ב"ה
Sometimes serving G-d feels easiest when the ordinary world has been left behind.
Noach knew such a time. For a full year he lived inside the teivah, the ark, sealed off from a civilization that had collapsed into corruption and violence. Inside, something remarkable happened: predators lived alongside their prey and did them no harm. The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that the ark held a foretaste of the future Yeshayahu describes:
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb … they shall neither harm nor destroy.”¹
Yet when the Flood was over and the earth was completely dry, Noach did not step out on his own. G-d had to tell him:
“Go out of the ark — you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.”²
There was even a separate command about the animals: bring them out with you. Rashi adds that if they did not want to leave, Noach was to take them out himself. Why did Noach — and the animals — need to be told to leave?
Why leave paradise?
The Rebbe explains that Noach had good reason to stay. The ark had become an island of peace in a world that had known only violence — an elevated, almost Messianic state. Leaving meant returning to an ordinary world, where predators would again act as predators and people would again face moral struggle. Seen from inside, stepping out looked like a descent.
Yet G-d said: Go out. The purpose was never to stay sheltered in the ark.
The very first thing Noach was told on leaving was to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.³ The Rebbe stresses that this was not an afterthought — it was the reason for leaving. The old world had been wiped away, and Noach’s task was now to build it anew.
There is a deeper point too. For all the lofty light that shone in the ark, it remained the experience of a created being, and so it stayed limited. Only out in the world, as it actually is, can G-d’s infinite power be revealed. A perfect little world inside a wooden ark was not enough. G-d wanted the earth itself.
From inspiration to mission
The Rebbe develops the same idea in a second sichah, for 7 MarCheshvan.
In the days of the Beis HaMikdash, Jews went up to Jerusalem for Sukkos to “appear before the L-rd, G-d.”⁴ Afterwards they travelled home. The Sages postponed the prayer for rain until 7 MarCheshvan, so that even the last pilgrim could reach the far boundary of Eretz Yisrael at the Euphrates before the rains began.⁵
Picture the contrast. Yesterday he stood in Jerusalem, before the Beis HaMikdash. Today he is back on his farm — plowing, planting, buying and selling. Surely that is a spiritual comedown?
The Rebbe answers that, seen more deeply, the return home is the greater ascent. In Jerusalem a Jew experienced holiness. At home he could bring holiness into the physical world itself — his field, his possessions, the details of everyday life — fulfilling “All your deeds should be for the sake of Heaven” and “Know Him in all your ways.”⁶
Why is that greater? Our Sages teach that G-d desired “a dwelling in the lower realms”: His presence revealed not only in places that are obviously holy, but within the physical world itself.⁷ That dwelling is built precisely when material things and ordinary life become vehicles for G-d’s will.
The Rebbe adds that the dwelling was complete only when the very last Jew, in the settlement furthest from Jerusalem, reached home and began his work. Like a house made of many rooms, G-d’s dwelling is built from the different contributions of every Jew — and none can be missing.⁸
So the two sichos arrive at the same place. The ark must eventually be left. Jerusalem must eventually be left. Inspiration has to become mission.
“The earth He gave to mankind”
A Chassidic story,
“Difficult Departures,” puts this into practice. After the festivals, a group of chassidim lingered with their Rebbe, the tzaddik of Zhidachov, reluctant to leave the elevated atmosphere and return to ordinary life. He sent his sons to them with a verse from Tehillim: “The heavens are the heavens of G-d, but the earth He has given to the children of man.”⁹
They understood. They folded their talleisim, packed their belongings and went home — each to his business and his responsibilities. The message was not that their service of G-d was over. Their real task was only beginning. The heavens already declare G-d’s glory; the earth is entrusted to man. Our challenge is to take business, family, property, food, relationships and society — things that do not automatically look holy — and conduct them according to G-d’s will.¹⁰
The lesson for a Jew
For a Jew, the application is clear. There has to be a teivah: Torah, prayer, Shabbos, Yom Tov, the shul and the beis midrash — times to step back from the noise of the world and reconnect with G-d. The Baal Shem Tov famously reads Gd’s words to Noach, “Come into the teivah,” as a call to enter the teivos — the words — of Torah and prayer.¹¹
But the Rebbe adds the other half. In the end G-d also says: Tzei min hateivah — go out of the ark. One cannot remain forever inside one’s own spiritual world. The Rebbe rejects the idea that a person may shut himself away in his own “four cubits” of Torah, unconcerned with what happens around him. The Torah and prayer inside the ark give us the strength to transform what lies outside it.
Nor is this a sacrifice of one’s own growth for the sake of others. The Rebbe stresses that whatever heights one reaches inside the ark remain limited; going out is how one’s own service reaches its fullness.¹²
So the businessman brings Torah ethics into business. The parent brings holiness into the home. The Jew who has learned shares it with another Jew. Even eating and earning a living become part of serving G-d when done for the right purpose.
The lesson for Bnei Noach
The same principle speaks powerfully to Bnei Noach, though the obligations of Jews and non-Jews differ.
A Ben Noach does not need to imitate Jewish religious life to come close to G-d, and his mission is not to escape ordinary civilization. On the contrary — the commandments given to the descendants of Noach operate precisely within it. The Rambam codifies the Seven Noahide Commandments as Divine obligations for all humanity,¹³ and a righteous gentile keeps them because G-d commanded them through Moshe in the Torah.¹⁴
Look at what these laws address: recognizing G-d and rejecting idolatry, honoring His Name, the sanctity of human life, sexual morality and the family, other people’s property, the treatment of living creatures, and courts of justice. These are the foundations on which human society stands.
So “Go out of the ark” says to every Ben and Bat Noach: you do not have to leave the normal world to find G-d. Bring Gd into the world you already live in.
• When a businessman refuses to steal because G-d has forbidden theft, his workplace becomes part of his service of G-d. • When a society sets up honest courts, justice becomes service of G-d.
• When a family is built on fidelity and responsibility, the home becomes part of the world G-d desires.
• When human life is treated as sacred because man was created in G-d’s image,¹⁵ society itself becomes more aware of its Creator.
Noach was not told to build another ark. He was told to build a world.
Do not wait for a perfect world
One last lesson. Noach knew better than anyone how badly humanity had failed; he had watched an entire civilization destroyed. He could easily have asked: why start again, if people may corrupt the world once more? The Rebbe notes that Noach did in fact hesitate. G-d’s answer was to command him to rebuild — for, as our Sages say, “Why concern yourself with the hidden plans of the Merciful One? Do what you are commanded.”¹⁶
That matters in an age when moral decline can seem overwhelming. We are not required to fix everything before doing anything. One honest transaction matters. One act of justice matters. One stable family, one life protected, one person who acknowledges the Creator — each one matters. The Rebbe’s teaching redefines spiritual success. It is measured not only by how elevated we feel inside the ark, but by what happens after we leave it. The ark shows us what a world of peace can look like. The Beis HaMikdash shows us what holiness feels like. But G-d gave mankind the earth.
So the real question is not only “How close can I come to G-d?” It is also: “What part of G-d’s world will be different because I was here?”
שבת שלום.
מאת הרב אבריאל רבנו, תואר שני במנהל עסקים
Sources 1. Yeshayahu 11:6–9; Likkutei Sichos vol. 25, Noach, Sichah 3, sec. 2, and the Chassidic sources cited there: Sefer HaMaamarim – Es’halech Liozna, p. 57; Or HaTorah, Noach, vol. 3, p. 669a ff.; Hemshech VeKachah 5637, chs. 95–96. 2. Bereishis 8:14–17; Rashi on 8:17. Likkutei Sichos ibid., sec. 1. 3. Bereishis 8:17; 9:1, 7. Likkutei Sichos ibid., secs. 4–5. 4. Shemos 23:17; 34:23; Devarim 16:16. 5. Taanis 10a; Yerushalmi Peah 3:7; Yalkut Shimoni sec. 404. Likkutei Sichos vol. 25, 7 MarCheshvan, sec. 1. 6. Avos 2:12; Mishlei 3:6; see Berachos 35b. Likkutei Sichos ibid., sec. 2. 7. Midrash Tanchuma, Naso 16; Bamidbar Rabbah 13:6; Tanya, ch. 36. Likkutei Sichos ibid., secs. 2 and 6. 8. Likkutei Sichos ibid., secs. 6–8. 9. Tehillim 115:16. “Difficult Departures,” Ascent of Safed, adapted and supplemented by Yerachmiel Tilles from Treasury of Chassidic Tales; indexed as concerning Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Eichenstein of Zhidachov. 10. The story illustrates the principle developed in the two sichos; it is not itself part of them. 11. Keser Shem Tov, Addenda, sec. 8 ff.; Tzavaas HaRivash, end of sec. 75. Cited in Likkutei Sichos vol. 25, Noach, Sichah 3, sec. 6. 12. Likkutei Sichos ibid., secs. 5–6. 13. Sanhedrin 56a–b; Rambam, Hilchos Melachim uMilchamoseihem, chs. 9–10. 14. Rambam, Hilchos Melachim uMilchamoseihem 8:11. 15. Bereishis 1:26–27; 9:6. 16. Berachos 10a. Likkutei Sichos vol. 25, Noach, Sichah 3, secs. 9–10.
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