We all know the story – the flood, the animals, the rainbow. But have you ever stopped to imagine the sheer logistical nightmare of keeping all those creatures alive and well for over a year?
According to Legends of the Jews, as retold by Ginzberg, gathering the animals was just the beginning for Noah. The real challenge? Food and lodging. Shem, Noah's son, later recounted the trials to Eliezer, Abraham's servant. "We had sore troubles in the ark," he confessed. Think about it: day animals needing daytime snacks, night animals demanding midnight feasts.
How did Noah even know what to feed each creature? The story goes that one day, he sliced open a pomegranate for some hungry critter, and a worm wriggled out. A tiny zikta (the text doesn't elaborate what this is, but you can imagine some small, unusual creature) snapped it up. From then on, Noah apparently became a worm farmer, kneading bran and waiting for the wriggling treats to emerge!
And the lion? Poor thing had a fever the whole time! Apparently, he was too sick to cause trouble and lost his appetite. Then there was the polite urshana. Finding him asleep, Noah asked if he needed anything. The urshana replied that he didn't want to add to Noah’s burdens. So Noah blessed him, wishing him eternal life – and, according to the tale, that blessing was realized.
But the chaos didn’t stop there. Imagine being tossed around like a lentil in a pot as the floodwaters raged. The lions roared, the oxen lowed, the wolves howled – a cacophony of animal agony. Noah and his sons, fearing death, cried out to God. "O Lord, help us!" he prayed. "The billows surge about us... death stares us in the face!"
Where did all that water come from anyway? The flood, we learn, was a result of the joining of the male waters above the firmament and the female waters from the earth. According to this tradition, the upper waters burst through the space left when God removed two stars from the constellation Pleiades. To stop the deluge, God had to move two stars from the constellation of the Bear to Pleiades. Hence, the Bear forever chases the Pleiades, longing for her lost children, who will only return in the future world. How's that for cosmic drama?
And the darkness! For the entire year, the sun and moon hid their faces. That’s why Noah's name is connected to the Hebrew word for "resting" (noach), because during his time, the heavenly lights “rested." How did they see? The ark was illuminated by a precious stone, shining brighter at night than during the day, allowing Noah to distinguish between the two.
The flood lasted a full year, beginning on the seventeenth of Heshvan (a month in the Jewish calendar, usually falling in October/November) and raining for forty days until the twenty-seventh of Kislev (November/December). The punishment, we are told, fit the crime. The sinful generation was punished for their immoral behavior.
For 150 days, the water remained at the same level, fifteen ells above the earth. During this time, all the wicked perished, each receiving their due punishment. Even Cain, the original murderer, met his end, avenging the death of Abel. The waters were so powerful that even Adam's grave wasn't spared.
Then, on the first of Sivan (May/June), the waters began to recede, a quarter of an ell each day. After sixty days, on the tenth of Av (July/August), the mountain tops emerged. But before that, on the tenth of Tammuz (June/July), Noah sent out the raven, and a week later, the dove.
Now, about that raven… He wasn't exactly enthusiastic about his mission. As Ginzberg tells us, drawing from earlier traditions, the raven whined, "The Lord, thy Master, hates me, and thou dost hate me, too!" He felt unfairly chosen, arguing that Noah favored the species with seven pairs in the ark. Maybe Noah just wanted to get rid of him to get to his mate! Noah, understandably, was offended. "Wretch!" he retorted. "I must live apart from my own wife in the ark. How much less would such thoughts occur to my mind as thou imputest to me!"
The raven’s mission failed. Spotting a floating corpse, he decided to snack instead of delivering the message. So, the dove was sent. She returned in the evening with an olive leaf in her beak, plucked from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, a sign that the Holy Land had been spared. As she plucked it, she prayed, "O Lord of the world, let my food be as bitter as the olive, but do Thou give it to me from Thy hand, rather than it should be sweet, and I be delivered into the power of men." A powerful prayer of trust and reliance.
It took until the first of Tishri (September/October) for the waters to completely recede. Even then, the ground was so muddy that Noah and his family had to wait until the twenty-seventh of Heshvan to leave the ark – a full solar year after they entered.
The story of Noah's ark is more than just a children's tale. It's a complex narrative about survival, divine judgment, and the incredible challenges of preserving life against all odds. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? What "ark" are we building today, and what sacrifices are we willing to make to ensure its survival?