand years ago, when the rabbis were learning about rainbow being a sign of God not destroying us when he could have otherwise, their students were just listening and nodding their head and said, I guess it has to be this way. Now when we know of the signs, we understand deeper why it is like that.
[00:11:59] So this is now. What did we see just now? We saw that you can read a simple text in the Torah, basic level of the Torah, and it tells you that God first wanted to destroy the world because world did not do what God wanted it to do because the world was corrupt.
[00:12:19] Then when Noah comes out of the ark, God says, okay, I am not going to destroy the world anymore.
[00:12:25] Now we understand how the world became different.
[00:12:29] And we also understand how the sign that God gave is reflecting, pun intended, on the very nature of that change.
