וַתִּשָּׁחֵת הָאָרֶץ לִפְנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים וַתִּמָּלֵא הָאָרֶץ חָמָס׃ (בראישת ו:יא) “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness.” Genesis 6:11 We have reached the second year of our Torah reading cycle since October 7, 2023, and the beginning of this war. Today is day 392, and we embark on a second reading of Parashat Noach and the story of the flood. Last week, we were reminded a second time that all human beings were created in the image of God, that our job as humans is to till and tend the earth, and that we as humans were banished from Eden because we ate of the forbidden fruit and discovered knowledge of good and evil. When we embarked on the journey of Genesis last year, few of us imagined that this war would still be going on over a year later. We would find ourselves re-reading these Parashot while 101 hostages still languish beneath the rubble of Gaza, tens of thousands of Israelis cannot yet return to their homes – both in the North and in the Gaza envelope. Thousands of Palestinian children, women, and non-combatants have lost their lives. This week was particularly mournful, as Israelis counted 34 tragic deaths of soldiers and reservists this week, and it felt like everyone I spoke to was either going to or coming from a Shiva house. The stories of the fallen heroes were heart-wrenching, with one family of ten children having lost their father. Rachel Goldberg, the widow of Rabbi Avraham Yosef Goldberg – a resident of Jerusalem and father of eight, who was a teacher at the Himmelfarb High School who was killed on Saturday night while fighting in southern Lebanon – requested that politicians who come to pay their condolences do so only after reaching out across the aisle. Their statement said they would welcome “politicians from any party or camp,” but only if they arrived in pairs — one from the coalition and one from the opposition. The family said this spirit matches what Rabbi Goldberg tried to do during his lifetime: bridging gaps and building bonds. And in the true spirit of Parashat Noach, photos circulating on social media Tuesday showed a number of lawmakers showing up 2×2 to visit the family in Jerusalem and extend their condolences. Rachel Goldberg, the slain soldier’s widow, urged the ultra-Orthodox community to share the burden of military service, which has been a constant controversy for decades, but particularly over the last year, and especially this week in which the ultra-Orthodox parties attempted to engrain exemption from military service as a condition for their approval of the State budget and maintaining their support for PM Netanyahu’s coalition. And this Shabbat we will read Parashat Noach for the second time since October 7, 2023, and the beginning of the war. Noach, was אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה בְּדֹרֹתָיו אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים הִתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹחַ׃ – “a righteous man; he was blameless in his generation; Noach walked with God” There is a famous debate on the understanding of what it meant for Noach to be a righteous person “in his time.” Noach might be understood to only have been righteous in comparison to all the rest of the people – which could be both more challenging and not that hard at the same time. From the short narrative offered in the book of Genesis, we do not hear Noach raise any moral questions upon learning that God planned to destroy the entire earth and all living creatures on it. Unlike Avraham, 12 chapters later, who haggled with God over the possibility of there being at least one righteous person in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, one could be critical towards Noach for an apparent lack of moral courage to look up and say, “Is it really necessary that everyone must be wiped out?” What did Noach say to his three sons if they asked, “What happened to all the other people?”  How might we have answered that question? A straightforward answer comes from God’s plain justification for the need to ‘hit reset’ and destroy the earth save for Noach and his family and pre-approved wildlife. “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness.” One cannot help but notice the word that the Torah uses for lawlessness, namely “חָמָס” – “hamas.” That the world was filled with Hamas and, therefore, needed to be destroyed was the rationale then, and it hits a bit too close to home today. We are familiar with the Hebrew term hamas as it is the 8th term in the series of the “Ashamnu“ confessional on Yom Kippur “חָמַסְנוּ” (meaning “to take by force from someone else”) and not to be confused with the terrorist organization Hamas, an acronym for The Islamic Resistance Movement (Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah). The question we ask today is, what lessons does this Parasha offer us regarding the conduct of the war and the hope of bringing it to an end? There is no question that Hamas is ultimately responsible for this war. It is they who launched a heinous attack, they who continually use their people as human shields and they who refuse to release the hostages. It is Hamas who for decades has siphoned critical resources of food, water, fuel, and funds to build their terrorist infrastructure to the detriment of their people. It was the infamous mastermind Yahya Sinwar (may his memory be erased) who was quoted as saying that he “doesn’t care if 10,000 or 100,000 Palestinians are killed as a result of the attack, it would still be worth it.” Now, does that not mean that Israel has the green light or moral justification for killing tens of thousands or reducing Gaza to an unlivable hell on earth? Can we as a collective Jewish people not reckon with the images of children and families killed, toddlers being pulled from the rubble, and the Gaza strip being reduced to an unlivable shell of its former self? In the biblical story, Noach had to first send a raven and then a dove three times. After waiting a week, Noach sent out a dove, who returned to him with a plucked olive branch. Upon sending it again, the dove did not return, so Noach concluded that it had found dry land and was okay to emerge from the ark. As Noach and his family got used to dry land, and began to rebuild, God’s message was poignant and direct: וְאַךְ אֶת־דִּמְכֶם לְנַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם אֶדְרֹשׁ מִיַּד כׇּל־חַיָּה אֶדְרְשֶׁנּוּ וּמִיַּד הָאָדָם מִיַּד אִישׁ אָחִיו אֶדְרֹשׁ אֶת־נֶפֶשׁ הָאָדָם׃ But for your own life-blood I will require a reckoning: I will require it of every beast; of humankind, too, will I require a reckoning for human life, of everyone for each other! שֹׁפֵךְ דַּם הָאָדָם בָּאָדָם דָּמוֹ יִשָּׁפֵךְ כִּי בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת־הָאָדָם׃ Whoever sheds human blood, By human [hands] shall that one’s blood be shed; For in the image of God Was humankind made. (Genesis 9:5-6) We often hear rhetoric cavalierly calling for the “flattening of Gaza,” the “transfer of all of its citizens,” and denial of the abject poverty, lack of resources, and unbearable conditions in which people exist. While we mourn the fallen among us, it is almost unfathomable to comprehend the scale of loss and devastation that has taken place in Gaza. The images of dead ashen children being pulled from the rubble of downed buildings and the pangs of hunger and suffering of toddlers should lead anyone with moral conviction to question the necessity of such action and the need to bring it to an end. There may not be political will to end the war and bring home the hostages who languish in the dungeons of Gaza and whose time is literally running out, but let us also heed the call of the Torah to require a reckoning for every human being and every life lost. To look at Palestinians and see them as also created in the image of God. While it may not bring an end to the war – and there is no question that the U.S. should continue to do all that is possible to ensure Israel has the means to defend itself as we know that there are those who value the destruction of Israel over human life, we are morally compelled to do all that we can to preserve life and to seek out “dry land” to end this miserable chapter of our history.