Since September I have been going to the pre-school occasionally, to meet with the children. I have answer their questions, celebrated Havdalah, played the guitar, sounded the shofar, taught them about the lulav and etrog, ate with them at their Succoth party and on and on and on…. I see them in the hallway, do Hi Fives and fist bumps, bid them “Shabbat Shalom”. The children have gotten to know me, have become comfortable with me and trust me. Last week a four-year-old boy saw me in the hallway and ran up to me. “Rabbi,” he said excitedly, “Yesterday at home I wore a yalmulke — and I pretended that I was YOU”! What I gift!!! That made my day, let me tell you. Kids say the darndest things, as Art Linkletter used to say. Last week at Sunday School a fourth grader asked me, “Rabbi, Why did G-d create people?”
That Shabbat we read the story of Creation, so it was a timely question. The fact is, the Torah does not tell us why G-d created people, or for that matter, why G-d created the world. All we can say for certain is that it is G-d’s will that there is “something” instead of “nothing”. However, the question called for an answer, so I gave the best one I could – G-d created people so that we can be partners with G-d in making our world a better world. G-d needs our help to complete the work of creation. Each time we do a mitzvah, it pleases G-d and brings our world closer to the way it is meant to be.
Yes, G-d has high hopes for humanity. Yet, in our Torah reading for this week, we see G-d very disappointed in his creatures, that is in us. Far from being partners with G-d in making the world more perfect, human beings have become corrupt and have turned their backs on G-d. G-d regrets that he created the world, and it looks as though G-d is going to turn the world back into the primordial chaos from which it emerged. G-d finds one person, Noah, who is worthy of saving. G-d commands Noah to build an ark where he can save himself, his family, and a male and female of every kind from extinction.
We all know the story. The world is destroyed by a flood and after forty days Noah, his family and all of the surviving animals emerge from the ark and begin life anew in the world. It is a fresh start. G-d gives Noah and his children laws to live by, which the Rabbis called the “Seven Noahide Laws”. These can serve as a guardrail against falling into the level of corruption and depravity to which humankind once descended. G-d also shows Noah a rainbow, a sign that G-d will never again destroy the world. Noah plants a vineyard. Then something very strange happens to this most righteous man in the world. He gets drunk on the wine made from the grapes of the vineyard. We may judge Noah harshly for this if we forget that he likely has no experience with alcohol. How can he know that fermented grape juice can have this effect on a person? Noah no doubt learns from his first experience with wine what it can do when imbibed to excess. Humankind will come to understand from then on that it is best to drink with moderation.
Noah’s experience with wine is paradigmatic for how human beings will deal with other novel situations we will encounter throughout history. G-d gave us the capacity to reason and to learn from experience. Humankind will inevitably make mistakes when confronting novel situations and serious challenges.
In the 18th century, England experienced an unprecedented growth in population due to a decrease in the mortality rate. Toward the end of that century an English minister named Thomas Malthus predicted that human population growth will inevitably outstrip world food supply, leading to worldwide starvation, disease, death and a collapse of civilization. This, he reasoned, is because human population growth increases exponentially, while food supply increases only linearly. The concern about overpopulation raised by Malthus led to tragic mistakes in dealing with the problem. Cruel laws such as the English Poor Law of 1834 were enacted which curtailed food aid to the poor. Providing food to the poor only encourages the poor to have more children, the monarchy reasoned, leading to more poor people and the need for even more food aid. The Potato Famine in Ireland in 1840 was seen by some British government officials as “an effective way of reducing surplus population”. Another example — Forced sterilization programs in the United States in the 1920s were also viewed as a means of population control. In our own day China’s one child program was a policy designed to coerce people to have smaller families in order to control population growth. It was the “Green Revolution” of the 1960’s with its development of high yielding rice and wheat, introduction of irrigation techniques, modernization of management and use of pesticides that ultimately is credited addressing the problem effectively. The “Green Revolution” is estimated to have saved a billion people worldwide from starvation. In other words, humanity finally found a humane solution to the problem! Many experts worldwide believe that in the future we should meet the challenges of population growth by raising standards of living worldwide, educating women, and providing birth control, all of which have been shown to reduce family size and put less pressure on resources.
Humankind faces many formidable challenges in the future including nuclear proliferation and climate changes. We must not despair of solving these problems. Like the properties of the grape and the challenges of human population growth, the consequences of modern technology must be learned about through experience. Solutions are found through trial and error. Crises need not lead to a second destruction of our world. Rather, with our G-d given power of reasoning, and in partnership with G-d we can complete the work of creation. In doing so we answer the question by our fourth grader. Why did G-d create people?
Shabbat Shalom