This week, we read about the near destruction of the world. Why does it come about – because, the Torah tells us, the earth “was filled with violence (6:11).” The Hebrew word for violence in the Torah, remarkably enough, is Hamas: ותמלא הארץ חמס.

Flood stories exist in other ancient civilizations. The striking difference is that in the Torah alone is morality a feature of the story. The Babylonian epic of Atrahasis explains that the flood comes because human beings are making so much noise they annoy the gods. That is a typical tale of the civilizations that surrounded Israel. The gods were annoyed, or in a bad mood, or had a fight with one another.

In the world of ancient religion, consequences depended upon how human beings treated the gods. The great innovation of Hebrew civilization is that God cared about how people treated one another. The consequence of having one God is that all human beings are kin. Therefore, God cares for us all, and moral actions and consequences are tied to our behaviors.

On this solemn week when we continue to reckon with the horrific massacre perpetrated on the people of Israel, we recognize yet again that the Torah has anticipated our pain and our plight. And the legacy of violence is resolution toward those who would continue to be violent. The Torah does not see war as something to be celebrated or encouraged or hoped for – it is an unfortunate, grim necessity, but a necessity it is. In this parasha, of course, the flood comes from the hand of God. In the aftermath of the flood, God promises that never again will such a cataclysm destroy the earth. But violence continues, and as the Torah progresses, human beings must fight on their own behalf.

The choice of Noah is the beginning of rebuilding a world. In the aftermath of destruction, there is hope that a more stable, peaceful order can emerge. That is the hope of all decent people today. First however, the structures that would undermine that order, the ideologies that gleefully perpetrate atrocities, that fill the world with violence, must be extirpated. The war against hatred is not new. Much of the time, it can be fought with words and arguments and advocacy. But there are times, and this surely is one of them, when it requires that a nation take up arms against those who would destroy it. So that Hamas, in both the ancient and modern senses, will no longer wield its sword.