While Bagels & Lox seem to be some form of ancient American Jewish cuisine, the Jewish connection to Salmon extends well beyond the Lox that are inside that fresh Bagel.
Salmon are renowned for their ability to swim upstream for hundreds of miles. Along the way, the salmon will work very hard to continue moving forward and have been known to jump as high as twelve feet as they ascend waterfalls and continue their migration upstream.
The reason they do this kind of swimming is since they want to spawn in the shallow river beds (where often they themselves were born) rather than in the Oceans. In their quest to make it upstream, they deal with all kinds of obstacles, predators and challenges and in the process they have become known as the fish that swim against the current.
In a certain sense, Salmon teach us about what it means to swim upstream, against currents, and jump upwards to scale waterfalls. Life as we know it also has its currents that may not always be ones that we want to get caught up in. Sometimes the correct moral and spiritual path might require us to swim upstream and go against what may be the present day popular currents or social tendencies. Being right may not always be so popular, doing the moral thing may not be the in thing, standing up for truth may be challenging, speaking up when we should do might come with consequences, yet like Salmon, we need to know that we too, can find the inner strength to do what is right and stay true to our purpose even if it requires some upstream efforts.
In this week's Torah portion we read the story of the great flood of Noah. While the story itself is a tragic and sad story of destruction and sorrow, Noah stands out as a beacon of light as someone who wasn't compelled by social pressures of his times to be like the immorality that surrounded him. Noah somehow found the inner strength to stay true to what was right, even though he lived in a time when the norm was to be immoral, depraved and not care about what was good or right.
Noah was like the Salmon swimming upstream against the flow, he overcame huge waterfalls, and succeeded in his journey in this world and at leaving a positive imprint on the world he lived in.
Tomorrow we will once again read the story of Noah and remind ourselves and contemplate how we too can ingrain ourselves and our children with the timeless values of Judaism, that will help us stay true to our mission and purpose, and swim against currents when needed to.
Next time you have that Bagel, as you crunch down hard, think about this life lesson from Salmon & Noah.