A vort from the Rebbe on this week's פרשה, פרשת נח. פרשת נח we learn about the mabul, the flood, that the Oibershter brought the flood to the world because people sinned, the Oibershter wanted to destroy them. And as the pasuk describes the mabul as לשחת הארץ, to come to destroy the earth. Now, normally to destroy the earth is a negative thing, but Hashem had to do it because the people were bad. But the Rebbe explains that לשחת הארץ has a meaning also l'ma'alisa, a meaning for the good, a positive way. How? Because the Alter Rebbe in Torah Ohr explains that the reason Hashem destroyed the world with a mabul, he could have done it through another way, is because since the world became impure through the behavior of the people, when a person is tamei, impure, how do you cleanse yourself? How do you purify yourself? Through going to the mikveh. So the mabul was like a mikveh. And just like a mikveh, the minimum amount of water a mikveh has to have is 40 se'ah, so the mabul was 40 days. So the reason the Oibershter destroyed the world through a mabul because this was bringing purity to the world that became tamei, that became impure.

But the truth is, in addition to what the Alter Rebbe says, we know that when it comes to mikveh, you have two types of going to the mikveh: one is to purify yourself from tumah, if a person is tamei, which is something negative, and you want to get rid of it, you go to the mikveh. But then there's another inyan in the mikveh, that it could be לתוספת קדושה. Just going to the mikveh adds holiness to the person. As we see that the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur, when he did the special avodah of Yom Kippur, he went to the mikveh five times. And the question is, meila the first time we can understand, even though he wasn't tamei, but maybe he didn't realize and he became tamei, so go to the mikveh. But going to the mikveh every once in a while, every short amount of time during one day, five times, is not because of tumah, because every time he went to the mikveh, there was an additional kedushah that was added to him. So this shows that there is a concept that even if a person is not tamei, by going to the mikveh you get tosefet kedushah.

So the Rebbe says we could apply this also to the mabul being like a mikveh, that it was not only to purify the world from its tumah, but also that through this, the world reached a higher madregah. Meaning, the Rambam writes that what's the remez, what's the hint in the inyan of going to the mikveh? Go to the mikveh, you immerse yourself in the water completely. The person is there, but if you look from the outside you can't see him at all. His metzius is covered, his metzius doesn't show. That represents the idea that you're completely batal to Hashem, like Chassidus explains it. That's why Chassidus says that the word tevilah, which is immersion, are the same letters as the word habit ul, because it's bittul to Hashem, so the mikveh represents bittul. So it's not just a cleansing from tumah, it brings a person to become more batal to Hashem. It elevates him into a higher person to recognize the truth of Hashem and to not feel his own metzius as identity for identity for itself. So the Rebbe explains, this is what the mabul did. Like the second besides that cleansing it from tumah, it also had in itself this concept of tosefet kedushah. It brought the world to a higher madregah. It brought the world to a level, it gave it the potential that the world could reach a point that you don't feel the world as a separate entity, as a metzius. You realize that the world is nothing but batal to Hashem. So the mabul not only cleansed the world from tumah, the mabul brought the potential that the world should reach a higher madregah, to completely be completely batal to Hashem. And that's the deeper peshat in לשחת הארץ, that they came to destroy the world. Haaretz means artziyut, veltishkeit, the gashmiyut. The mabul accomplished to destroy the gashmiyut, not in a negative way, in a positive way, which means that you have the gashmiyut, but the gashmiyut is not felt as a separate entity besides Hashem, but to feel that the whole metziut of the world is only Hashem. You're immersed in the concept of the truth which is Hashem, which will be fulfilled completely when Mashiach will come, then it says ונגלה וראו כל בשר יחדו כי פי השם דבר, השם will be revealed and the world will see that it's only Hashem. So then we'll see it bagashmiyut kipeshuto completely. But the potential came at the time of the mabul, that the mabul came to take away the tumah number one, but it also came to elevate the world, to give the world the potential of לשחת הארץ, to get rid of the artziyut of the feeling of the metziut of the gashmiyut, and the whole feeling should be the feeling that אין עוד מלבדו, there is nothing but Hashem, and the world's whole metziut is only because Hashem wanted it to be, so it's only an expression of Hashem's will.