Parshah Summary – P’shat
The parshah opens with the description of Noah as an ish tzaddik tamim, a righteous and pure person in his generation, and God expresses displeasure to Noah with the world which has become consumed by violence and corruption. God tells Noah that a flood is coming, and that he should build an ark to float upon the water, saving Noah and his family, along with members of each animal species. Rain falls for 40 days and nights, and the waters churn for 150 days more before calming and beginning to recede. When the ark settles on Mount Ararat, Noah dispatches a raven, and then a series of doves, “to see if the waters have subsided from the face of the earth.” When the ground dries completely—exactly one year after the onset of the Flood—God tells Noah to exit the ark and begin repopulating the earth.
Noah builds an altar and offers sacrifices. God swears never again to destroy humanity because of their deeds, and sets the rainbow in the sky as a testimony of the new covenant with human beings. God also instructs Noah regarding the sacredness of life: murder is explicitly forbidden, and while humans are permitted to eat the meat of animals, they are forbidden to eat flesh or blood taken from a living animal. Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, and becomes drunk. Two of Noah’s sons, Shem and Yaphet, are blessed for covering up their father, while his third son, Ham, is punished for behaving inappropriately in the presence of his drunk and naked father, though his precise offense is not explicitly described. The descendants of Noah remain a single people, with a single language and culture, for ten generations. Then they try to build a great tower to symbolize their own invincibility; God confuses their language so that “one does not comprehend the tongue of the other,” causing them to abandon their project and disperse across the face of the earth, splitting into seventy nations. The parshah concludes with a chronology of the ten generations from Noah to Abram (who becomes Abraham), and the latter’s journey from his birthplace of Ur Casdim to Haran, on the way to the land of Canaan.
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אֵ֚לֶּה תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת נֹ֔חַ נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹ–הִ֖ים הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ: These are the offspring of Noah; Noah was a righteous person, perfect in his generation; Noah walked with God. - Bereisheet (Genesis) 6:9
There is a story of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotz, that as he grew older, he suffered pain in his eyes. He was advised to wear glasses for reading, but he refused: “I do not want to get a wall between my eyes and the holiness of creation.”
The eccentricity of the Kotzker in his refusal to wear eyeglasses may seem foolish, but the story hints an inner reality that tends to get between us and the world – that is, the “eyeglasses” of thought. Very much like physical eyeglasses, the thinking mind can allow us to see things more clearly; without the context of thought, we would have no idea where we are or what we are doing. And yet, the context and understanding provided by thought can also create a separation between ourselves and the fullness of the moment. Remove this separation and we may lose a sense of context and function, but we gain a certain intimacy with whatever is present, an intimacy that reveals that ineffable quality that we might call the “sacred.” And though we certainly can think and talk about the sacred dimension of experience, we access this dimension when we go beyond the thinking mind, into the silent field of consciousness from which it arises… נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים – Noah was a righteous person, perfect… The word for “perfect” is תָּמִים tamim, which comes from תָם tam, meaning “simple,” as in the “simple son” of the Passover Seder. In that context, תָם tam is not a positive thing, at least on the surface; the תָם tam is normally thought of as someone without much intelligence – that is, someone without a strong thinking mind, someone without conceptual context. And yet, in the case of Noah, to be תָּמִים tamim is a good thing, and later in the Torah, it is even described as a mitzvah: תָּמִ֣ים תִּֽהְיֶ֔ה עִ֖ם יְיְ אֱלֹ–הֶֽיךָ: – Simple (tamim) you shall be with Hashem, your God… - Devarim (Deuteronomy) 18:13 And in Rashi’s commentary on this verse, he explains what it means to be תָּמִ֣ים tamim: כָּל מַה שֶּׁיָּבֹא עָלֶיךָ קַבֵּל בִּתְמִימוּת: – Whatever comes to you, accept it with simplicity (t’mimut)… This simple acceptance of “whatever comes to you” is the deeper level of being תָּמִ֣ים tamim. On the surface, it resembles being unintelligent; isn’t it stupid to “simply accept” bad things? But this common misunderstanding confuses “acceptance” with “approval;” we can accept whatever comes, and also respond to it with intelligent judgement; “acceptance” simply means offering no emotional resistance to the truth of what has already come about – this is meditation. So, being תָּמִים tamim doesn’t mean to be passively resigned to whatever happens; it means being present with whatever happens. There is a hint of this in the sound of the word תָם tam, which is pronounced almost the same as טַעַם ta-am, meaning “taste,” hinting: to be תָּמִים tamim means to “fully taste” the present moment, to be intimately connected with “whatever comes to you.” And furthermore, this connection with our situation includes what we do about the situation. For example, if we accept and “fully taste” a situation that is causing suffering, that may naturally lead us to a response aimed at relieving the suffering. נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים – Noah was a righteous person, perfect… That’s why this pasuk describes Noah not only as תָּמִים tamim, but also as an אִישׁ צַדִּיק ish tzaddik – a “righteous person.” Presence is Acceptance and Love in One. אֵ֚לֶּה תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת נֹ֔חַ נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים – These are the offspring of Noah, Noah was a righteous person, perfect… Another hint is in the unusual construction of the pasuk in which נֹחַ Noakh is written twice. The name נֹחַ Noakh actually means “comfort” or “ease.” The fact that it is repeated hints at two kinds of ease: ease within oneself (accepting what happens with simplicity, being תָּמִים tamim), and bringing easefulness to others (love, righteousness, being a צַדִּיק tzaddik). הֵם אָמְרוּ שְׁלשָׁה דְבָרִים. רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר אוֹמֵר, יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרְךָ חָבִיב עָלֶיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְאַל תְּהִי נוֹחַ לִכְעֹס. וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתְךָ: They said three things: Rabbi Eliezer said: Let the honor of your friend be as dear to you as your own, and don’t easily become angry. And, return one day before your death. - Pirkei Avot 2:15 These three aphorisms are all connected: if you want to have the honor of your friend be as dear to you as your own honor, you’ve got to get free from your own anger, because it is anger that causes us to be callous toward others. Furthermore, there is a funny play on words here: וְאַל תְּהִי נוֹחַ לִכְעֹס – …don’t be easeful/comfortable (noakh) to get angry. In other words, if we want to be like Noah, if we want to be easeful, accepting what is (tamim) and we also want to be a helpful person to others (ish tzaddik), then we should not be noakh likh’os – “easy to get angry.” And how do we do this וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתְךָ: – Return one day before your death. On the surface it’s saying we should “repent” every day, because we don’t know what day we will die. But on a deeper level, this is the “death” of everything extraneous to this moment; it is the death of anger, of worry, of overthinking. We achieve this “death” through שׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד – return one day – meaning, return to this moment. But to do this means cultivating a heightened self-awareness; we must learn to notice our inner state, to constantly discern between Presence and distraction אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹ–הִ֖ים הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ: – Noah walked with the Divine… The Divine Name here is אֱלֹ–הִ֖ים Elohim, the Name associated with discernment. Our natural tendency is to become absorbed into our own thinking and then see the world through the “eyeglasses” of our minds. To counter this, we must constantly “walk ourselves back” to our actual experience, to the simple truth of the moment…
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