One Late Meal - Rabbi Shlomo Horwitz

Imagine spending an entire year feeding animals. All day. All night. This one eats now, that one eats later. And every single one of them depends on you. This was Noah's life inside the ark, the tebah. The Gemara in Sanhedrin 108b tells us that Shem, the son of Noah, later described the tremendous difficulty that his father went through. Some animals needed to be fed during the day, others at night. Noah and his family had to accommodate all of them. And Rashi tells us that once Noah was late bringing food to the lion, the lion struck him, leaving him injured. Rav Eliahu Lopian asks in his Sefer Lev Eliyahu such a great question, you're going to wonder why you never thought of it yourself. How did all those animals fit into the ark? The Ramban says it was a miracle. Under ordinary circumstances, that structure could never have held all the animals and all the food that they needed. Hashem is already making a miracle for this expedition to take place. Why not make one more miracle? Let the animals, I don't know, stay alive without eating, arrange for the food to reach them miraculously. Why did Noah and his family have to spend 12 exhausting months feeding one animal after another? Rav Eliahu explains that Noah had been given an extraordinary opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah of the halachah to bidrachav, following in God's ways. God sustains his creatures. Now Noach is given the responsibility of sustaining the creatures just like Hashem, so to speak. Every feeding was an act of chesed. Every interruption of his sleep was another opportunity to care for a creature that could not fend for itself. We look at the feeding and say, "I, what a burden. Why doesn't Hashem take that burden away?" But actually, that work was his avodas Hashem. That was his job on this planet. And there's a very demanding part to this. Noach had been feeding these animals for months. Think of everything he had already done. But when he's late feeding the lion, he's held accountable. Rav Eliyahu says, "This teaches us how responsible we need to be when it comes to chesed, kindness, performed to other people. We have to consider the needs of the one receiving it. Here, the lion's hungry now. And if that's true in the case of an animal, how much more so do we need to pay attention to the needs of another human being, somebody created b'tselem Elokim in God's image?" Rav Eliyahu ends with an application that brings this right into our daily lives. You and I cannot feed the entire world. We don't have the resources. We don't have the ability. But you know what we can do? We can pray for other people. We can pray for the world. When we stand before Hashem and say, "Barech aleinu et hashanah hazos, bless this year." We're asking for sustenance. Whose sustenance? Not just mine. I might be thinking about my own paycheck, my own bills. And of course, we need that. But what are the words? Barech aleinu, bless us. There are people out there who don't know how they're going to make ends meet. They're looking for work, trying to support their families. We are praying for them. And that says Rav Eliyahu is doing chesed with Hashem's creatures, kindness with Hashem's creations, through our prayer, besides physical help. And it goes on. When we say Re'eh na b'onyenu, see our suffering, it's not just us. It's others around us, other people who need Hashem's help. Noach is teaching us he had to be on time to bring the lion its food. Rav Eliyahu says we should take our tefillot seriously as an avodah on behalf of others. And to come on time, and I'm not I'm not the greatest at this myself, but to come on time, to daven with attention, with kavana, and to recognize that we have been given the opportunity to help others, not just physically, but also with prayer. So, tomorrow morning when you open your siddur, think about somebody else who might need a recovery from an illness. They might need a livelihood. You may not be able to provide what they need, but you can bring their needs before the one who can. Wishing everybody a wonderful Shabbos.