My heart goes out to the Florida panhandle and North Carolina community as they contend with the aftermath of their worst flood in a generation. In what I consider a beautiful sentiment, my daughter asked if there was something we could do to help those who are suffering there. I didn't have a ready answer, but hope that we'll find something that we can dig our hands into to help out. It's sadly coincidental that on the heels of these floods, in the Jewish tradition we are reading about Noah and the Flood story. There are those that believe that there is symmetry in such events. Personally, I scoff at those who name this as God's wrath meted out with biblical certainty. I am much more inclined to blame human negligence and our inability to truly contend with global warming and rising sea levels. We can blame God if that makes us feel better, but really we have no one to blame but ourselves.
One of the more fascinating parts of the Noah story is when the rains have stopped, Noah sends out the raven first to reconnoiter and report back. The Bible reports that he kept "going to and fro until the waters dried up..." In a rather graphic interpretation of this, in Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer, it suggests that the raven didn't return to the ark after being sent out because it was feasting off the drowned corpses. A rather grim supposition, but it is trying to answer the question, why did Noah have to send the dove afterwards if the raven had done its job. The dove was more reliable in that it didn't eat carrion and so wouldn't use the drowned corpses as life rafts while waiting for more suitable place to land. The dove had to return to the ark.
The dove is often heralded as harbinger of peace. In Jewish law, we are not allowed to eat the raven (or other animals that eat carrion) but the dove is kosher and can be both eaten and sacrificed (though, thankfully, we do not do this anymore). In fact, it's only after the flood that the Bible informs us we are permitted to eat meat. I find it odd that there is this distinction between the two. We are permitted to consume the animal, the dove, that represents kindness, tenderness and empathy but not the raven, the carnivore, that represents aggression, strength and even brutality.
You would think that if we were truly a peace-loving people, we would be more inclined to eat the raven than the dove. Maybe, the notion that we are what we eat was as much a thing then, as it is now. If we consume the dove, maybe some of its peace loving characteristics will imbue us. No. I imagine it's quite the opposite. Our consumption of those docile, kosher animals has not made us kinder. Really, it has continued to perpetuate our inherently violent culture. Animals have two basic categories, predators and prey. In this, we are just predators. Maybe if we truly wanted to change this, we'd start by changing our diet.
Meanwhile, as the floods come, are we going to be like the raven, feasting of the drowned corpses and using them as floating islands until the earth dries up. Or are we going to be like the dove, searching for dry land, and spreading kindness and love.
