Noach 5786
Patterns, patterns, patterns…
Thanks to our rabbi’s teaching, I am learning to see the patterns revealed in the Torah that repeat in cycles throughout history, unfolding and spiralling us either upwards or downwards. They swing like a pendulum from times of chaos—the tohu vavohu described in Genesis—to times of order. It’s easy to see where we are now.
Parashat Bereshit ends with, “And Noah found grace with God” and today’s week’s Parashah, Noach begins with: נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו Noach ish tzaddik tamim haya b’dorotaiv. “Noah was a righteous man (ish tzaddik), innocent in his generation.” In other words, he was an “ish tam”, a man without guile, sincere, genuine, truthful, not a hypocrite and someone who lives with integrity even when it’s hard to do. When God made man in his image, these were some of the characteristics God imbued him with. These traits can turn chaos into order—how different would our cities be if politicians had them? Later in Genesis 25:27, Jacob would be called Ish Tam despite his reputation for being deceitful. This teaches us that, despite the challenges we face daily due to our imperfect nature, with God’s help, we can cultivate these characteristics. The key lies in what God said to Cain in Gen.4:6-7: “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.“
Our parashah continues, הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ׃ hitchalech Noach, “Noah walked with God”. So, Noah found grace with God; he was righteous in his day, and he walked with God. Then Gen. 6:10 states: “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with violence (חָמָֽס – Hamas).” How could this have happened so quickly after creation? What is it about our nature that makes us rebel against the God who created us?
God told Noah that He was going to destroy everything that was on the earth, giving him explicit instructions on how to build an ark to save mankind through this one family. God made a covenant with Noah, but the Torah doesn’t say that God made a covenant with Adam. A covenant is a pact, an oath that is agreed upon by two parties. Today, they are trying to make a pact between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is committed to violence, while Israel is committed to peace. How can that ever work?
Gen. 6:22 says that Noah did exactly as God commanded him to do. Adam had been given one rule, one commandment: “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on that day you will die.” Adam knew what he was supposed to do, but he didn’t do it. Later, that one commandment would become ten, but the principle behind both is the same…spiritual death for those who disobey. One chooses life while the other chooses death.
The stories of these righteous men — Adam, Noah, later Abram, to whom righteousness was credited, then others like Moses and Yeshua — would follow the patterns set down in these early stories. Once these patterns were formulated, they were rarely, if ever, broken, but the only way to properly see them—to benefit from their wisdom—is to step back and view the Torah from a broader perspective.
God’s desire for us was that we would enjoy everything about His creation…to eat, to drink, to be merry and especially be grateful…with the proviso that we live within His boundaries–for our protection–and that we be obedient to His warnings about what we could and could not do. The keyword is obedience. Although Noah did obey God, his humanity was later displayed when he planted a vineyard and got drunk. God didn’t command Noah, “Thou shalt not get drunk.” This shows us that with God’s gift of Free Will to humanity, He’s given us a lot of freedom, but the consequences of Adam and Noah’s actions demonstrate that with freedom of choice comes “responsibility”.
It is interesting that the sins of Adam and Noah involved eating and drinking. Did this have anything to do with their diet? What is the principle behind this picture? In the Garden of Eden, we were given all the vegetation to eat, but here, after the flood subsided, Gen. 9:3 states: כׇּל־רֶ֙מֶשׂ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הוּא־חַ֔י לָכֶ֥ם יִהְיֶ֖ה לְאׇכְלָ֑ה. “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat, as with the green grasses, I give you all these.” What? We can eat anything?? Well, what comes next in Gen. 9:4-6 tells us that it is not about what we can or cannot eat. The key lies in the following verses: “However, you must not eat flesh with its lifeblood in it. But for your own lifeblood I will require a reckoning: Whoever sheds human blood by human [hands] shall that one’s blood be shed; for in the image of God was mankind made.” That later became the sixth commandment, “You shall not commit premeditated murder.”
This has to do with the value of the life that God breathed into us. It depends on where the emphasis lies and whether we take verses out of context to prove a point. The principle behind eating food without the blood had nothing to do with what we eat and drink, but that we are made in God’s image, and when we murder another living being, it is like we are murdering God’s very essence.
How did it morph into the extensive laws of kashrut? That’s a long story, but again, it’s not about what we can and cannot eat. The animals acceptable to be brought to God as offerings in the Mishkan were our acknowledgment of what we had done wrong and our desire to make it right. He gave us the way to rule over sin. It’s called “teshuva”: to turn back to Him.
When we add to or change anything from God’s Words, as we are later told not to do, we open Pandora’s box. Look at the world today… Like in the days of Noah, we are in chaos. We have thrown God’s Words out of every aspect of our society, in which now what is right is considered wrong and vice versa. We release criminals and imprison the innocent. The right to abortion on demand and euthanasia are hailed as freedoms. Can we see how chaos has replaced order? Can we see how we few are called “ish tam”– righteous, innocent, and without guile? The word tzedek (justice) comes from the same root as tzaddik (righteous). The Torah teaches “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. Justice, justice we must pursue.” God said, “Whoever sheds human blood by human [hands] shall that one’s blood be shed; for in the image of God was mankind made”, but mankind responds, No to the death penalty.
Genesis 9:19 states something out of the ordinary: “The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth—Ham being the father of Canaan.” The pattern in the Torah for introducingmen is by their first name, followed by “ben” (son of) and their father’s first name, for example, Moshe ben Amram (Moses, son of Amram). Ham, being the father of Canaan, immediately draws our attention to someone breaking the typical pattern. Although the Torah doesn’t specify what Ham did, we know he did something to Noah that led to Ham’s son, Canaan, being cursed. Noah knew he couldn’t curse his son Ham because God had already blessed him, like Bilaam, who later would be unable to curse the Israelites. The curse prophesied in Gen. 9:25 was that Canaan would be “a servant of servants to his brothers”.
Again, when we take things out of context or add to what God says, it can cause chaos and pain. Joshua Hammerman stated in an article posted in RNS, January 2024,[1] “In 1578, English travel writer George Best wrote that it was God’s will that Ham’s son and ‘all his posterity after him should be so black and loathsome that it might be a spectacle of disobedience to all the world. In the popular imagination, blackness itself became the curse. Slavery was the byproduct. In subsequent centuries, the curse quickly gained the sanction of the church. Here are a couple of Jewish things you need to know about the Curse of Ham and Canaan. First, even in the Jewish sources that see the curse in terms of skin color, no value judgment is made here as to which color is superior”… Ham was blessed — not cursed — by being “dark like the raven.” …Second: From a Jewish perspective, the Curse of Ham/Canaan was, in fact, not about skin color at all.
As the medieval commentator Ibn Ezra reminds us, who were the Canaanites? They were the nation that Israel had to conquer in order to possess the land.
They had to subjugate them, not enslave them. Just take over their country. That’s why the Canaanites are cursed in Genesis: to pave the way, so that centuries later (in the books of Joshua and Judges) the Israelites could conquer the land. The Curse of Canaan is a geo-political narrative that sets the scene for what is to come later — and not just regarding the Canaanites, but also their descendants, the Hittites, and the Amorites (but having nothing to do with today’s Palestinians). It has nothing to do with blackness or racial inferiority of any sort. It is about biblical conquest — not race.
Let’s look at the situation in the Middle East today. Where did this pattern begin? Right here with Noah.Canaan played a considerable role in God’s prophetic timetable. His eleven sons were the founders of the various Canaanite tribes, none of which still exist, including the Sidonians (modern Lebanon), Jebusites, and Amorites (Syria and Jordan). They worshipped a pantheon of gods and goddesses, and they worshipped the dead as part of their religious and spiritual life. The many band-aid solutions by well-meaning politicians today can never change this long, long history, no matter how hard they try. It will take the Hand of God.
The land of Canaan lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It is the most disputed land in the world, in which so many are still shouting out, “from the River to the Sea”, calling for the annihilation of our people… it has nothing to do with land. It represents God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants, and this brings out the human trait first displayed in Cain – jealousy.
This land belongs to the God of Israel; anyone living on it, seeking shalom in their lives, must be like the people who possess the character traits of those who, like Noah, “walk with God”. Even God’s Chosen People, descended from the ancient Israelites and called by God, were expelled from it for seventy years to Babylon after they disobeyed the shmittah for 490 years.
The principles, set down in patterns from the beginning, remain the same throughout history. The people who will inhabit this extraordinary land in the renewed earth will live the Godly character traits of those who walk with God. Let us, today, seek out these patterns, displayed in beautiful mosaics in the Torah, and work hard to live them, so that we can benefit from the grace that God showed Noah.
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo
[1] https://religionnews.com/2024/01/11/blacks-and-jews-shame-pride-and-the-curse-of-canaan/