Rabbi Eve Posen

This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Friday, October 16, 2026. It’s dedicated to Shiri and Matan, the carriers – and great question-askers – of so much Torah.

Do you know this song? “Rise and shine, and sing out your glory, glory.” My mom used to sing it to me whenever we arrived at this week’s Torah portion, and I can’t help hearing it in my head every year. Noah’s ark! Animals! A rainbow! It all seems innocent enough.

I also think back to when Duncan and I picked out bedding for Shiri. We wanted something gentle and something that wasn’t stereotypically gendered. We chose Noah’s ark, complete with happy animals nestled together. Little did we know how much significance that Torah story would eventually hold for our family.

But here’s the thing about Parshat Noach: it isn’t exactly a cheerful children’s story, despite the number of PJ Library books dedicated to it. Have you read it? The world is in shambles. People are cruel to one another. God is angry. There is destruction, death, and, even after the flood, some deeply troubling family dynamics. This is a questionable choice for a calming nursery theme.

It is, however, a powerful story for becoming a parent.

When Shiri was two, Duncan and I began a project called “Parenting by the Parshah.” Each week, we recorded a video exploring a parenting lesson from the Torah portion. For Noach, I remembered a day from those first exhausting weeks of parenthood.

Shiri was a month or two old, and wouldn’t stop screaming. I tried everything I could think of. Nothing worked. Finally, I reached the point where I could feel my own frustration taking over. With Shiri safe in the crib, I walked into our bedroom and did my own screaming and crying.

I needed somewhere to put all the feelings I couldn’t fix.

That experience changed how I read the story of the ark. God sees a world filled with violence and responds with apocalyptic destruction. In the parenting lens I brought to the text, the flood looked like a cosmic eruption of frustration. But there was a place of safety, a place of protection amid the storm. The ark was the crib.

This is not a perfect comparison. Just to be clear, an infant’s crying is not wrongdoing, and wiping out humanity probably isn’t the best model for how parents should handle their frustration, tempting as it might be. The part that spoke to me was the need for a safe place when emotions become too big to hold. It was the crib for Shiri. It was my room for me. It was the ark for Noah.

And this will come as no surprise to parents: the flood isn’t the last time God is frustrated. It’s not even the last time God is frustrated in this one Torah portion. Parshat Noah doesn’t end with the happy rainbow. Instead, humanity builds the Tower of Babel. God does stay true to the covenant of not destroying the world again, but there are consequences nonetheless. God confuses their language and scatters them. But the world survives.

Reading these episodes together, I hear a question for every parent—and every human being. Obviously, frustration will rise again, and when it does, can our response change? Can we keep the promises we made when we were calm?

Everyone has moments when you can’t quiet the crying, solve the problem, or make another person understand. But what you can do is protect the people in your care, recognize your limits, and create enough space to choose what happens next.

So this week, do a little check for yourself. Do you have an ark ready before the emotional waters rise? Do you know when to pause? Whom to call? Will you give yourself permission to say, “I need a moment,” and make room for someone else to say it, too? Then, when the waters recede, return. Return to the conversation, to the child, to the work of repairing whatever needs our care.

The ark – the protective pause – is the most important character in the story because of what it makes possible afterward. May our own protective pauses lead to gentler voices, wiser choices, and renewed promises.

This, too, is Torah.