Parshas Noach: Against Our Nature

Three Teachers This Week

Rabbi Adi was away this week, and he arranged for the weekly shiur to be carried by teachers who work alongside him. Three of them each gave a Dvar Torah on Parshas Noach: Moshe Knecht, who also opened this year's Netziv learning on the parsha; Baruch Wexler; and Asaf Weiss. Two of the three ideas this week come from the Ha'amek Davar, so the year of learning the Netziv continued right on schedule.

Avraham's Argument, Noach's Silence

Moshe began where last week's parsha ended, and it did not end on a high note. Hashem sees that the wickedness of man on earth is great, and that every plan of his heart is only evil all day long. The word ra there, Moshe explained, means something like selfish: the very essence of man had gone bad. And the Torah says that Hashem regretted, so to speak, having made man, and decided to wipe out the human race. From Adam and Chava, and from Kayin and Hevel, we were not off to a good start. But one pasuk turns everything around:

וְנֹחַ מָצָא חֵן בְּעֵינֵי ה׳

And Noach found favor in the eyes of Hashem. (Bereishis 6:8)

That is where our parsha picks up, and as Moshe put it, in some parshios all you need to do is read the first pasuk and it will keep you busy for quite a while. The first pasuk of Noach is a loaded one, and there is a lot to learn from it:

אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת נֹחַ נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה בְּדֹרֹתָיו אֶת־הָאֱלֹקִים הִתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹחַ

These are the offspring of Noach: Noach was a righteous man, perfect in his generations; with G-d did Noach walk. (Bereishis 6:9)

The famous Rashi at the beginning of the parsha takes up the words tamim hayah b'dorosav, perfect in his generations. Of course it was his generation; you only live in your own generation. Rashi explains that there are two ways of understanding it. Some learn it l'shevach, as praise: even though his generation was so wicked, more wicked even than the generation of Avraham Avinu, Noach still remained a tzaddik tamim, and on this reading he comes out all the greater. And some learn it l'gnai, negatively: only in his generation was he considered that great, but had he lived in Avraham's generation, he would not have been considered anything special.

Moshe shared a question he once heard on this. We have a rule of dan l'kaf zechus, judging people favorably. If there are two ways of reading this pasuk, why in the world would we ever read it negatively? Shouldn't we take the reading that makes Noach even greater? And the answer he saw given is that the difference is visible just by reading the text. When Hashem tells Avraham that He is going to wipe out the evil city of Sdom, is Avraham okay with that? No. He starts to argue: maybe there are fifty righteous people there, maybe forty. He does not simply allow Hashem to wipe out even one evil city, let alone an entire world. And here we do not see Noach making any such request. Noach just acquiesces, and he does not seem to be fighting against it. For that reason, there is room to think that Noach was not as great as Avraham. Noach also had no followers: nobody came along with him besides his own family members, which also speaks volumes. The lesson, Moshe said, is the willingness to fight for the other and to step up for everybody, even for the wicked, and even when Hashem Himself is saying that they are wicked and must be removed. Even there, we learn from Avraham, unlike Noach, to be willing to put up a fight.

The Netziv: Against His Nature

Then Moshe turned to the Ha'amek Davar, with what he called a very interesting and even radical idea. The pasuk seems repetitive: Noach is a tzaddik, he is tamim, and he walked with G-d. In three different ways it is telling us that Noach was a great person. What is each phrase adding? The Netziv explains, as Moshe presented it, that tzaddik refers to the relationship bein adam laMakom, between man and Hashem: the Torah and mitzvos that are between you and Hashem, like keeping kosher, tefillin, and Shabbos. Whether or not I eat kosher does not affect other people; that is between me and Hashem. Tamim refers to bein adam l'chaveiro, the relationship between man and his fellow man: how you act with others. The pasuk is saying that Noach was both. He was a tzaddik toward Hashem, and he was also perfect in his interactions with other human beings.

But the most interesting part is the last phrase: es haElokim hishalech Noach, with G-d did Noach walk. Of course he walked with Hashem; that is exactly what tzaddik and tamim just told us. Here, Moshe said, the Netziv says something very interesting: it did not come naturally to him. Acting kindly with other people was not Noach's nature, and he had to go against his own nature to have proper bein adam l'chaveiro. And only because of that was he saved. In a natural time, doing the good that is already within your nature brings its reward, in this world or the next. But in the completely unnatural scenario of a mabul, a great flood, doing what is innate to you is not going to save you. What saved Noach from the flood was precisely that he went against his nature and worked on himself.

This is a pretty amazing idea, and it shines a light on something: what matters is not how high on the ladder you are, but how many rungs you have climbed. We all start life in a different place. We all have a different nature, a different DNA. Someone whose parents or grandparents are Holocaust survivors cannot be expected to have the same nature as someone without that history. Everyone has things that come more naturally to them and things that come less naturally. The things that come naturally to us, we should embrace, be thankful for, and appreciate. But the things that do not come naturally, those are the things that can save a person from a flood. If you are able to go against your nature, especially in your interpersonal relationships, and work on yourself in a really meaningful way, that is what Hashem is looking for, and that is something that can really save a person from disaster. Moshe closed by making the idea practical, with the question he would ask students: what is a good trait that comes to you naturally, and what is one that does not come so naturally, that you want to work on?

Two Kinds of Rainbows

The second Dvar Torah, from Baruch Wexler, looked at the end of the parsha and the sign Hashem gave Noach after the flood: the keshes, the rainbow.

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹקִים זֹאת אוֹת־הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר־אֲנִי נֹתֵן בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם

And G-d said: This is the sign of the covenant that I give between Me and you… (Bereishis 9:12)

The famous understanding is that the rainbow appears at a time when the world would deserve another flood, and it is the sign that Hashem, in His mercy, will not bring one. That is why we make a bracha when we see a rainbow. Baruch Wexler had a siddur in front of him and read it out. It thanks Hashem for three things:

זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית וְנֶאֱמָן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָּם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ

…Who remembers the covenant, and is faithful to His covenant, and keeps His word. (the bracha on seeing a rainbow)

Then he brought the Ha'amek Davar, which, he said, goes in a different direction, with a few fascinating points; he added that he knows of no other source that brings this idea, and that it blew his mind. First, the rainbow Hashem showed Noach was shown to him miraculously. It was not the natural rainbow we know about, of light breaking into all its colors when it hits the clouds; it was a miracle, as if Hashem were saying: this is the rainbow you will see when I want to show the world that it is not really worthy of existence. Second, the Torah says zos os habris, THIS is the sign of the covenant: this one, and not any other rainbow. Only a keshes that comes and goes within a few seconds, the Netziv dares to say, is the sign the parsha is talking about, the reminder that we should look into what we are doing and fix the world, so that it should not deserve destruction. But a rainbow that comes after a lot of rain and hangs in the sky for a while, from the light breaking naturally in the clouds, is not the rainbow the parsha is discussing at all. That one is a good sign for the world, a siman bracha, like the sun coming out after the rain.

So why do we make the bracha on every rainbow? He compared it to the bracha made at the pillar of salt by the Dead Sea, where we thank Hashem for remembering the tzaddikim and saving Lot: a bracha with a general meaning, said over one specific sight. Here too, even though the sign of the parsha is only one specific kind of rainbow, we make the bracha on every rainbow, because every rainbow reminds us that Hashem has mercy on us, and at the same time that Hashem really wants us to go out there and change the world, so that it will not be a world deserving of destruction. It is a very reassuring thought, he said, to know that not every rainbow is the sign of din.

And he added one deeper point. The Torah uses the name Elokim here, and there are two sides to that name. There is Elokim as midas hadin, the attribute of judgment: the world as it was set up to run, where people are worthy and receive, or are not. Even though the world we live in runs with mercy mixed into the din, that side of strict judgment is still there in the name. And there is Elokim as the Creator, the G-d of the whole world. By the rainbow we find both, and both are inside the bracha. Zocher habris: Hashem remembers His promise that He will not destroy the world again with a flood, even when the short rainbow is saying the world deserves it. V'ne'eman bivriso v'kayam b'ma'amaro: and when the keshes stays in the sky a long time, that is the rainbow we know, and it is itself a bracha for the world, the light that comes when the sun comes out after the rain. Whichever one we see, we make the same bracha, and we hold both thoughts at once: Hashem holds back the din, and Hashem sends the bracha.

Feeding the Animals

The third Dvar Torah came from Asaf Weiss, who shared one of his favorite ideas in this week's parsha, an idea he heard in the name of Rav Yeruchom Levovitz, the famous mashgiach of the Mir Yeshiva back when the Mir was still in the town of Mir in Europe (today it is in Jerusalem and in Brooklyn). The Torah says the teivah, the ark, was built with three levels:

תַּחְתִּיִּם שְׁנִיִּם וּשְׁלִשִׁים תַּעֲשֶׂהָ

Lower, second, and third levels shall you make it. (Bereishis 6:16)

Chazal explain that one level was for Noach and his family, one level was for all the animals that were brought in, and one entire level was devoted to the waste. And the animals needed to be fed. They were in the teivah for a long time, much more than forty days and forty nights, because it also took a long while for the waters to subside. Chazal tell us a fascinating thing: of all the people on the teivah, Noach, his wife, his sons, and his sons' wives, it was Noach himself who fed the animals. He did not delegate the task to his sons or to their wives. He took it upon himself.

Rav Yeruchom asks: why? Noach was the tzaddik of the generation, really the tzaddik of the whole world at that point; the whole world was being destroyed, and it was in his righteousness that mankind had a chance to continue. Let Noach sit and learn up on the deck, and let the job go to someone else. And Rav Yeruchom answers with what Asaf called a paradigm shift in what a person should be striving for. If a person thinks that righteousness means, I have achieved what I needed to achieve, and now my time is my own, whether for learning Torah or for enjoying the honor of the position I have finally reached, Rav Yeruchom says: absolutely not. A sign of greatness, from a Jewish point of view, is actually measured by how little it bothers a person to do what others would consider a degrading task. The greater a person is, the easier and the happier he will be to do the jobs that bring no honor. Why? Because the righteous understand one thing: the reason we are in this world is to give to others, to take as little as possible and to give as much as possible. And Noach understood that giving does not only mean giving to other people; it extended even to the animals. The animals needed to be fed, so Noach considered it an honor to be the one making sure they were fed. He did not consider it beneath his dignity. If anything, it was a sign of how great he actually was.

Asaf shared that he heard this idea right before he began working in Jewish education five years ago, and that it put him in the right mindset for the job. Alongside the beautiful parts, the teaching and the learning, there is a lot of shopping, a lot of cooking, a lot of cleaning, literally scrubbing the toilets, and carrying out bags and bags of garbage, work that nobody would call glorious. Whenever this parsha comes around, he said, he tries to tap into this idea of Noach and bring it into the rest of the year: the more I can give, and the more I can be okay with giving even when the task might seem beneath my honor, the more it actually builds me up as a person. The things that are beneath my honor are actually there to help me grow and to be a better person.

One Thread

Three teachers, three pieces of the parsha, and really one thread. Avraham fought for people even when they did not deserve it. Noach was saved because he went against his own nature to be good to others. And his greatness showed most in the job that carried no honor. The parsha of the flood turns out to be about what Hashem treasures: not what comes easily to us, but what costs us something, especially in how we care for everyone around us.