Noah.

There are only two weeks of the year that we are invited to imagine a world without Torah. 

Last week, still in the afterglow of holiday season, we immerse ourselves in the energy of newness, of ultimate creation, and the lasting consequence of the feminine asserting free will.  

By now you have had over a week to see which of your behaviors, negative thought forms, and unconscious tendencies have re-emerged giving you another chance to work them through this year.

Be gentle with yourself during the new moon of Cheshvan. As we step into the reality of life, there is a significant drop in spiritual energy — and if you are living in the holy land, or sensitive to the jewish plight -  that drop has thrown us back into the reality of war, and the painful loss of life that results from it.

Trust that if you are feeling low in any way the spiritual cycle worked. 

According to the spiritual energy, this week is the most favorable time of the year to imagine a world so corrupt and devoid of morality that the Creator of the Universe decided to destroy every last being. Imagine a world where extreme sexual immorality and “hamas” filled the earth — and “hamas” was so bad that God needed to destroy ALL of creation.  This year, sadly, we might be closer than ever to really sensing into the pain God felt when seeing creation filled with “hamas.” Rashi, the most trusted and beloved of biblical interpreters defines the word “hamas” as “theft in broad daylight.” Later commentators like the Gur Aryeh further clarify the meaning of “hamas” to include stealing land,  material objects AND the “overt stealing of human beings that was so common at that time that people stole their neighbors.”  Only Noah, a single human being on the entire earth, was able to align with moral law and prove worthy of being saved- and so that is what happened. The world was flooded and only those Noah was spiritually advised to bring with him on the arc survived. 

Take this week to really consider a pre-abrahamic world without torah and morality and the striving to overcome our negative inclinations. See how few “Noahs” there are in spaces filling with sympathy or enthusiasm for Hamas - a world that actively supports murderers and rapists who actually stole their neighbors in broad daylight—  and their neighbors things, and actually want steal an entire land too.

Allow yourself to feel the divine offense deep in your bones — and the divine impulse to remove irredeemable evil “Hamas” ( AMALEK) — those that steal humans and land and things and rape and kill in broad daylight from this earth - and pray that the IDF is successful and divinely guided in it’s mission to remove pure evil and the shadow it casts from the face of the earth.

And then come back to your own life with a little more compassion. Take a moment to find love for your sensitivity to your lower states of consciousness, even if you need to work on the same things again and again, whatever it is - at least you are working on — and thank yourself and thank God no matter what the messed up world tells you - at least you don’t support “Hamas”.

May we be strengthened,

Shabbat Shalom.