Noah's Ascension

  בראשית כ וייבן נוח מזבח ליהוה וייקח מכול הבהמה הטהורה ומכול העוף הטהור ויעל עולות במזבח  כא וירח יהוה את ריח הניחוח ויאמר יהוה אל ליבו לא אוסיף לקלל עוד את האדמה בעבור האדם כי יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו ולא-אוסיף עוד להכות את-כל-חי כאשר עשיתי  כב עוד כל-ימי הארץ זרע וקציר וקור וחום וקיץ וחורף ויום ולילה לא ישבותו.

Genesis 8:20 And Noah built an alter to God. He took from all of the pure animals and from all the pure birds and raised them as an ascension offering at the alter. (21) God smelled the pleasant fragrance and God said to his heart, I will not continue to destroy the earth because of man for his heart's inclination is bad from his youth. And I will not again destroy all life as I have done. (22)To the end of the days of the land, during seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will not cease.

The next time sacrifices are mentioned in the Tanach is during the story of Noah (Genesis 8:20-22). After the flood is over, Noah comes out of the ark and builds an alter (מזבח). He takes one of each of the pure animals and sacrifices them in/at the alter. The word for Sacrifice is olah עולה, to go up. The scent of the sacrifice (and possible Noah) go up to God, and in response God says to his heart that he will not destroy the world again in response to man's evil inclination.

This is a very different type of sacrifice then Cain and Hevel. Their sacrifice was a mincha (rest), and the result of the sacrifice was that God gazed upon Hevel. In this sacrifice, the goal of the offering was to ascend, and the result was that God made a change. One question I had was what exactly ascended? In the text, God smelled the "pleasant fragrance". My general assumption is that God is so far beyond us that we can't even begin to understand or explain God, but how does one make sense of God "smelling"?

I think the answer lies in a closer reading of the text. The word for pleasant odor is ריח הניחוח reach hanichoah. The first word can be read as רוח or spirit/wind, and the second is a variation on his name: נח Noah. When God smells (וירח), his spirit (רוח) meets with Noah's. This reading is that the spirit of Noah ascended up to God, God "spirited" Noah's "spirit", and it effected God's heart.

The Mincha sacrafice is a type of offering that results in a connection with God. It seems that the person offering the sacrifice brings God into the world. An ascension offering is more active and one that makes a change in the world. Here, the person goes into the spiritual world to make a change.

I'm excited to see how these types play out as we go further into our study, and what we can learn from how sacrifices were used biblically.

Responses to a flood

I've always been fascinated with the idea of Jewish Archetypes. I think we could gain a lot in understanding our actions by seeing our own lives reflected in the stories and patterns of our ancestors. As I discovered last year, when I began to study texts in greater depth, the characters and choices of our ancestors are complex and often difficult to understand. The stories I understood, and last studied, when I was a child have a much greater depth than my childhood understanding could comprehend. Now that I study the stories as an adult, I see there are patterns and stories in our ancestors that replay themselves today, and maybe understanding the patterns will help to do Tikkun Olam.

I am not sure that I am the right person to prepare a comprehensive analysis of Jewish archetypes, but I think it's a good idea. So I'll send it out in the Universe and maybe it will germinate in the someone else for awhile until it grows into something or is passed along. (I also don't feel that I've studied enough to add to this discussion, but that's really an example of giving away my power - check in later for another post on that topic.)

It's raining in Jerusalem today. Due to soil conditions, an overabundance of development, and a lack of good drainage, whenever it rains, the runoff on the sides of roads tends to be mini-floods. This got me thinking about Jonah and Noah.

I had a patient awhile back who was re-playing the story of Jonah. There was something within herself that she was being asked to do that she absolutely didn't want to do, so she was spending a lot of time and energy running away from it. When I would connect to her, the vision I had was either her standing on the deck of a ship during a storm (when her symptoms were bad), to hiding in a storage room (when her symptoms were decreased).

I had no idea what God was asking her to do, but it became clear to me that for her to get better she needed to jump overboard in a raging storm and get swallowed by a fish for a few days. The first required courage in that she was essentially going to have to choose to allow her old self to die (a common shamanic metaphor - the shaman needs to die to move forward). The second would be enormously painful as she went though a near death experience in a cold dark place. But when she got spit up by the fish on the shore, things were going to be a whole lot better.

Today weather got me thinking about Noah too. In that case, Noah listened to what God asked and was able to ride out the flood in an ark. I can't imagine it was comfortable living in a huge boat filled with animals for a little over a year. Nor can it have been easy to watch your entire community, and everything you know, get wiped out. Noah also went through a "death" of sorts and emerged a changed man.

Comparing the two:
Noah listened to what God wanted and rode our the storm on top of the water.
Jonah ran away, got tossed around on a boat until he jumped into the water and rode out the storm in the water and in a fish.
Noah went through the change with his family.
Jonah went through it alone.
Noah listened and went through the storm with God.
Jonah ran away and caused the storm.
Noah accepted the change at the end and became a new person, though somewhat of a drinker.
Jonah didn't accept the change and did what he was asked but resented it.

If we are to think of these as Archetypes, we need to look at what they can teach us about our own lives and the problems we face. Both of these men were challenged by God. Is our response to our challenges to run away or to figure out what to do? Is the storm part of the challenge or is it caused by our response to it? Are we willing to let the challenge change us or are we going to resist to the end, long after the change has happened? How do we involve others in our challenges? Are we going to maintain our community connections or try to go it alone? Do we keep our problems to ourselves or do we let our challenges cause problems to others (the sailors on the ship Jonah was on)? Or do we involve others to help them ride through a crisis?

The Archetypal part of this is to ask if these behaviors go together. If we identify as a Jonah or as a Noah, can we use that to understand our behavior? And most importantly, can we use that to change and grow? A Jonah might suddenly understand why they cause problems to others when faced with a challenge and try to head off the storm by spending more time with themselves. A Noah might try to involve others in help her to meet her challenges instead of trying to go it alone.

This is just a brief sketch of what two Jewish Archetypes might look like. These two stories are very short and incomplete, so I wouldn't think that a person would be primarily one of them, but a person might have a bit of Noah in him, and that might be useful to understand. I'm very pragmatic about this and if they can help us to understand and grow, then it's something worth pursuing.