Air Quality

“All flesh had corrupted its ways on the earth” (Bereishis 6:12)

The Medrash Bereishis Rabbah states: R’ Azaryah said in the name of R’ Yehuda bar Simon that all the creatures, including the animals, all corrupted their actions in the Generation of the Flood – the dog mated with the wolf, the chicken mated with the peacock, as it says, “All flesh had corrupted its ways.” It doesn’t say that it was only mankind; rather “all flesh” had corrupted their ways. R’ Luliani bar Tavrin said in the name of R’ Yitzchak that the earth itself was also corrupted. People would plant wheat and grass would grow. Only the fish, and all the creatures of the sea, did not corrupt their ways, as the pasuk says, “all flesh … on the earth,” and not in the water.

R’ Eliyahu Lopian, the author of the Lev Eliyahu, asks: How is it possible that animals and vegetation – which do not have “free will” – became corrupted? We understand that humans have an evil inclination which goads man to corrupt his ways, as the Ramban comments on the pasuk (Devarim 29:18),“In order to add punishment for the unintentional sins to that of his intentional sins.” After the person sins and satisfies his initial urge to transgress, he creates a stronger desire for more sin, until he becomes totally corrupted.

The Lev Eliyahu notes that in the Viduy of Yom Kippur we ask Hashem to forgive us, “For the sin that we committed with our evil inclination.” Ostensibly all of man’s sins are driven by the evil inclination. What is the intent of this particular confession?

We are acknowledging that our actions cultivated a more potent evil inclination than that which was created intrinsically in mankind. This would explain the expansive corruption of the human beings. But how do we explain the crossbreeding across the different species of animals and vegetation?

The Lev Eliyahu says that the impurity that man created in the world was so great that it even affected the animals and the vegetation. They had no choice in the matter; the impurity adhered to them and caused them involuntarily to corrupt their ways.

R’ Lopian recounted that when he learned in the Yeshiva of Lomza, there was a beautiful huge building in the city that served as the old hospital. It was a splendid building that had been built with magnificent huge stones many years earlier. No one knew exactly how old the building was; even the elders of the city could not remember when it had been built.

Once the administration of the hospital invited many professors and doctors to research an unusual phenomenon that was occurring in the hospital. They found that people who had been ill and remained in the hospital for an extended period of time ultimately became sick with other diseases, much different than the ones with which they had originally come in.

This disturbing fact drove the administration to organize this meeting. The doctors and professors confirmed the truth of this occurrence and came to a unanimous conclusion. Many, many ill people had passed through the hospital building since its first day, and the building had never been renovated. The illnesses of these people had ultimately become absorbed in the walls of the building.

. this person he would add yimach shemo and he wouThe governor of Lomza accepted the words of these experts, and within a few days it was decided that the building should be destroyed. After the building was taken down, workers were hired to remove the stones from the site and to take them out of the city’s boundaries and burn them there.

R’ Elya Lopian noted that if this is so with diseases of the body, how much more should we be concerned with sicknesses of the soul.

That was exactly what happened in the Generation of the Flood. So much impurity was already suspended in the air that it poisoned even the animals and they became corrupt.

The same can be said of the energy of holiness. Just like sin creates an essence of impurity that lingers in the air, so too a sacred act creates an essence of sanctity that endures in the atmosphere.

The Chazon Ish, the leader of the generation, was once walking with R’ Chaim Kanievsky, when he was a young man, in an orchard in Bnei Brak. Suddenly the Chazon Ish stood still and remarked, “They learn Torah here.” He repeated this a number of times with great emotion. It was later revealed that a few hours earlier two disciples of the yeshiva had been standing in that spot speaking in learning. Although they had long departed, the atmosphere had absorbed their words of Torah and a spirit of holiness hovered there.

Similarly, they say that a Yid once entered the big beis haknesses in Vilna to daven Mincha. He sat down in one of the seats and was suddenly overwhelmed with a tremendous desire to pray with intense kavanah and enthusiasm. He was later told that he had been sitting in the seat of the Vilna Gaon. Although that had been his place 200 years earlier, the impact of the Vilna Gaon still remained.

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