G0d told Noah to build a big boat. G0d gave Noah a few descriptions of what it should look like. Here is what Noah heard G0d say (Genesis 6):

" 14. Make an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and kopher it inside and outside with kopher. (If kopher sounds like gopher to you, so are supposed to notice the pun!)

"15. And here's how you make it; three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, thirty cubits tall." (Another note: A "cubit" is the length from your fingertip to your elbow, about a foot and a half, or half a meter, so the dimensions were 450 feet by 75 feet by 45 feet, or 150m x 25m x 15 m. Not that wide, and not that tall, but fairly long).

To return to the instructions, "16. Put a skylight in the ark, and make sure you finish it all the way up. Put a door in the side of the ark; and make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17. For, I, personally, am bringing a MaBool: waters on the earth."

The Hebrew word, MaBool, does not mean Flood, as is usually translated. It means a "wearing away," a forceful eroding, a scouring, in this case, by water, which is why the verse seems so repetitive, saying, "a MaBool: waters on the earth." Waters on the earth is a flood. But the Hebrew is not Flood. It is a wearing away, as in what did not happen to the clothes of the Israelites over 40 years of wandering, when Moses quoted G0d as saying (Deuteronomy 29:4):

"I led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes did not wear away (lo baloo) on you, and your shoe did not wear away (lo baltah) on your foot." Baloo and Baltah are forms of the word MaBool: wearing away.

Sometime last winter I had decided to use this selection about Noah as the basis of a High Holy Day talk. I was first moved by the Tsunami and its dreadful aftermath. But just weeks ago, one hurricane and flood after another hit our country, and other places in the world.

And so I will use this occasion to refer to the ripples that will continue to emanate from our Gulf Coastal region for the foreseeable future, continuing, no doubt, until the lap-sitting infants here tonight are well into college, and possibly beyond, for we are about to mortgage their future to pay for everything we will do in the near term to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

If you received a copy of our Congregation's excellent magazine, Connections (and a thanks goes to Eric Savitz on his editorship and to Devora Weinapple for her design work) then you saw my article on the front page that said that the Haftarah for the very week that Katrina hit was part of the Haftarah for the Shabbat when we read about Noah. In fact, the other part of Noah's Haftarah was read two weeks later in the summer. In the meantime, I have been working with Evan Gitterman on his Bar Mitzvah, which IS the Torah portion of Noah in early November, and, this year more than any year before, this Torah portion has taken on new meaning. I invite you to come hear Evan discuss this issue.

An aside: Just so you should know, unlike some synagogues with which you may be familiar, our congregation invites the bar/t mitzvah family, and not the other way around. Etz congregants do not need a special invitation to come and celebrate, both during the service, and at the Kiddush afterwards. That is the way we do things. If you have never seen a bar/t mitzvah at Etz Chayim, and about half of our congregation have not yet seen one, you should see one. The experience will reorient you on what a bar/t mitzvah is supposed to be, and what one can be.

But enough of the commercial.

It has taken me a few minutes just to get to what I want to say. Here it is: Noah was told to kopher his ark, inside and out. Kopher is an old Hebrew word for pitch, tar. It is also the root of the word Kippur, as in Yom Kippur, which is usually translated as "Atonement." It is atonement, but the Hebrew and the English differ on their insights into atonement.

In English, the word atonement is made up from At-One-Ment. We pronounce it differently today, but in Middle English it was pronounced At-one, not ah-tone. It means to reconcile, to be at-one with each other.

In Hebrew, Kappeir, from Kopher, means to pave with pitch, as if to repave the roads full of potholes that keep us from getting close to each other. The mistakes and hurts don't disappear into nothingness (No-Thing-ness), but they are covered over, or, in Hebrew, Kophered over.

What we are supposed to do when we offend or harm somebody is smooth over our differences and make our relationship watertight again. How we do that depends on what we have done to each other. Now you know. Get to be At-One with each other, and Kopher over your differences by making amends. 'Tis the season of At-One-Ment.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, we have a lot of amends to make. When Katrina hit, it was a MaBool, a wearing away, by storm surge and levee breaking, of a length of the Gulf Coast equal to the length of Britain . Why was there so much damage and loss of life? Well, first of all, Katrina was a huge storm that smacked us in the gut. It crashed into the weakest link in our coastline's defenses and overwhelmed it.

When the state of Mississippi legalized gambling, it was only legal if the gambling took place offshore. So a seacoast of gambling barges was built, and all of them were tossed ashore by Katrina's MaBool.

When the Mississippi river flooded in 1927, killing thousands and sweeping homes and farms and livelihoods out to sea past New Orleans , the state of Louisiana and the Army Corps of Engineers decided not to let that happen again. The system of levees that was built kept the Mississippi in check, more or less, for 70 years. I say, more or less, for I wrote this talk in my home study, and I keep a poster on my wall of one of two Mississippi floods I witnessed in my hometown of St. Louis , MO.

The levees built on the lower Mississippi ultimately kept the silt that the Louisiana delta depended on from reaching the bayous, so the sea began to swallow Louisiana , chunk by Manhattan-sized chunk each year. This also made New Orleans begin to sink, so levees were built around it, to make it into America 's little Holland .

These levees were built to withstand a category 3 Hurricane. And, as is the case with all insurance policies, New Orleans got what it paid for. Katrina was a category 5, and the levees could not contain the force of the water, of the MaBool.

It is an axiom of medicine, and of all life, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The problem is that there is never enough time nor money nor people nor foresight to prevent everything. So we pays our money and we takes our choice. The symbol of a coastline full of derelict gambling barges is as much a symbol of this disaster as is New Orleans stewing in its own septic bathtub. The Gulf Coast gambled, and lost.

Every event has its ripples. People I have not seen nor heard from in decades come up to me, or find me on the web, and tell me that something I said in a High Holy Day talk, or some other class, made such and such a difference in their lives. I am always amazed that people remember these things so long.

We all have stories, good and bad, of incidents that occurred in childhood -- especially if we still are in childhood! -- that were formative experiences for us. The ripples of our deeds expand ever outward into inlets and bays of other harbors, in ways we could never anticipate, and in ways that continue to do good, and to do harm. Katrina will have those rippling effects as well.

I mentioned that we will be paying for the restoration of the Gulf Coast for a long time to come. Because of Katrina, other Government spending, from local to national, will have to compete with those dollars. The Gulf Coast , and the nation will also be diminished by the lost revenue of an entire economic ecosystem.

We will also find that there will be a Gulf Coast Diaspora, exiles from Basin Street , who will decide never to go back. Zoe Kohl will address that issue at her bat mitzvah on the Shabbat in Sukkot. (You can see how this year's disasters by violent waters will be formative in the lives of our upcoming bar/t mitzvahs.)

There are many who will make a new life elsewhere, and bring their expertise and energy to the places where they have been scattered. This will deplete the Gulf of some of its talented people.

These hurricanes have also created a Diaspora of the Gulf Coast 's poorest residents far away to other locales. They could end up staying whither they have been evacuated, loading up other localities with the cost of dealing with them. Additionally, many people, who were about to retire, have lost everything they have, and are already on the rolls of the newly poor. They are scrambling for whatever jobs they can get. But many of those do not pay healthcare, and these older Americans will also add to the bills that we all pay for how these people will overload hospital emergency rooms for their basic Medicare.

There are at least another two Diasporas of which you may not have heard much. The first is that many people awaiting trial, out on bail, have skipped. They have already descended on other communities. It will take a huge effort to be modestly successful in bringing them back. Most will reappear, though, possibly, in other courts, after employing their version of The Big Easy on the communities into which they have descended.

Another Diaspora is a dispersion of the mentally ill and the traumatized, both those who were that way before Katrina, and those who are suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome as a result of the horrors they endured, having lost everything, having spent three to four days in the Superdome, having been confined to their attic for a week without food or water or sanitation until rescued, or having huddled in the dark in the Superdome, and other shelters, while rumors of assault, robbery, rape, and murder multiplied like the pathogens and mosquitoes that festered in the septic city. We will be living with the after-effects of this as well, as these people spread across our nation.

There will be another Diaspora -- of money -- caused by donor fatigue. As long as the media's cameras are focused on the Gulf, money will pour in. When they turn their attention to the next crises, the spigot will dry up.

Additionally, if you gave generously to Katrina's victims -- and if you haven't, what's your excuse? -- what will you find left to give to other needy causes? Will there be less for the hungry and the homeless in our neighborhood? I hope not. And to stave off that possibility, I put a donation barrel for canned food in our congregational lobby. It is there for families who bring their daughters and sons to school each week. It is there for people who come to services each week. It is there for people who come to meetings, classes, and on other business each week. G0d willing we will fill it each week. G0d willing we will find people willing to drive it over to the Ecumenical Hunger Program each week. We could use an hour of your help!

If Judaism stands for anything, it stands for Tzedakah, righteous giving of our resources: time and money and substance. Now that our congregation is housed in our own home, we can keep this barrel up. We could not do that before when we were wandering and scattered ourselves.

It is up to all of us to keep filling the barrel up with food. Yes, please don't forget to bring your bags full of canned meals next week on the eve of Yom Kippur. But don't let that make you feel as if you have done all you can for a year. Buy an extra can of food each time you go shopping. Go get beef stew, or macaroni and cheese, or chili -- something that can be heated on a hotplate by a family without a stove. Every day there are hungry and homeless in our town who need to be fed. Don't wait for Yom Kippur, or for the Hurricane of the Week Club.

And, while you are bringing canned food to the synagogue, remember we are always collecting old cell phones to give to the Support Network for Battered Women. If you don't have another reason to stop by, bring them by on your way into services. Let Tzedakah bring you to shul for Shabbat.

Noah was told to make sure his boat was watertight with Kopher on the inside, as well as on the outside. What difference does it make if you put tar on the inside, once the water has been kept outside?

Answer: water outside wears you away or sinks you. Water, from condensation and urination on the inside, rots you out inside, becoming a poison that kills you from the inside. Those returning to flooded homes and businesses find mold, fungus and bacteria eating their homes away, many if not most to the point at which the building is no longer inhabitable. Most of these bad things don't grow on tar, so Noah, his family, and his many animals did not die of disease on the Ark. Think metaphorically, now, and realize that the Kopher on the inside is like atonement on the insides of our homes, and all of us can use as much reconciling to each other, parents to children, spouses to each other, as we can get.

Here's another answer, but in the form of another question: why did the levee breaks kill so many people? Not just because the water got in, but because the people could not get out. New Orleans was rotten on the inside. The poor had no transportation. They were not well-factored into the evacuation. They died because they were left to die. They drowned in the streets. They drowned in their attics. They drowned in their nursing home beds. They died of heat stroke waiting for someone to take them out of the Superdome, out of the hospitals, off the streets. They died waiting for water in makeshift morgues into which they were assigned to die before they were dead, when water would have saved them from the scourge that was caused by, ironically, too much water. But there was not enough water for them.

There will be commissions and more commissions, but still there will be omissions, people looking into everything that others did, and nothing that they did, people with money to gain and power to lose being allowed to judge themselves. I am already sick of what they will not find, what they will not say, and what we will never do. This is, and I use the word pointedly, a watershed event in our lives. Katrina washed the dirt of American society out from under the rug in which our "happy meal" lives have tried to hide it for so long. If we do nothing to address the continued impoverishment of and lack of health care for our fellow citizens in the name of productivity and stock gains, we will be complicit in failing to Kopher the inside of our Ark with the atonement it will need to keep the water out.

We can rebuild the levees as high as we want, but if we don't raise the boats of the whole country at the same time, the level of rot and mold and fungus and pestilence will rise with those levees, and the waters will find it easy to knock the whole damn thing down and drown our poor again.

And will people be living in coastal developments when that storm strikes? Can you say, "Global Warming?" Unless we, and the rest of the world, start doing more now, by the time our lap-sitters here tonight are dandling their own children on their laps, the water levels will be rising. The Palo Alto Baylands will be a memory. Miami , Galveston , and much of Tel Aviv will be a memory. The Florida Keys will be history. Hurricanes hitting what's left of Florida in that future could be strong enough, and Florida narrow enough, to surge over and erode the whole state away. MaBool.

I began to work on the ideas for this talk in response to the Tsunami that hit south Asia while I was on vacation in Hawaii . Actually, the Tsunami hit while I was in the water off the coast of Hawaii . I could have been swept away. Instead, I was praying while swimming in the ocean. I could have been one of those many bloated corpses baking in the sun, swirling around in the debris. Instead, I was basking in a Hawaiian resort.

You can chalk this talk up to my case of survivor's guilt. G0d willing we all survive the next one. And the one after that, and the one after that.

But we can do things now. The first things are to listen to those Noahs, those scientists who see the weather changing in response to the wealth and carelessness of our lifestyles, and the short-range views of our country's and corporate interests. The second thing we can do is never to rest easy while we allow the world to remain impoverished.

And every week we can, at the very least, bring a can of food to shul as a reminder that people are hungry, the ocean is vast, and that there is a lot of work to be done to keep the inside and the outside of our Ark covered in Atonement.