NOACH: Noah’s Ark, 2026 Edition

The Hebrew root shin, chet, tav (שחת) appears seven times in Parashat Noach, which is very unusual. It gives us the words “shechitut,” corruption, and “hashchata,” destruction. These are not two separate ideas. Corruption is destruction that does not come by accident or from outside. It comes from within, caused by the very people who are supposed to care for and protect.

This is how the Torah describes the generation of the Mabul:

וַתִּשָּׁחֵ֥ת הָאָ֖רֶץ לִפְנֵ֣י הָאֱ-לֹהִ֑ים וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א הָאָ֖רֶץ חָמָֽס׃

“The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Bereshit 6:11).

The first man had been commanded to rule the earth, which means to take care of it. Now human beings were destroying, beyond repair, the very thing they were meant to protect: human civilization. So the Creator decides to destroy the world with the Flood. Nothing was left. No one was left. Only the people and animals in the ark with Noach survived.

WHY NOACH?

Noach survived because he was different. Look at what the Torah and our Sages tell us about him.

In a generation devoted to destroying, Noach thought about creating, about building. He contributed to human civilization. You may not know that Noach “invented the plow.” That is how Rashi explains the pasuk behind his name:

זֶ֞ה יְנַחֲמֵ֤נוּ מִֽמַּעֲשֵׂ֙נוּ֙ וּמֵעִצְּב֣וֹן יָדֵ֔ינוּ

“This one will relieve us from our work and from the toil of our hands” (Bereshit 5:29).

Until Noach came along, Rashi explains, people worked the land with their bare hands. Noach invented farming tools that greatly reduced that labor. A technological revolution. An extraordinary benefit for all of humanity!

THE ANTI-NOACH OBSESSION

Of course, his creativity and his passion for building did not make him more popular with the destroyers. Quite the opposite.

Our Sages tell us that when Noach obeyed God and started building the ark, everyone mocked him: “Hey, old man, why are you building a boat [in the middle of a valley]?” Rashi (7:13) relates that the people of his generation threatened him: “If we see him go into the ark, we will take picks and axes and smash it to pieces.” Ruining their own civilization was not enough for them. They also wanted to eliminate the one man trying to save himself. Neither live nor let live. It was God, our Sages explain, who protected Noach from those who sought his destruction.

Noach’s drive to create shows up again when he leaves the ark. The first thing he does is build an altar to thank God for his survival: Vayiven Noach mizbeach, “And Noach built an altar” (8:20). Then Noach receives from God a command that is also a blessing: be fruitful and multiply. And that is exactly what he does. Noach and his sons rebuild the humanity that had committed suicide, and they bring prosperity and new life into the world.

The world before the Flood was split into two distinct camps. On one side, Noach and his family, devoted to building and to benefiting humanity. On the other, a society ruled by men with an appetite for tearing down the civilization that sustained them, and obsessed with eliminating those who built, like Noach.

THE NEW ANTEDILUVIANS

This week I heard a fascinating talk on the Israeli channel TOV by Dr. Doron Matza (https://youtu.be/dyiR2VFDeCo), a former senior official of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. Matza offers a very interesting way to read today’s world. In his view, the war that began on October 7 is a kind of third world war, still in its early stages. And in the realm of ideas, the world is divided into four large blocs.

The first is the totalitarian bloc, the “destroyers of Western civilization” (which Matza calls, without euphemism, “the bloc of murderers”). It includes not only those who personally commit acts of terror, but also those who back them, justify them or glorify them. They support organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, which seek to impose their goals through violence, terror and destruction, and which invade and try to take over wherever they find morally weakened societies.

The second is the “woke” bloc, progressivism, which was born with slogans that are hard to argue with: “equality,” “inclusion” and “tolerance” for all. The problem, Matza explains, is that over time this “inclusive” movement included the extremists of the first bloc too! As incredible and paradoxical as it sounds, they tolerate the intolerance of people who embrace terrorist ideologies. They were so tolerant of the intolerant that, according to Matza, the two blocs have become true partners on the same destructive political platform.

The third is the utilitarian bloc. Matza’s example is the United States, which deals with the world according to its own cost-benefit calculation. It strikes Iran when that suits it and stops when the price of oil goes up. And it would have no problem negotiating with the Iranian regime if that brought economic or strategic gains. It is Henry Kissinger’s famous maxim: America has no friends, only interests.

The fourth bloc, says Matza (who does not appear to be an observant Jew), is the bloc of ethics and values: the bloc of justice. That is where the State of Israel stands. And there stands the Jewish State, practically alone, in what Matza calls an “alarming solitude.”

ONE WORD AND ONE OBSESSION

The totalitarian bloc and the progressive bloc have nothing in common. One is oppressive; the other claims to defend freedom. One oppresses women; the other claims to protect them. One rejects religious diversity; the other claims to celebrate it. One seeks to impose its beliefs; the other preaches tolerance. And yet they march together!

What unites them? One word and one obsession.

The word is the root שחת (sh-ch-t): “lehashchit,” to destroy.

The thirst for destruction is on full display in a video circulating on social media. At one of the huge “student” protests now shaking Europe, a reporter walks up to a young man and asks: “What are you protesting against?” “I don’t know,” he answers, “but we came to protest.” “And what’s your message?” “Destroy everything! Destroy everything!” https://youtu.be/p9NpYTVE4Vk?si=LuBBf5j4cAlzLWAb

The answer is as brutal as it is revealing. He doesn’t know what he is protesting, what he wants to change, or what he would put in its place. But he knows exactly what he wants to do: destroy. This is the impulse Matza describes. And it is a chilling reminder of the generation of the Flood: a society in which destruction stops being a means and becomes a calling.

That spirit is not limited to one video. In France, the protests that began in mid-September came with reported attacks on teachers, arson, destruction of public property, wrecked cars, and assaults on police and even on the firefighters who came to put out the fires. According to the figures circulating, 24 schools were burned or looted, and 761 police officers and gendarmes were injured.

Why burn schools? Who gains from wrecking a teacher’s car? What is the point of attacking a firefighter who comes to put out a fire? It is the same logic as those who threatened Noah’s ark: if someone builds, he must be destroyed; if someone protects, he must be attacked.

OBSESSION NUMBER ONE

And then there is the obsession with the Jews. Israel is the bearer of the biblical tradition, the foundation of “Judeo-Christian” Western civilization, which these movements reject and fight, each for very different reasons.

In France, England and Belgium, progressive and socialist groups march alongside radical Islamist movements whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish State. The leaders of these countries, who are themselves the targets of these protests, like Emmanuel Macron or the British prime minister, criticize “Israel”! Recently, former president Barack Obama joined them. And so they feed the climate of hostility toward the Jewish State.

The symbols at these European protests, no matter what is being protested or celebrated, are always the same: the Palestinian flag, which stands for the destruction of Israel, anti-Israel slogans, open support for Hamas or Hezbollah, and justification of their crimes.

During a Fox News broadcast from Paris, amid tear gas and running crowds, the anchor noticed with surprise that the flags on screen “were not French flags.” Commentator Nile Gardiner identified them as Palestinian flags and said that pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas movements had taken over the riots.

And what does the Palestinian flag have to do with French students’ grievances? Why Israel?

Follow the analogy with Noach, and the answer is simple. While the world before the flood was destroying itself, Noach kept building his ark to survive. And that drove them crazy!

NOAH’S ARK: THE 2026 VERSION

On October 7, Israel was attacked by land, air and sea in an operation Hamas, INCREDIBLY, called “the Al-Aqsa Flood” (Tufan al-Aqsa). I’m not making this up. The terrorists themselves chose the word “Flood” for their devastating, criminal attack.

Israel, thanks to “the Forces of Heaven,” survived the flood and learned to build and reinforce its ark. While its enemies seek to destroy, Israel builds, invents and resettles its land.

Israel enlarged its ark. It expanded military control over Gaza to roughly 60% of the territory and reinforced its borders with new security zones in Lebanon and Syria that together cover more than 1,000 square kilometers. All of it to keep a massacre like that from happening again.

Until a little over a year ago, Israel faced another potential “flood”: Hezbollah’s arsenal of some 150,000 rockets and missiles. Today, after the blows Hezbollah has taken and Israel’s technological advances, Israel has built a far stronger air defense, backed by some of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, developed by its own scientists and engineers.

And like Noach, Israel is repopulating its land. Hamas wanted to empty southern Israel and turn the communities along the Gaza border into ghost towns. Today about 65,000 people live in that region, more than before the massacre. Over 90% of the residents have returned home, and thousands of new residents have arrived, especially in Sderot, where new housing is going up. The government’s goal is to double the region’s population. That is a Noach-style answer to those who tried to empty the south!

And Israel is not only rebuilding the communities that were attacked. It keeps growing, thanks to its extraordinary demographic vitality.

THE OPEN DOOR

Noach spent 120 years building the ark. He did it in plain view, Rashi explains (Bereshit 6:14), so that people would ask him why and perhaps change their ways. They had 120 years to get in. But apart from his family, no one entered. And when the rain began, the Torah says the door was shut behind him (7:16). It was too late.

Medinat Israel is Noah’s ark for the Jews of our generation. The Jewish people built it almost 80 years ago, with HaShem’s help, and today it protects them from the forces of destruction and their antisemitic partners.

Israel’s ark keeps its door open. The Jews of the world should not wait for the next flood to start before seeking shelter. To each of them, the Jewish State repeats the words HaShem said to Noach:

בֹּֽא־אַתָּ֥ה וְכָל־בֵּיתְךָ֖ אֶל־הַתֵּבָ֑ה

“Come, you and all your household, into the ark” (Bereshit 7:1).

The door is open. It’s time to go up.

Rabbi Yosef Bitton