Parshat Noah - The forecast calls for Rain

The Torah is filled with mitzvoth – 613 of them in fact. Some are big ones, like "Thou shalt not murder." It’s easy to see the implication of these. Others seems smaller, more mundane, like "Men must not shave the hair off the sides of their head" – it’s a little harder to see the impact of these ones.

However, Jewish tradition doesn’t differentiate between these, all mitzvoth come from God and, accordingly, all are important. This week’s parashah speaks to that.

We read about Noah and how he was righteous in a world of corruption. In what way were the people of Noah’s time corrupt? The sages describe their crime as being theft; but not ordinary theft. If an man was walking through a crowd with a basket of peas, the thieves would not snatch the basket, in stead everyone in the crown would take a single pea, leaving the owner with an empty basket at the end of the walk. You could imagine each thief rationalizing his actions by saying "What’s the big deal, I only took one pea, worth less than a penny. And everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I?"

You see how little missteps can have disastrous consequences.

So, what was God’s response? He could have caused a one gigantic calamity to punish the people, like an earthquake or meteor strike, but instead He used rain. Each individual rain drop is basically harmless, it’s only when you pile millions upon millions of drops in a row that rain can cause destruction and devastation. God’s response was measure for measure – lots of tiny, seemingly harmless, sins leading to a corrupt world brings lots of tiny, seemingly harmless, rain drops leading to utter devastation.

This is more than an interesting observation, it’s actually fundamental Jewish philosophy – the little things count. You don’t read any sages saying "not killing anyone will get you a good portion I the world to come", but we do read that "Whosoever recites Psalm 145 (the Ashrey) three times a day may feel certain of having a portion in the life to come."

I think the lesson is that the big things you do because of their obvious benefit. The benefit of the small things is not as obvious, but just as real, in fact, even more. While I’m proud to say I have lived every second of every day of my life without violating the commandment "Thou shalt not murder", I’ve never really been in a situation where that choice was difficult, so living by that commandment is not something that will alter my character, and bring me closer to God. However, the little things are things we struggle with every day, and living by those will have an impact on your character.

Most of us (I hope) would not steal a bag of food from the grocery store, but how many of us would sample something from the bulk containers? If we avoid that and stive for total honesty in all our dealings, we’ll become a better person, and move closer to God. But if we rationalizing this by saying "What’s the big deal, I only took one nut, worth less than a penny, and everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I", you may want to keep an eye out for rain.

Shabbat Shalom.