WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Excerpted from a thought of Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky
This week’s Parsha, Noach, underscores the distinction between Noach’s approach to helping the people of his generation and Avraham’s approach. Both Noach and Avraham lived in periods of overwhelming paganism and yet Noach was unsuccessful in turning the people of his generation around while Avraham was very successful. Both Noach and Avraham addressed the foolishness of idolatry. They both explained and argued how the source of all powers originates from HaShem and all else is but an expression of HaShem’s greatness. Why did Avraham succeed and Noach failed?
The Torah identifies the sin for which the world was to be destroyed by the Mabul was their widespread immorality. They lived a life where there were no boundaries. Even though paganism was also widespread, nevertheless, the Torah omits this sin against them. Why?
The reason for this omission is because the reason they accepted paganism was only to justify their immoral behavior. Their pagan worship was not motivated by any philosophical corruptness, it was simply their excuse to live a life with no moral boundaries. The root of their idolatry was found in the licentious way of life. It was therefore why the Torah identifies licentiousness as being the cause for their demise. Everything else was a consequence of that.
Noach was lacking this insight. He had it backwards. Noach thought their primary sin was paganism and their immorality was a consequence of that. He therefore, ad-dressed the philosophical issues involving idolatry rather than addressing their immoral lifestyle. It is no wonder that he did not succeed. The members of his generation understood quite well how foolish paganism was. They only adopted it as a way to justify their behavior and therefore he could not communicate any meaningful message that would turn them around.
In Avraham’s generation, however, the world had already accepted basic boundaries to protect themselves from any widespread licentiousness. His generation had adopted paganism for the virtues they found in it. Once Avraham addressed the philosophical issues arguing against paganism, his words resonated. He succeeded in opening the minds of his generation to recognizing HaShem.
The secret in successful communication is to recognize the root cause of the other person’s understanding and speak to that point.
Have a very safe and very wonderful Shabbos.
Paysach Diskind