Home Makeover? - Noach (2023 Version)

My Brother and I were recently speaking about construction and home renovation. He mentioned that he would rather only renovate parts of our house. I disagreed and told him; I would like to knock down the whole house. He argued that knocking down a home can cause increased unnecessary costs and that he has an emotional connection to the house the way it was. I responded that renovating part of the house would leave us with the same amount of space, but knocking it down can give us the opportunity to make something bigger and better. This idea got me thinking because, in this week's parsha, we read about Noach and his journey through the Mabul (A huge flood that destroyed the world). One might wonder, why Hashem destroyed a majority of his world to save one boat filled with people and animals when he could have just remodeled some of it.

The answer to my quandary is in the following analogy. Imagine if I had a house, but my house was not taken care of. The floors were cracked, the roof leaked and quite honestly it was too small. Instead of trying to fix all the parts of the house that needed repair, it would be easier to just knock most of it down and rebuild from scratch. Hashem made it so that Noach who was a good part of his world survived to rebuild and recreate the world into something bigger and better!

The lesson that I learned from this is that there are times when it is necessary to let go of the old and embrace the potential for something better. It requires courage and a willingness to leave behind the familiar, but it can lead to growth, improvement, and the opportunity to create something greater than what was previously there. Even if that growth is not ideal or satisfactory, it can lead to something amazing!

Good Shabbos

All the best

Avroham Y Ross