Parashat Noach
November 1, 2019
3 Cheshvan 5780

Candle Lighting: 5:39 p.m.
Dear Friends, 

In our Torah portion this week, Parashat Noach , we read about the Tower of Babel. In an attempt to physically reach the heavens, people try to build a tower all the way up to God. This angered God, who confused their languages so that the construction workers could not understand one another, preventing them from being able to complete their construction project, also serving as a story of origin for the various languages spread across the world. 

One of the reasons that I think God might have been so angry at the people for building the tower, was because they misunderstood an essential piece of what it means to be close to God. There are most definitely some physical places and spaces where we may feel closer to God than others, but what the people building the tower failed to realize is that God can be found everywhere. We don’t need to build big, beautiful, and expensive towers up to the heavens to reach God; we can feel God’s presence wherever we are, in our minds, and in our hearts. 

Our relationship with God, as a community, as families, and as individuals, is always changing. One of the important lessons we can take away from the Tower of Babel is that it really doesn’t matter how high we build, how far we go. That is because we can always build a little higher, and go even further. God can always be found, sometimes we just have to push ourselves a little harder, and dig a little deeper.

Shabbat Shalom ,

Josh


November 1: 6:15 p.m. Kol Tefillah
followed by Potluck Dinner
November 2: 9:30 a.m. Shabbat Services