GEN731 What ethical failure led to the Flood? Vaguely, the Torah specifies only hamas—ruination, perhaps connected with “heat.” Humanity at large, not a central institution or person, was to blame. The Rabbis usually asserted that the universe is built on “measure for measure”: God’s rewards and punishments fit our actions. So the Rabbis asked, “Since the purging of the earth came through water, what was being wrongly done through water?” And they answered that before the Flood, all the species were mixing the water of their semen with each other. This water washed away all biological boundaries, confounding the clarity of God’s creation; so God sent a Flood of water to wash away all boundaries. Rosh Hashanah 12a: Rav Hisda said: “With hot liquid they sinned, and with hot liquid they were punished. With hot liquid they sinned –namely, with sexual transgressions.” Today we know that few species can mix together and propagate in this way. But we have also invented “genetic recombination,” by which indeed the genes of one species can be introduced inside the DNA of another. Should we take the fantasy of the Rabbis as a warning to explore this new technology with the greatest care, if at all, lest we bring upon ourselves a global disaster? (By Arthur Waskow, "Jewish Environmental Ethics: Intertwining Adam with Adamah") OXFORD 411