Just a few weeks ago, three children and a teacher were murdered at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon. Parents sent their children to school expecting to see them again that afternoon. A teacher went to work to help children build their futures. In a few terrible moments, those futures were stolen. As a father of eleven, I struggle to find words for the grief those families are facing.
I miss the world I thought we lived in. Perhaps it was never as safe as I imagined, but I believed there were certain things we could count on. A classroom should be a place where children discover the world, and parents should be able to send them there without wondering whether they will come home.
We have access to more information than any generation in history, yet we seem increasingly confused about the things that matter most. We can communicate instantly across continents while struggling to speak respectfully across a table. We have extraordinary tools for improving life, yet the headlines leave us wondering what has happened to our humanity.
As Jews, we feel that bewilderment when anti-Israel hostility becomes an excuse for antisemitism, when the murder of Jews is rationalized, and when people who speak passionately about human rights seem unable to recognize our own. Something in the world we trusted feels profoundly broken. We cannot explain these families’ suffering, but we can ask what their heartbreak calls upon us to strengthen in ourselves.
It feels as though we are drowning in a kind of flood.
This isn’t the first time that the world was destroyed. In the same Torah portion in which this horrific shooting took place, the biblical Noach stands before a world that has literally been washed away by the Great Flood. At first glance, the Flood looks like an eruption of Divine anger. The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, reveals a deeper dimension: Humanity had turned against the very source that sustained it. Before the world lost its life, it had lost its connection to the Giver of life.
The Torah describes a moral collapse before it describes the rising waters. Violence and robbery had become ordinary, and people had abandoned their obligations to their Creator and to one another. The flood began long before the first raindrop.
A society depends on the convictions people carry within them, especially when nobody is around to enforce the rules. What makes another person’s life sacred? Why must I restrain my anger? What obligates me to do the right thing when doing otherwise would benefit me?
For years, the Rebbe championed a daily moment of silence in public schools, giving students an opportunity to reflect on their purpose and their responsibility to their Creator. Parents would guide their children at home about what to contemplate, according to their family’s beliefs.
The separation of church and state protects freedom of religion. A public school serves families of different faiths, and the Rebbe was sensitive to the danger of teachers imposing religious beliefs. His proposal respected that concern: The school would provide the quiet moment, while parents would provide its spiritual content.
But protecting religious freedom should leave room for us to speak openly about G-d, purpose, and moral responsibility. We need to bring G-d into the conversation in our homes and in our own lives. We need to ask what it means to have a Creator who gave us life and entrusted us with the lives of others.
That is why the guidance matters. A child told simply to sit quietly may spend the minute waiting for it to end. The Rebbe wanted that moment to spark a conversation at home about what deserves our attention and how we ought to live.
For our children, that conversation might sound like this: “When you have your quiet moment tomorrow, remember that G-d gave you this day because there is something good you can do with it. Think about someone who might need your kindness. Remember that every person you meet was created by G-d, and that your choices matter even when nobody else is watching.”
Those words speak to us as adults, too. Whether we are raising a family, running a business, enjoying retirement, or navigating the challenges of growing older, we still have a purpose. We still have choices to make, people to care for, and goodness that only we can bring into the world.
Our quiet moment might begin with a simple question: “G-d Almighty, what do You need from me today?” Perhaps we need patience for a difficult conversation, courage to acknowledge a mistake, or the generosity to notice someone whose loneliness has gone unspoken. Remembering that we answer to a Higher Authority gives weight to decisions that might otherwise seem small.
Noach’s rescue offers a way forward. The Hebrew word for ark, teivah, also means “word.” The Baal Shem Tov taught that G-d’s instruction to enter the ark also invites us to enter the words of Torah and prayer, allowing them to surround us and shape our lives amid the floodwaters outside.
Today, the flood reaches us through our phones, our televisions, and our conversations. Outrage follows outrage. Cruelty becomes familiar through repetition. We can spend hours absorbing what is wrong with the world and leave ourselves little time to consider our responsibility within it.
We need an ark, too. Before opening the floodgates of the news tomorrow morning, open a prayer book. Say a few words slowly enough to mean them. Give ten uninterrupted minutes to learning Torah. We check the news to discover what happened overnight; we study Torah to remember what matters forever.
Then carry that awareness into the day. Honor a commitment that has become inconvenient. Protect someone’s dignity when others are careless with it. Bringing G-d into our lives becomes real through the demands we allow Him to make on us.
But the most hopeful part of Noach’s story comes after he leaves the ark. G-d promises never again to destroy the world through a flood, and chooses the rainbow as the sign of His covenant. Why a rainbow? What does a splash of color have to do with humanity’s future?
The Rebbe explains that after the Flood, the world gained a capacity for renewal from within. Consider the rainbow: Moisture rises from the earth, and water droplets receive sunlight, refracting it into glorious colors. Light comes from above, but something below participates in revealing its beauty. This becomes a picture of our partnership with G-d. Even after losing our way, we retain the ability to return, repair, and rebuild. Even a tiny droplet can reveal colors hidden within sunlight. Together, countless droplets transform the horizon. Each of us has light to reveal; together, we can change the view. A single person has the power to illuminate the horizon.
That changes how I understand hope. I can bring G-d’s wisdom into a conversation, honesty into a business deal, kindness into someone’s difficult day. Each choice allows more light into the world we actually inhabit. The rainbow reminds us that the capacity to begin again is part of creation itself.
When I look at my children, I cannot promise them a world without storms. But my wife and I can help them build an ark: faith to steady them, Torah to guide them, and responsibility for whoever needs their help. The world we thought we knew may be gone. The world we help create is still ahead of us. Noach could not stop the rain, but he could build something that carried life through it. So can we.
Rabbi Dovid Vigler is the spiritual leader at Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens, with over 85,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, youtube.com/jewishgardens. Email him at [email protected].
