I first want to share something that I hope everybody has already heard. For those of you who have seen the Cheshvan Rosh Chodesh video, we had a tape of the Rav talking. I hope those of you who did not see it will get a copy. We are working on the process of getting many of the old tapes of the Rav edited so everyone around the world can have access and study from the Rav. This Rosh Chodesh, the Rav said many things about Cheshvan. We know it’s not coincidental that Cheshvan begins with the reading of Noach.

As I mentioned in the recording, I had to listen to it quite a few times to appreciate what the Rav was saying. In this week’s Parashah is the discussion of the flood. The people at that time were acting with the Desire to Receive for the Self-Alone, acting selfishly. And because of all the negative energy that was awakened through their actions, the flood needed to occur, needed to destroy everything that was in the world except Noach and those who were close to him.

In the video, the Rav asks why water, which we know is the manifestation of chesed, of Right Column, of mercy, was the tool used by the Creator to create destruction? Why didn’t He use tools of the Left Side, maybe fire?Why did this destruction occur with Chesed, with the Right Column energy of water?

The Rav says an amazing thing. One of the beauties of kabbalists is that they take the stories in the Torah and not only give us an understanding, but very often completely change the way we view them. He says the flood was not a flood. It’s important that we have this consciousness now. It was a flood of mercy, of sharing. It will awaken an overflow of Chesed, of sharing. More importantly, for us as we read the Torah now, we don’t want to connect to destruction, to a flood that destroys and kills. Rather, we want to connect to the true kabbalistic understanding: what we want to have in our consciousnesses, what we are drawing to ourself, and the world, is a flood of Chesed, a flood of mercy.

With this understanding, we know the Torah was not using water, the channel of Chesed, as destruction. But rather it was being used for the purpose it was created — an overflow of mercy, an overflow of sharing.

As we come to Shabbat, we don’t come simply to learn, but to experience, to awaken Light. The first thing we should think about today is to open ourselves and the world to this mercy that has the power to solve any problem, has the power to remove any darkness, has the power to remove any chaos. We have the power to open this Light of Noach.