1 Heshvan 5758 return For other texts or commentaries see the Parashah Archive Register to subscribe to Parashat HaShavuah for free. Send this to a friend Ismar Schorsch is the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary. But ten generations after Adam and Eve, we find God in despair over the unrelieved waywardness of humanity.
Human depravity threatens to turn created order into primordial chaos.
Yet the Torah denies us any illustrative details, leaving a gap that begs for reader participation. The midrash steps in to sketch a moral meltdown that leveled all norms and boundaries. The midrash specified that this corruption extended even to the natural world. Thus dogs would copulate with wolves, chickens with peacocks. A farmer would plant wheat, but the earth yielded only weeds.