The Daily Chizzuk of our Rebbe Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a – Hashem hid them specifically inside a closed, small, and suffocating ark
“If not, erase me now from Your book” (Shemot 32:32)
Monday, 23 Tevet 5783 – What would have happened in the generation of the flood if there was a Tzaddik like Moshe?
These are his holy words:
Because Noach came out after twelve months inside the ark, in solitary confinement. Hashem could have made it so that there would have been some mountain instead of the ark and everyone would be on the mountain; they would be in the [open] air. Hashem suffocated everyone inside the ark. Everyone had to atone for the entire generation, for the transgressions which the generation of the flood did.
They suffocated there from the smell of the animals. They couldn’t live because of the smell of the animals, but the moment that they came out to the air of the world, everyone was dead. Everything was corpses. Everything was mountains of corpses. This was in Shinar and reached Babylonia. Noach said to Hashem, “You destroyed the world!”
Hashem asked Noach, “Why didn’t you say this before the flood? If you had said, ‘I will not enter the ark,’ you would have cancelled the decree!!”
If there had been there a Tzaddik, [if] there was Moshe Rabbeinu, he would have cancelled the decree! Like Moshe said, “If not, erase me now from Your book” (Shemot 32:32) – erase me and not the world.
“MeCheNI na – Erase me now” is [the letters of] “MeI NoaCh – the waters of Noach” – because Moshe came to rectify the sin of Noach. Therefore, he said, “MeCheNI na – Erase me now.”
The flood is called the “waters of Noach,” because Noach could have cancelled the decree – if he had danced and sang. Because a person, after he learns twelve hours, needs to dance and sing. [For] one hour, we go to the field, to some forest, to some moshav, and sing and dance for a whole hour. Then everything is sweetened. We are nullifying all the decrees that there are in the world.
Until King Mashiach comes, speedily in our days. Amen
