God took Hanuch after 365 years at a time when people lived for about 900 years. God was afraid that Hanuch would fall into sin so he took him early.
A Quick Dvar Torah: Enoch and the Power of Our Surroundings
Parshat Bereishit
One of the most enigmatic characters in the entire Torah is Chanoch, known in English as Enoch.
Chanoch was the seventh generation from Adam. Now, remember, in those days people lived extraordinarily long lives—800, 900 years, and sometimes even longer. But Chanoch lived only 365 years. And what’s even more interesting is that the Torah doesn’t actually say that he died.
Instead, the Torah tells us:
“And Chanoch walked with God, and he was no more, because God had taken him.” (Genesis 5:24)
What does that mean? What happened to Chanoch? Why did God take him?
Rashi offers a fascinating explanation.
Chanoch was a tzaddik, a righteous man. But there was a problem. He was living in a generation that was becoming increasingly wicked, and his righteousness was not necessarily strong enough to withstand the influences around him.
According to Rashi, God knew that Chanoch might eventually be influenced by his surroundings and become wicked himself. So God took him from the world before that could happen.
Now, that’s an extraordinary idea.
Here was a righteous man, someone who actually walked with God, and yet even he wasn’t necessarily strong enough to resist the pressures of society.
Our sages understood this problem very well. Pirkei Avot tells us to distance ourselves from bad neighbors and bad influences. Why? Because whether we realize it or not, the people around us influence how we behave.
Not everybody can stand up to social pressure.
Someone says, “Come on, let’s go out and have a few drinks. What’s the harm?” Or, “Everybody’s doing it. Why shouldn’t you?”
And before you know it, you’re doing things you never intended to do.
It’s very easy to be tempted. It’s much harder to resist temptation.
We see an interesting example of this in Israel today, in the debate over whether yeshiva students should serve in the army. One of the arguments made against their service is that exposure to the army’s secular environment might weaken their religious observance.
Now, I’ve always found that argument rather revealing. If your religious education is so fragile that exposure to a different environment might destroy it, perhaps we ought to be asking some serious questions about that educational system.
But that’s a discussion for another day.
The point is that the concern about outside influences is a very real one. And according to Rashi, even Chanoch was vulnerable.
There’s another beautiful tradition about Chanoch.
According to a later Jewish tradition, Chanoch was a shoemaker. And as he worked, with every stitch he made, he would direct his thoughts toward serving God.
Think about that.
He wasn’t sitting in a yeshiva studying Torah all day. He wasn’t a priest offering sacrifices. He was making shoes!
But to Chanoch, making shoes was itself a way of serving God. Every stitch had a purpose. He was creating something that would help another human being walk through the world and, hopefully, serve God.
That’s an important lesson in itself. You don’t have to be a rabbi or a great scholar to serve God. You can bring holiness into the world through the ordinary work you do every day.
And there’s another interesting detail about Chanoch.
He lived exactly 365 years. That’s the same number as the days in a solar year.
Perhaps there’s a lesson there as well. Every year of his life can remind us of a day in our own year. Every day is an opportunity to bring God into our lives, through the things we do, the people we encounter, and the choices we make.
But let’s return to Rashi’s explanation.
There’s a wonderful story about Billy Graham, the famous American evangelist.
Graham was known for maintaining very strict personal boundaries. He had a rule that he would not be alone behind a closed door with a woman other than his wife. He understood that even a religious leader needed to protect himself against temptation and against situations that could lead to wrongdoing.
According to a story told about him, a reporter once asked, “Reverend Graham, surely a man like you doesn’t have to worry about such things!”
And Graham reportedly replied, “Before I was a reverend, I was a man.”
What a wonderful answer!
He understood something very important about human nature. Being religious doesn’t mean that you stop being human. Being righteous doesn’t mean that temptation disappears.
We all have weaknesses. We all have temptations. And sometimes the wisest thing we can do is avoid putting ourselves in situations where those weaknesses might overcome us.
That’s the lesson of Chanoch.
Here was a man who walked with God, who brought holiness into his everyday work, who was considered righteous—and yet, according to Rashi, he was still vulnerable to the influence of the world around him.
If Chanoch had to worry about his surroundings, how much more should we?
We have to choose our friends carefully. We have to think about the environments in which we place ourselves. And we have to recognize that being a good person isn’t simply a matter of having good intentions. It’s also a matter of creating the conditions that will help us remain good people.
The Torah tells us that Chanoch walked with God. Perhaps the lesson for us is that if we want to walk with God, we have to pay attention to whom we’re walking with.
Something to think about.
Shabbat Shalom.
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