How the Ark Changed All the Living

By Rabbi Moshe Krieger, Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah (www,bircas.org)

In Parshas Noach, we see the world degenerating to a stage where “all flesh destroyed its way on the land” (Bereishis 6:12). What does it mean that they destroyed “their way?”

The Sages explain that humans began mating with animals, and then animals began mating outside of their species (Sanhedrin 108a). The Midrash (Bereishis Rabba 28:8) adds that even the ground perverted its way – if someone planted wheat, another grain would grow instead.

The Torah is describing something quite perplexing. Human beings have free choice and can choose to sin by mating outside of our species, but why should animals do this? Animals don’t have free choice, nor do they have a yetzer hara. Animals follow their instincts, and their instinct is to mate within their species. How could animals pervert their way, and even more so, how could the soil pervert its way?

The Beis Halevi answers that sin makes an impression on the world. First, a sin affects the sinner – this is clear. Once he sins, he is more likely to sin again. His second sin is in part an effect caused by his first sin. His sin also has an effect on those who see him, as this serves as a green light for them to sin as well. These are rational effects that we can understand, but beyond that, a sin brings tuma (roughly translated as impurity) into the world. Once this tuma is at large, it can have a profound effect on the entire world. This is what happened in the era before the Flood. Everyone was sinning, and these sins had an effect on the animals and even on the land.

Without a doubt, just as a bad act influences the world, so too the good deeds we do have their effect on the world, as the Mesilas Yesharim (1) states, that if a person “rules over himself and unites himself with His Creator, and uses the world only to aid him in his service of the Creator, he is uplifted and the world itself is uplifted with him.”

During the years when Rav Yechezkel Levinstein served as mashgiach of the Ponovezh Yeshiva, public busses began operating on Shabbos in Haifa. The Rav of Haifa planned to hold a public protest against this, and turned to the Ponovezh Yeshiva to send bachurim to take part in it.

Many Rabbanim supported the idea, but Rav Levinstein was opposed to it. He countered that a protest is not the proper response, because if chillul Shabbos is going on in Haifa on a public scale, it is because we ourselves are not strong enough in our Shabbos observance. What did he feel was the proper response? He explained that we must strengthen our own Shabbos observance. “This will have an effect on Haifa,” he said.

In Noach’s time, the whole world had become tainted by sin. What was the proper response then?

The response was Hashem’s command to build a teiva (ark). The teiva was disconnected from the rest of the world. No bad influences could come in, and no one inside could engage in sin. Neither man nor animals engaged in procreation during this year of the Flood. Even the outer layer of topsoil was destroyed by the Flood, so that afterwards, only land untainted by the earlier sins of man would resume the task of supplying the world with food.

Moreover, inside the teiva, a non-stop, unimaginable project of chessed was going on. Noach and his family were busy around the clock feeding and caring for the animals. This was creating a positive impression on the inhabitants of the teiva and preparing them for the time that they would go out and repopulate the world in a pure way.

The word we live in today is like the world before the Flood, with many people tragically washed away in the myriad lures of the yetzer hara. We need a teiva that we can enter and separate ourselves from all the wickedness of the outside world.

The Gedolei Yisrael say that the yeshivos and Torah centers are this teiva.

A yeshiva is closed off from the influences of the outside world, and inside, one can benefit from the influence of gedolei HaTorah and idealistic friends. A bachur should appreciate what the yeshiva is doing for him and try to remain there as long as he can.

Sometimes, parents are reluctant to send their sons to yeshiva or have them remain in learning for many years. Usually, their concern is how their son will later earn a living. These parents should understand, though, that the yeshiva is the only hope for their son. Our world is flooded with countless manifestations of the yetzer hara at every turn, and only the yeshiva can save us.

The yeshiva also imbues talmidim with kedusha, enabling them to grow there spiritually. Rav Menachem Friedman, mashgiach of Eitz Chaim, would say that whenever a person separates himself from bad influences and surrounds himself with good ones, he merits exceptional siyatta deShemaya. “Just look at what happened in the teiva,” he would say. “Man and animal were separated from all the sin that had filled the world, and Hashem gave this craft of limited size the supernatural ability to hold a huge amount of animals in a small space. So too, when bachurim enter a yeshiva and separate themselves from bad influences outside, Hashem gives the yeshiva the supernatural ability to imbue its talmidim with kedusha and elevate them.

Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, zt”l, Rosh Yeshivas Mir, was very careful not to change anything about the yeshiva, not in its architecture, and surely not in its learning sedarim. Once, when people suggested that a certain wall be torn down to make more space in the crowded Mir Beis Midrash, Rav Finkel was reluctant. “How can we change the building?” he asked. “It’s so full of kedusha!”

Rav Finkel decided to bring the matter before Rav Shach, who ruled that since the intent was to enable more Torah study, the wall should be torn down. Still, as construction was underway, people suggested relocating learning to a large room of the nearby Tamir Halls, which the owners were willing to make available to the bachurim.

This time, Rav Finkel was adamant. “How can we learn there? We need the Mir building, where the walls of the beis medrash have absorbed such tremendous kedusha. This is what gives us special siyata deShemaya in our learning!”

Much later, when cell phones were beginning to become common items and were making their way into batei medrash as well, Rav Finkel was beside himself: “You’re learning Torah here. How can you bring the outside world in with you? This cannot be!”

Rav Finkel went to great lengths to set up an alternate system outside of the beis midrash in which the hundreds of bachurim of Mir would each have a private number that could receive messages, which could be responded to later.

May the yeshiva be our teivas Noach!