The Little Teivah and the Foolish Shepherd 

Noach stepped out of his teivah. Although he knew what to expect, the sight of it shook him to his core. A prosperous, blossoming, incredibly beautiful world was no more. People, animals, trees, and plants were gone. All that remained was muck and more endless muck — the residue of a verdant world utterly destroyed.

Noach could not contain himself, and turned to Hashem demanding, “You, Who are the Merciful One, how could You have done it?”

What did Hashem reply?

“Foolish shepherd, when I told you that you are the only righteous one, that I was going to bring a deluge upon the world and that you should build a teivah, what were you thinking? I warned you about the flood and delayed it for so long so that you would pray for the entire world. But as soon as you heard that you would be saved in the teivah, you didn’t even think of praying for anyone. You simply built the teivah and saved yourself. Now that the world has been destroyed, you are opening your mouth to talk to me about mercy? Why did you not pray then?”

Noach then became contrite and then began offering sacrifices.

Zohar 1, 67b

The events of Simchas Torah 5784 were a churban. It was not about any one person being killed, or even many people. It was wholesale destruction. A whole swath of Eretz Yisrael was overrun by those bent on destroying us. And they actually succeeded in doing so, to a certain degree. Entire communities and villages were wiped out. Fields and orchards, homes and belongings, women and the elderly and infirm, all were ravaged and pillaged.

We woke up the day after Simchas Torah to a post-mabul world. No one who saw the churban, including non-Jews, remained dispassionate. As humans, we are programmed to crave living, thriving, and blossoming; churban is the antithesis of all of that.

As we look around at the devastation, we raise up our eyes to Heaven, and in our hearts, Noach’s question wells up: “How could You, the Merciful One, bring such destruction to Your beautiful world?”

But we are maaminim. We know Hashem has a plan. Having learned the parshiyos of Bechukosai and Ki Savo many, many times, we know that our relationship with Hashem is a two-way covenant. We are His chosen people, and if we choose to stray, chas v’shalom, we suffer the terrible consequences listed in the tochachah.