Chaos. Suicide bombers. Anthrax. Being engaged. People having children. Governments toppling. Finding love, discovering darkness, ripping away the images of what you used to think was true - for good and... What an insane world we live in, I live in.
Into a world not so far from our own, where "every flesh has distorted its way on the earth," where old definitions and understandings no longer apply, a world where only fools have prophecy, appears Lemech, "The Fool (Lemech in Hebrew means "fool")." He looks at his son and says, "I will call him Noach (rest); he will console us (yenachamenu)..."
It is a strange, cryptic prophecy; if Noach's name is based on consolation (nechama), then it is missing a letter mem. Where is his mem, and what does it mean? Perhaps Lemech saw the mem that was at the center of his own name - saw it shining in Noach and added the two other letters (nun and chet) to give his son the strength of nachem - of consolation.
You know the ideal shape of the mem, the shape the Talmud describes it when the Torah was given - was a square, an enclosed space, a box - a teva. Kind of like that enclosed space which for forty (mem) days of rain - of mayim - was the only living place in the world… kind of like the forty days Moshe Rabbeinu was up on the mountain alone with God… and kind of like the forty days before conception when there is nothing but the knowledge of the soulmate that has been called out for you… That enclosed space inside, which can withstand all the storms and keeps alive that point of life and humanity even in a world that has lost it and even in the face of God's tremendous majesty… It is the mem of Mashiach.
Rebbe Nachman teaches of the square (mem) within the circle - kind of like that space inside which holds the globe together. Noach, called by the Torah "ish tzadik (a righteous man)," had this space - this point of life shining through him, this mem, through which his father could see nechama - consolation. It is the mem which allowed the na'a - the movement in the world - to become na'ama (pleasant) - the name of Noach's wife. Rebbe Nachman says an awesome thing. You know when a chatan and kallah (a bride and groom) get married, so we know why they're happy; they've found each other. But why do we go so crazy at their wedding? Because they bring new hope, new possibility into the world; who knows who or what may be born of this union? This is the mem - the forty days of hope that are around even before a person comes into the world.
Now, in this time of chaos - of shattering and of new outpurings of judgement and harshness, of love and of breaking of boundaries - we must all go back to the mem, to that hope and that yearning for Mashiach, for we all come from Noach and Na'ama. Rebbe Natan teaches that at the beginning of the coming close to God, how can we possibly have a vessel to contain that light and connection that is shining down on us, how can we create a teva, an ark to hold the life? The vessel can be created through longing and yearning. This is the mem of consolation that we received from Noach and keeps flowing past Noach even in his fall through Avraham to Moshe Rabbeinu and on through the storm waters of history until the mem of Mashiach.
Rav Raz Hartman
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Rav Raz Hartman, born to Israeli parents, grew up in Southern California. He was attending U.S.C., majoring in Music Peformance, when he met Rav Natan Greenberg. That meeting eventually result in Raz's coming to the Bat Ayin Yeshiva, where he studied for six years and was given Semichah in 2003. He is married to Leah, and they live, with their three children, in Nachla'ot, Jerusalem. Raz serves as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo, and founder of the v'Ani Tefillah minyan. He has produced several albums of Jewish music. |