This week’s parsha contains a familiar context and a famous story that even young children will know well! Our parsha text this week looks at Noah and the Flood.

Partway through the parsha we read the following:

Noah wanted to know if land had appeared, so he sent out the dove, but it came back to the ark because there was no place for it to land. Later, Noah sent out the dove a second time, but it returned with an olive leaf, “freshly plucked,” in its mouth; indicating that the waters must have started to subside. Finally, he sent out the dove for the third time, and it never returned. The dove had found a resting place, and Noah’s family would too. “Rest” is what the name Noach very well may mean. The three journeys of the dove in Parshat Noach can be compared with the Jewish tradition of learning. Judaism teaches us to ask questions, to argue, and to debate. In the words of Rabbi Andy Bachman:

“The Jewish people have persistently modeled to the world that argument is sacred, that argument is, in religious terms, for the sake of Heaven1”

As Jews, we are meant to be lifelong students. An innately curious people, we are always seeking answers, more information, and to prove or disprove a theory. This mode of engagement goes back to Talmudic times, if not earlier. Even today, how often have we heard that it’s even better to ask questions, than it is to find answers? For, the idea of finding answers may suggest that we have come to an end of learning, which is diametrically opposed to the Jewish way of thinking.

In the 1930s, the famed (and controversial) Yiddish writer Sholem Asch penned a novel called The War Goes On, published in 1936 as the situation in Europe was growing darker. Asch’s character, Dr. Heinrich Bodenheimer—who is really a mouthpiece for Asch—comments:

I often think how really extraordinary it is that the Jews, who brought the message of salvation to the heathen world, should themselves reject it…. They were terrified of realizing their own Messianic idea lest it might kill all human hope….. That is the permanent quality of the Jewish character: always to seek and never to find.2

While a statement about “the Jewish character” today could often be misunderstood to sound racist or antisemitic, Asch spoke from within his own Jewish worldview. Does anything about his comment resonate? And does Noah’s dove come to teach us anything about this?

We note that the dove first goes out and comes back because it has found no manoah (“resting place” in Hebrew) for its foot. The next time it goes out, it returns, bringing something with it. However, the third and final time the dove is released from the ark, it never returns because it’s found a resting place.

This dove can be compared to the story of a Yeshiva student named Yonah. No one knows where the story came from, but you can tell when you read it, this story is very, very old—perhaps it even comes from a Yiddish writer who lived a long time ago.

The story is told somewhat like this:

Yonah studied diligently in search of truth and meaning—heady subjects if any there were. He was full of questions! Such questions you’ve never heard in your life! When Adam named the animals, which animal did he start with? Why are there only Jews and Gentiles—why couldn’t God have created a third kind? Why didn’t God create people whose beards were made of cotton?

Did you ever hear such questions?! But that is the kind of student Yonah was: always questioning, always wanting to learn.

After a few years of studying, he left the yeshiva and got a job. Some say he became a tailor, others a shochet3. From time to time, he would return to the yeshiva to discuss and dispute, and he believed his questions were leading him to answers. But who goes to a yeshiva for answers? We are supposed to be asking questions!

Finally, after some time he left the yeshiva once again. But this time he did not return, for he felt that he had finally found the answers he was looking for. Some scoffed: who was Yonah to say that he found answers?! Were his questions finally resolved? Some said he did not return because he became an epikoros—a heretic—who had abandoned Judaism. Others said he had become closed-minded, like the wicked son at the seder, and that all his time in yeshiva had availed him nothing. Yet others claimed to have seen him in a beshamidrash⁴ in this city or that—maybe Vienna, or Warsaw, or even Odessa. They said that, though he looked older, he looked more content—and sometimes, they thought they could hear him still vigorously debating. Once a questioner, always a questioner!

Yet Yonah, they said, seemed to have found a resolution to the questions that had haunted him for a long time. They did not despise him for that; instead, some of them even hoped that they, too, would finally find the answers to their questions. Poignantly, in the context of our parsha this week, Yonah is the Hebrew word for dove.

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What does the story of Yonah have to do with the dove other than his name? The dove in our parsha finally found manoah, a resting place. Does it teach us that sometimes there is a place to rest from our questioning and debating? This reflection recalls a quote from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (not usually taught in yeshiva!). It states, “If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it.”

The dove in Parshat Noach went out twice looking for dry land, but didn’t find it. Noah could have concluded it wasn’t there and given up, but he pressed on, expecting the unexpected! Finally, the dove comes to find her place of rest, as does Yonah, our yeshiva student.

The dove in Parshat Noach was sent out twice, each time seeking a sign—searching for a resting place, a signal that the waters of judgment were receding. Twice she returned empty-beaked. Noah could have concluded that rest would never come—but he didn’t. He waited, he hoped, and he sent the dove out again—expecting the unexpected. At last, she returned with an olive leaf in her mouth: confirmation that manoah—rest—was possible.

Like the dove, we circle over floodwaters of confusion, doubt, and chaos—longing for a branch of peace to appear. Yonah, whose very name means “dove,” tossed and turned until he surrendered—eventually finding rest. Others, non-Jews even, have also found rest.

Do you think you have found rest in the answers to your questions?

Endnotes

1. Rabbi Andy Bachman, “What I learned when a Brooklyn bookstore canceled a discussion of Judaism over my Zionism,” JTA, August 23, 2024. Online at https://www.jta.org/2024/08/23/ideas/what-i-learned-when-a-brooklyn-bookstore-canceled-a-discussion-of-Judaism-over-my-zionism

2. The War Goes On, pp. 241–42, as quoted in Ben Siegel, The Controversial Sholem Asch: An Introduction to His Fiction (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976), p. 147. Emphasis added.

3. Ritual slaughterer to provide kosher meat