After the deluge

Our world finds itself reflected in the words of the Torah. No consolation from Noah.

Since I’m not giving an official sermon tomorrow, I thought I would take the opportunity to share a few texts that I’ve been turning in my mind this week, reading the parasha of Noach with my mind flickering back and forth between Paris, Jerusalem and Gaza. It’s not that the Torah predicts current events (a journalist asked me that question this week), as much as that the words of the Torah reflect and refract my jumbled thoughts, and I recognise in them something new; I can now try to interpret them as if exterior to myself.

There’s a collection of about a hundred teachings about prayer attributed to the Ba’al Shem Tov, all based around the verse in our parasha describing the building of Noah’s boat. They play on the double meaning of the word teivah, which can mean either ‘ark’ or ‘word’, and of tzohar, which is either a window or light. (I once started translating this work into English, and about half way through discovered that it had already been translated, probably much better, by somebody else.) Here’s one example:

שמעתי בשם הבעל שם טוב זללה"ה שפירש, צוהר תעשה לתבה, לעשות צוהר מן התבה של תורה ותפלה, לראות ולהסתכל עמה מראש העולם ועד סופו:

I heard in the name of the Ba’al Shem Tov of blessed memory, an explanation of the verse "Make an opening for the ark (teivah)" - one should turn the words (teivah) of Torah and of prayer into an illuminated opening, to look in and see from the beginning of the world until its end. (Amud Hatefillah 19)

Sometimes that illumination of words is active - I let the words I say fill with inspiration that comes from elsewhere and goes elsewhere. And sometimes it’s passive - again, I open a book and let my mind wander as I read and reflect, a mirror gazing at a mirror.

What does the name ‘Noah’ mean?

Our parasha starts in the middle of a story. Noah was already introduced at the end of last week’s parasha in a genealogical list - after ten generations, he’s the first to be named by his father.

וַֽיְחִי־לֶ֕מֶךְ שְׁתַּ֧יִם וּשְׁמֹנִ֛ים שָׁנָ֖ה וּמְאַ֣ת שָׁנָ֑ה וַיּ֖וֹלֶד בֵּֽן׃ וַיִּקְרָ֧א אֶת־שְׁמ֛וֹ נֹ֖חַ לֵאמֹ֑ר זֶ֞֠ה יְנַחֲמֵ֤נוּ מִֽמַּעֲשֵׂ֙נוּ֙ וּמֵעִצְּב֣וֹן יָדֵ֔ינוּ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵֽרְרָ֖הּ יְ-הֹוָֽה׃

Lemekh lived eighty-two years and a hundred years, and then he begot a son.

He called his name: Noah, saying:
Zeh yenahamenu: May this-one comfort-our-sorrow
from our toil, from the pains of our hands
coming from the ground, which God has cursed. (Gen 5.28-29)

The Torah seems to link the name Noah to the verb n.h.m , which here is used to mean comfort, instead of a more intuitive explanation of his name from the verb n.o.h, rest and tranquility. Ok. Zeh yenahamenu, this little one will comfort us, like every child born after a tragedy. But is that what the word means? Afterwards, we read one of the most tragic verses in the Torah, a declaration of divine hopelessness.

וַיַּ֣רְא יְ-הֹוָ֔ה כִּ֥י רַבָּ֛ה רָעַ֥ת הָאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וְכׇל־יֵ֙צֶר֙ מַחְשְׁבֹ֣ת לִבּ֔וֹ רַ֥ק רַ֖ע כׇּל־הַיּֽוֹם׃ וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם יְ-הֹוָ֔ה כִּֽי־עָשָׂ֥ה אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וַיִּתְעַצֵּ֖ב אֶל־לִבּֽוֹ׃ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר יְ-הֹוָ֗ה אֶמְחֶ֨ה אֶת־הָאָדָ֤ם אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָ֙אתִי֙ מֵעַל֙ פְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֲדָמָ֔ה מֵֽאָדָם֙ עַד־בְּהֵמָ֔ה עַד־רֶ֖מֶשׂ וְעַד־ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם כִּ֥י נִחַ֖מְתִּי כִּ֥י עֲשִׂיתִֽם׃

God saw that great was humankind’s evildoing on earth and every form of their heart’s planning was only evil all the day.

Then God was sorry (vayinahem) that he had made humankind on earth, and it pained his heart.

God said: I will blot out humankind, whom I created, from the face of the earth,
from man to beast, to crawling thing and to the birds of the heavens, for I am sorry (nihamti) that I made them. (Genesis 6:5-7)

The inherent potential for evil is so evident that the same God who created humanity decides to destroy it. The darkness in man’s heart is so deep, ‘only evil all the day’, that it would be better if they did not exist, and now God’s heart aches. The same Hebrew verb that meant comfort and consolation a few verses ago is now used to mean something like regret. The medieval grammarians point out that even though n.h.m in the Torah usually means consolation, more precisely, it means a change of emotion. From sad to happy, but also the opposite. The only response at this point seems to be utter destruction. But then another change.

וְנֹ֕חַ מָ֥צָא חֵ֖ן בְּעֵינֵ֥י יְ-הֹוָֽה

But Noah found favor in the eyes of God.

The heart of God was so full of grief that the only response was violent destruction. But the eyes of God saw Noah. Noah as a human also had the potential for evil, and nonetheless something about him changes God’s mind. The totality of evil and the totality of the destruction are both tamed by the reintroduction of Noah to the story, he flips the emotions, consoles God and ensures that something of humanity remains.

Noah-Noah

As I mentioned, our parasha only starts after all of these introductions. We’re suddenly told in the middle of the story that ‘This is the story of Noah, Noah was a righteous and wholehearted man in his generation.’ The majestic mystics, always sensitive to the words, wonder about the double use of his name, and decide to read it otherwise: ‘This is the story of Noah-Noah, a righteous and wholehearted man in his generations.’ There’s a cryptic explanation of this double name.

לָמָּה נֹחַ נֹחַ תְּרֵי זִמְנִי. אֶלָּא כָּל צַּדִּיק וצַּדִּיק דִּי בְּעָלְמָא אִיתּ לֵיהּ תְּרֵין רוּחִין. רוּחָא חַד בְּעָלְמָא דֵין ורוּחָא חַד בְּעָלְמָא דְאָתֵּי. והָכִי תִּשְׁכַּח בְּכֻלְהוּ צַּדִּיקֵי משֶׁה משֶׁה, יַעֲקֹב יַעֲקֹב, אַבְרָהָם אַבְרָהָם, שְׁמוּאֵל שְׁמוּאֵל, שֵׁם שֵׁם.

Why is "Noah Noah" (Gen. 6:9) written twice? Each and every righteous person in the world has two spirits. One stays in this world, while the other is in the World to Come. And so we find that the Holy One, blessed be He, named all the righteous twice: "Moses, Moses" (Ex. 3:4), "Jacob, Jacob" (Gen. 46:2), "Abraham, Abraham" (Gen. 22:11), "Samuel, Samuel" (I Shmuel 3:10) - a name followed by a name. (Tosefta Zohar I:59b)

Everyone has a double soul, we might say an actual and a potential personality. They mirror each other. Those named twice, Noah-Noah and so on, have their actuality very close to their potential. For the rest of us, with only one name manifest, our souls are disconnected from what they could be. This reminds me of the debate about whether Noah is only righteous in comparison to the others in his time, or whether he is so righteous that even in his generation he was not corrupted by them. The Zohar seems to answer that he’s both: his mediocre self and his fine self are both called on by the events of his time. It might be even that the evil acts of his generation pushed him to do goodness, like the incredible acts of solidarity and kindness that we are seeing today in response to the atrocities committed by Hamas.

Words

So what exactly was the ‘sin’ of that generation that shook the heart of God and warranted the near-destruction of humanity? By a weird twist of linguistic and historical chance, the Hebrew word for violence and robbery is the same as the Arabic word for zeal or bravery: Hamas. This is what the Torah describes as being the state of affairs at the time of Noah.

וַתִּשָּׁחֵ֥ת הָאָ֖רֶץ לִפְנֵ֣י הָֽאֱ-לֹהִ֑ים וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א הָאָ֖רֶץ חָמָֽס

The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness (hamas). (Genesis 6:11)

Commentaries and legends abound on the mysterious words here - what did ‘the earth’ do wrong, and what does ‘before God’ actually mean? - but in another linguistic twist, one of the earliest Aramaic interpretations of the biblical text uses a poignant word to translate ‘hamas’.

וְאִתְחַבָּלַת אַרְעָא קֳדָם יְיָ וְאִתְמְלִיאַת אַרְעָא חֲטוֹפִין (Targum Onkelos 6:11)

The word it uses is hatufin, which can also mean violence but more commonly means snatching, seizing, kidnap. What do we do with that, when those words meet our eyes in October 2023? It might be that we will never be able to unsee it. I’ve studied this before, but only now notice the commentaries that speak about kidnapping and rape. If we turned to the Torah to escape our terrible reality, here we find it again, gazing back at us. This awful word refuses to stay just a word, like Lacan’s stained painting, we learn more about ourselves than about the text at hand.

If I was writing this as a sermon, I would need to finish, like Noah, with words of comfort and encouragement. But I don’t have so many at the moment. The parasha ends with a promise that the world will never again be completely destroyed, and even that doesn’t resonate with me this week. So I end, with a feeble hope rather than a description of reality: Shabbat shalom.