Noah and Jonah - 

Stories for Broken-Hearted Children

Both the stories of Noah and Jonah (pronounced Yonah and we'll get to why that's important later) read like children's stories. And they are children's stories – for the most broken-hearted children. They are the stories of how a Child's Heart filled with sorrow, fear and pain, lost and bewildered in a world not of their making makes another, more beautiful world, a world they can call home – a place they can be safe and happy.

It would seem from the Text such as it looks on the surface that God looks at the world and decides that it is so corrupt that most People and animals must drown. But that is not true as anyone who has been overcome with sorrow for the world, but not hatred, knows. It is really a story about how the tears of a pure and bewildered heart wash away suffering and make the world a place where Children and animals and birds and fish and olive trees and gourds can live.

The Flood is the outpouring of the depths of Compassion and Love from the wellsprings of the Soul.

We said that Jonah's name is pronounced Yonah correctly. Yonah is a dove. The Prophet Yonah is the dove that Noah sends forth from the ark. And, God, knowing that the story of the Flood has to be understood correctly retells the story, from the point of view of the dove. And it is there, at the very end of the story of the dove (Yonah) that it is written:

And God said to Yonah: 'Art thou greatly angry for the gourd?' And he said: 'I am greatly angry, even unto death.'
And the LORD said: 'Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night;

and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?'

Let's look at this again:
And the LORD said: 'Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night;

Most people think that God just wills the existence of the world effortlessly. In truth, it is very hard Labor. The Name of God saying this is E-lohim. The first and last letters of the Name E-lohim are aleph and mem – which together are Em, meaning Mother. The Name

E-lohim is the Mother of Every Born Being. She labors greatly to bring forth all Life and does not merely wipe Life out, even if it is corrupted. The Hebrew word for Compassion is Rahamim. The Hebrew word for Wombs is Rehamim. Same word. E-lohim labors greatly in Compassion to bring for all Life – even the Life of a gourd. E-lohim is also the Name of God which refers to Judgement. Judgement comes from the Compassion of God as Mother.                                      

Now it should be understood that the name Ninveh in Hebrew is the name Yonah with another letter Nun added. So, the name Ninveh can be understood as meaning every dove. The people of Ninveh in God's eyes look like doves.

Torah is not a history book. Everything that is written in Torah is true and operational in every time and in every place. The stories of Noah and Yonah are happening now. They are our stories, the story of the Soul of the Child within all of us. God does not wipe out the world when God washes away sin and inequity. God washes away our sins with God's own flood of tears.