Matthew Stein - Dvar Torah

My torah parsha is on Noach. He was told by God that since the world is filled with wrongdoing people there was going to be a flood and that he must build an ark and put every animal on it two by two. By other people he was thought weird because there was a sun in the sky and not a single cloud to be seen. When the day came that God said there would be a flood it started to rain and rain for 40 days and 40 nights punishing all that weren’t on that ark. After 40 days Noah sent a raven that returned because of the lack of land. 7 days later Noah sent out a dove that also returned because of no land but then 7 days after that he sent out another dove who returned with an olive tree branch. Since olive trees are short trees he knew the water had lowered a lot. What I thought is a good topic to talk about is faith and how Noah had his faith in God that he was building an ark for the flood God was going to send down and not to make him look silly. Faith has been going on for a long time, even now we have faith. Faith in our family our friends and people we even barely know. Noach had to have a lot of faith in various things in that time. He had faith that God wasn’t lying to him, he had faith that the animals could behave themselves, he had faith in his family and he had faith in God to keep the flood under control. Faith is a very powerful thing which must be used wisely. Here is a quote- Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase

Martin Luther King Jr.

Noah could only see the first step but he went all the way up that staircase with no hesitation what so ever. For my bar mitzvah project I decided to help out animals that needed help as Noah did saving them from death so we can live with them today.