Noach: The First Verse and the Three Creations of Man

Good evening, everyone. We are inaugurating the new year with a new program: a commentary on the text of the Torah, held regularly every week. Each week we will finish whatever verses we can; we will not deal with the whole parasha. It is a study of texts which, I believe, is enormously rewarding, because these are the keys to interpreting any text in the Torah and in the midrashic literature. Now, we did in fact miss the first parasha, Bereshit. We will take up a few of its ideas as we treat the parasha of Noach — of Ele toldot Noach, “These are the generations of Noach.” We will see that Bereshit deals mainly with the fathers, that is, with all those who took it upon themselves to determine the history of their generation, of their era, and who became the prototypes of that history on different levels.

And needless to say, just as an entire population entrusts its national and economic destiny to a person it has chosen for the ideology he embodies or is willing to carry out, so we, in a certain sense, entrust our destiny to the hands of a tzaddik (a righteous man), and we are there to serve him as much as he serves us. Consequently, to speak of tzaddikim as though they [alone] brought this universe into being is something of an illusion. We must realize that there are tzaddikim who do indeed bend history in the right direction, and we entrust ourselves to their hands and follow them; but of course the world takes part — the entire universe takes part in this history. That is to say, the tzaddik himself cannot do as he pleases.

There is, if you like, a free will that is left to each person and that constitutes each person’s merit. But this free will, as we shall see, is from time to time amended, sometimes withdrawn, corrected, so that man may indeed correct the course of his own life. Otherwise nature rushes back toward its origins — that is the tehom, the abyss. So when we study the text of the Torah, it is in fact our own history that is at stake. Each of us has within himself something of the destiny of Adam, of the destiny of Noach, of the aspirations of Avraham, of Yitzchak, of Yaakov, of Yosef. If not throughout a whole life, then at least in certain periods of one’s life — sometimes for a day, for an hour — a person is Avraham, he is Yitzchak, he is Yaakov, he is Yosef.

And in this way, when we open the book of the Torah, it is not a story of the past that we are dissecting; it is the present. It is the present we live in private, and that we also live as a community, on the universal plane. And of course, no history is made without begettings. All of it is invested in children and grandchildren — that is life’s finest achievement — and that is why the word is toldot, begettings. But let us not speak only of children and grandchildren, for we have been taught that “the toldot of the righteous are their good deeds.” That is to say, we beget ourselves, we bring ourselves to fulfillment; and this self-fulfillment is our history — the history of the community in which we move, and of the entire universe, whose course of progress, of advancement, or, unfortunately, of decline, we determine.

Well then, we must know that from the very outset the Torah has told us that there are three realities in man. There is the man who was created at the origin, in the image and likeness of G-d. And of this man who was created, we are not told how. G-d commits Himself, saying Na’aseh adam — “You, man, and I, G-d, let us make man.” He used a plural for this. And when He created man, He conceived him as the culmination of all creation. And this man is at once male and female. Woman was created simultaneously with man; consequently there is no before and no after, there is no dependence of one on the other, neither in time nor in space.

Man and woman were created simultaneously, in the image and the likeness. […] Our sages, or our kabbalists, rendered this as the supreme manifestation of G-d from on high and His immanent presence in the world here below — in the beyond, and in the here and now that we live at every moment. Now, there is a second creation of man, but this time it is the one that stands at the starting point of the whole of creation: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth behibaram, when they were created.” That is in chapter 2, and we are told: do not read behibaram, “when they were created,” but be-Avraham, “through Avraham.” That is, history begins — the true history of man begins — with Avraham, and the twenty generations that preceded him were only a preparatory initiation for the emergence of Avraham.

Now this is toldot — you know that the word toldot is written here with two vavs: toldot hashamayim veha’aretz. But what we see afterward is that the vav is missing — either the first vav or the last vav. You know that the letter vav is the letter of truth, the letter of authenticity, the letter of stability, and the letter of coordination in time and space. It is the letter of the connectedness of being. So these begettings, or this connection, is deficient, it is defective — and it is precisely because it is still deficient and defective that the world can move forward. For if the world were perfect and there were nothing left to do, we would have lived in a state of fullness in total passivity; there would be no more tension, nothing more to do, and — well — the world would not move forward. And our sages have already told us: let us pay tribute to our generations that opened the path of sin before us, because without that we would have had no merit. That is to say, it is the sense of imperfection that gives history its full measure of being. We will explain this further. But in any case, there is a second stage in the creation of man, and that one is the point of departure of the whole of creation, and we are told about it precisely. We are told that this man is taken from the four corners of the earth, and that a mist rises from the ground and makes a clay from which this man is created; and G-d, the Creator, breathes into him a breath of life, which gives him a sensibility of being, a consciousness of being.

But — take note — a consciousness of being onto which speech will later be grafted. Speech is not immediate. Just like a child who comes into the world: he is able to feel things here and there, as a being of flesh and blood, like every creature, but speech he will develop much later, he will manifest it much later. Now this man is no longer nivra, he is no longer created; he is yetzer, he is notzar — he is formed. I would point out to you that in our blessings we never say Baruch atah Hashem borei ha’adam, “Blessed are You, Creator, who creates Adam.” No: Baruch atah Hashem yotzer ha’adam — “Blessed are You, Hashem, who forms Adam.” Yetzirah (formation) is what makes it so that, from then on, we have a diversity of persons and of sensibilities, and we are no longer a single model. The single model is the one that was created as the culmination of creation in the first chapter. But in the second chapter — the one from which the feminine will then be separated — well, that is in the conception.

And this conception means that man must not remain alone. He must not remain alone — why? Because he risks taking himself for a god, and consequently achieving nothing in this world, because he will live in a Garden of Eden. And what is a Garden of Eden? It is living in a world where the idea of time and space does not exist. You know, there are fragments of this Garden of Eden life in the intimacy of love, of the couple, where this absence of time and space is real. And there is only that feeling, that desire to find again, to live again, a unity that was deliberately separated — because without that separation there would be no openness of mind, there would be no critique.

There would be no competition in the achievement of life, there would be no mutual help, there would be no recognition of the other; but it is from this separation that everything will come to be realized. That is why the manifestation of the feminine appears as a necessity. For woman was created at the origin at the same time as man — in man, or man in woman. But there came a moment when this separation became necessary. So the manifestation of the feminine comes a posteriori, not a priori: it is because it was seen that man could not live alone, in a solitary state, without the other, that the feminine was then separated. Now, of course, what may seem distressing or diminishing for the feminine is the fact of depending on an amputation of the masculine. But take note: there is a gentle revenge of the feminine, because it is she who then becomes the origin of everything. She is the makor, she is the source; she is the one who ensures the begettings; she is the toldot, and these toldot depend on the feminine. Now they will be perfect when, as in the lineage of Ruth the Moabite, the contribution comes from outside — not a withdrawal into oneself alone, but a spirit of openness to the outside world. And there we are in a messianic phase. For there are two places in the whole Bible where the word toldot is written in full: the starting point of the universal history of the heavens and the earth, of spirit and matter — that is chapter 2 — and its messianic culmination as it takes shape through the book of Ruth. Toldot with two vavs is in the book of Ruth.

But between these two toldot there will always be, as I said a moment ago, dark and blurred zones, which mean that we will need another light to advance in being. Well, in all of this there is respect for the reshut hayachid, the private domain — the person’s own intimacy. Let us remember that the starting point of Adam’s sin is truly this: Vayihyu shneihem arumim, ha’adam ve’ishto, velo yitboshashu — “The two of them were naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.” No — that is the starting point of the sin, since, once the sin had been committed, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Adam and Chavah, who hide because they realize they are naked: “Who told you that you were naked?” But nakedness, as long as one is alone in a house, is no embarrassment.

Where embarrassment actually begins is when we are two, and there is no longer any respect for the intimacy of one by the other. At that point we have indeed made our intimacy into a public place. And when we have confused private life, one’s own intimacy, with that of others — when we have confused them — there is no longer any respect of one for the other, there is no longer any recognition. A garment is needed, a garment is needed; nakedness must be covered; each person must find again, somewhere, his private life, his intimate life, his own home. The first way in which Adam and Chavah went wrong is that they were in a public world, without a nest, without intimacy. They did not think of making themselves a little hut or a little house to withdraw into, to live their intimacy. No — and so they faced a serpent. And this serpent, who dwells within man, waits only for moments of weakness in order to slip in; and the moment is, let us say, at the height of this rediscovered intimacy: he will demolish it. And that is the breaking point of history at every moment.

It is when one has refused to respect individualities and personalities. Let us remember that man begins to speak — the first word that comes out of his mouth — when he finds woman facing him. It is at that moment that he found his language: “This time, this is truly bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He felt that satisfaction, that fullness of life, in discovering the other. Awareness of the other in relation to oneself is the starting point of history. As long as this awareness of the other does not assert itself, we will indeed be in a disjointed world, a world of violence, a world in which one does not recognize the other. And it is here that toldot, the begettings, come in. Very important: there is a third dimension of the creation of man — zeh sefer toldot adam, “This is the book of the generations of man.”

Here is the record of the book of man, in which he creates man in his image. It is no longer in the image of G-d, but in the image of man. In the image of man I create man. And of course, in this man that I am, there is already that first divine deposit; but this variety of man that I bring into the world takes part in this association, in this covenant of man — in yetzirah, in formation, in the concept of creation; not in beri’ah, not in creation itself. It is in asiyah (action), and that is where the dimension of free will enters. Free will, in a sense, is given to man so that he may bring about with his Creator asher bara Elokim la’asot — what G-d created in order to be completed.

Well, we now understand the importance of this Ele toldot: Ele toldot Noach, Noach. What Noach begets is not first of all his own children. What Noach begets is himself. First one must fulfill oneself — fulfill oneself in one’s shell, in one’s private life, in one’s intimacy. The children will be what I have made of myself, not what I projected onto them outside of myself. You see how the text speaks of him. And in saying ele — take note: wherever it says ele, pasal et harishonim, it disqualifies what came before. What does “ele disqualifies what came before” mean? Ele, “these are,” is a new point of departure, which sets aside what preceded it.

There is of course a chain of history, but in that chain of history one can find oneself either in the hollow, in the gap, or in the link — in the circuit of the chain. Now the Torah has made generations upon generations file past us: vayoled, vayoled, vayoled, vayoled — “and he begot, and he begot…” These were unfinished stories, and unfinished stories remain in the hollow of the chain, and not in what forms the linking of the generations. That, too, is a second teaching. That is why the word ele is a diminutive of Elohim. It takes the bold spirit of our sages to say that the singular of Elohim is ele. And what does that mean? It means quite simply that when one indulges in the quantitative, one indulges in the direction of idolatry. When one clings to the crowd, and when one goes along with the current of whatever comes along, of every ideology, of every philosophy, and does not live from within what we are, then we are in avodah zarah, we are in idolatry. There is a scent of idolatry in ele: Ele elohecha Yisrael — “These are your gods, O Israel”; here are gods, Israel. The golden calf is the fact that the people yielded, in a moment of despair, to whatever came along — any leader, any philosophy — in order to go on living, to have bearings, to have points of reference. That, unfortunately, is what happens; it is what man easily does. Very often, when he goes along with the current of the various ways of life that present themselves to him, without any personal search — does he truly and fully recognize himself in them? So Noach indeed begins a new trajectory of life in history. Yes — for when does Noach appear? Noach appears when the world, when society, multiplies, and the sense of individuality is lost; one becomes a number, one becomes anonymous in society.

The text says that what counts is to take whatever woman one wants, to abuse whatever woman one wants — that is to say, in the end, whatever intimacy one has lies in the debauchery of being. And that is the quantitative. That is the crowd. That is the way in which governments — sometimes, even — divert peoples from the true course of life by opening all the floodgates — perversion under cover of democracy, of a laissez-faire in which everyone does as he pleases. There is this quantitative that takes precedence over the qualitative. And so G-d reconsiders — G-d reconsiders. But what, does He regret? No, He does not regret, He does not regret.

It is an attempt, a lesson given to man. The plan, the direction, must be changed. The mode of education must be changed, staking not on society as a whole but on the qualitative, on the individual, on the tzaddik, on the righteous man of the generation — not necessarily one who lives like an angel. No: he is, if you like, the tzaddik of his generation — tzaddik tamim hayah bedorotav, “a righteous man, whole in his generations.” He is the righteous man of his generation. He has a message to give. He has, let us say, a balance of life to offer. He is taken into account, he is taken into consideration; he “found favor in the eyes of Hashem.” That is to say, for a time G-d let man act, make use of his freedom — since the third panel of the creation of man… We saw that the first panel was creation ex nihilo; the second panel was the conception of man; and with the appearance of the feminine, the third panel is man’s free will, which is put to the test. When there is an abuse of power in the world of action, then restrictions come into play.

Restrictions come into play in space and in time, since at that point G-d Himself decides that man shall leave this Edenic life in which he has nothing to do compared with what he might undertake. Since he himself seeks no challenges in the way he progresses, G-d places him in tension — and tension lies in dualities: the dualities of private life and public life, of good and evil, of light and darkness. And indeed, if there is no darkness there is no light; if there is no evil there is no good; if there is no private life there is no public life.

Consequently: tovim hashnayim min ha’echad, “two are better than one.” — “Rav Benizri? Rav Benizri, we can’t hear you anymore. And we can’t see you either.” — […] The phone — it happened just as I made a rather sharp gesture. — “Ah, there we are — wonderful. We lost you.” — Yes, yes, I lost you too. Well — it was a dialectic: light and darkness. So then: Noach, as his name indicates, is passive. Are you following me now? Yes. But he decided to withdraw into himself; he is in his tevah, in his ark; he wants to build his own ark. What concerns him first is to make a success of his own family, to save his own universe — not to go along with the despair of others, with their lack of belonging, their lack of recognition.

He wants first of all to fulfill himself completely, and it is by fulfilling himself completely that he will save the universe — we will see that. But let us not skip the stages. We have explained, if you like, this ele, this toldot, this Noach, which comes from nechamah — nechamah which does not mean consolation, which does not mean regret, but which means a change of direction. And this Noach is an ish; he is no longer Adam. To be Adam is to take upon oneself the problems of humanity; […] it is beyond our capacities. One must limit oneself to what one can achieve, to what one can do, to what is possible. So rather than being an Adam, one must be an ish.

And one can be an ish only if, facing us, there is an ishah: ish and ishah. Adam — what he has facing him is adamah, the ground. So this notion of adam and adamah comes back to tell man that he is limited in his life. Afar min ha’adamah, “dust from the ground”: he is limited in time, he is limited in space. Enough of speaking so grandly of the destiny of humanity; [speak] a little of your own destiny, of that of your family, of that of your society. Begin there, and try to give your own universe […]. That, then, is the ish; that is the ish tzaddik. The title ish calls for a responsibility, an ishiyut — a personality. Adam does not convey the idea of personality. Ish, on the other hand, does: veha’ish Moshe, “the man Moshe.” Moshe is an ish; Moshe is not Adam. What concerns Moshe most is the destiny of his people. Then: tamim hayah bedorotav — ish tzaddik tamim. Tamim — yes, tamim does not mean naive; tamim means perfect, in the sense of perfection. But perfection exists only in the mind. No one is perfect; in reality, each person has his faults, each person suffers from some lack — and fortunately so, because that is how a genuine exchange takes place, and responsibilities. So one can always hold tamim as a line of conduct, as a criterion; but it is tamim in the sense that it is relative to oneself — it indicates that it is relative to my possibilities, to my capacities.

And then it is always relative to my generation. Had he been in Avraham’s generation, he would of course have been something else; perhaps the challenge would have been far greater for him. He would have measured himself against that challenge and advanced still further — or else he would have renounced that awareness, because in the end it was too much for him, wouldn’t you say? Hence bedorotav, bedorotav, “in his generations.” Let us try to find the society in which we can advance — and advance prudently, advance well — and which we can also serve. And let us not forget one last important idea, namely et ha’Elokim hithalech Noach, “Noach walked with G-d.” With oneself, what counts is not indulgence, not kindness. One must not be kind to oneself; one must be kind to others. With oneself one must be demanding, one must be rigorous.

And et ha’Elokim — Elokim is middat hadin, the attribute of rigor: I walk with G-d according to criteria of rigor toward myself and criteria of kindness toward others. So — but when I do not have enough confidence in myself… One must not get one’s mistakes forgiven; one must correct them, one must mend one’s ways. And et ha’Elokim hithalech Noach — Noach walking hand in hand with G-d — this can be held against him, because he should have walked ahead of G-d. He should have — he should have left G-d behind him, chas veshalom, heaven forbid — I say it in quotation marks — because it is better to be able to announce G-d’s coming as one passes than to hold His hand because one cannot keep one’s balance without Him.

Rather, one must walk forward oneself. Instead of et ha’Elokim hithalech Noach — lifnei ha’Elokim, walking ahead, before G-d: that is done with much more assurance, much more serenity, let us say. We are not afraid of faltering, of toppling, of falling. So what we are presented with now is Noach as he was. And immediately we will be told vayoled Noach — Noach brought three children into the world. What are these three children, Shem, Cham and Yefet? They are the three components of a life, of an ethic. Shem is the ethical; Cham is the biological being, the biological side of the human being; and Yefet is the aesthetic side — all three united in one being. And we will see later that Shem, Cham and Yefet will define three tendencies in the world: economics on the one hand, art on the other, and the intellectual and the spiritual last of all.

But what will come first — because Shem is not […] — Shem is first of all the one named first. Cham and Yefet come to be grafted onto that. In what way, we will not see here. I will stop there. If you have questions to ask, please ask them. — “I have no question, Rav Benizri.” — If this interests you, tell me so. If it does not interest you, tell me that too. — “First of all, it was fascinating. The question I have, which is a question I always ask myself, concerns a kind of paradox: it is written et ha’Elokim hithalech Noach, and yet we know that Noach, according to the midrashim, did not go straight into the ark; he waited until the water came up to his knees.

“When he saw it, he went in. So there was in fact a moment of… Even though he already had all the information in advance, he still did not believe the Holy One, blessed be He; he waited until the water reached his knees before going into the ark. And that is a kind of paradox: on one side et ha’Elokim hithalech, hand in hand with G-d, but on the other side he did not believe. So I find that rather surprising.” — Yes, well, listen: I would say that in the dialogue between man and G-d — I don’t know how else to put it — in the dialogue between man and the absolute, there is, in an undertone, a challenge thrown at the other.

“I’m going to see how far you want to go.” And one counts on the other to stop his machine and say, “All right, I’ve taught you a lesson, I’ve frightened you, you have finally seen what I am capable of doing — so now behave yourselves.” So Noach is at the door of […]. Will the Holy One, blessed be He, the Creator, really go all the way? Will He destroy His work? You know, it is hard for… Even for an artist who has set out to make a beautiful painting — to take it and tear it up, to destroy it, to burn it: it breaks his heart, when he thinks how much time he spent on it, how much energy he invested in this work, and from one day to the next he is going to throw it away.

So tell yourselves that Noach did not believe his eyes. He did not believe that the world was going to topple into this chaos, when G-d had made this world to be His work, and if ever He destroyed it, it would be G-d’s failure, the failure of His work. So he waited until the last minute. At that point he had no way out, and he withdrew into his ark. But we will come to that chapter; I have confined myself to commenting on the first verse of Noach, because the time allotted to me allowed only that. Yes, another question? — “Yes, Rav, I have a question.” — Yes, go ahead. — “It is written in the Torah that Adam and Chavah had two sons, and I learned yesterday that, in a coded way, they had six children.

“Kayin was paired with a girl, and Hevel was paired with a girl, and Kayin was paired with two girls — so they had six children. Did Noach also have other children, and is that coded in the Torah?” — Well, I must tell you that, just as the Torah does not dwell on what lies on the margins of history, on the margins of society — on what I called the trough of the wave of history, or of the chain of generations — the Torah did not bring all of that forward, did not mention it. If one may put it this way, it belongs to the refuse of history, to the husks of history, because we must draw only from what is decisive — the decisive elements of this history — that is what the Torah brings out. — “Mr. Benizri, good evening. I have two things: first, something that startled me a little, and second, a reflection I would like your view on. The first thing that startled me is that you said democracy is ‘everyone does as he pleases,’ somewhat in opposition to morality, in a way, between the separation of private and public life — at least that is what I understood. As far as I understand it, democracy is allowing everyone to do what they want within very precise, clearly defined rules. So did you mean to speak of anarchy or of democracy? That is the first thing. The second: there is creation, which is in fact a perfect world in a certain way, and with the sin this perfect world becomes imperfect, so that man can make it perfect again with G-d’s help. But why does G-d need to create a perfect world only to undo it — and why make creation at all? Why make it? Why does He need this creation, in fact? Those are the two things I wanted to ask.” — So, first, an answer to the first question. I am not speaking of anarchy — on the contrary, anarchy is what I described in Vayehi ki hechel ha’adam larov al pnei ha’adamah, “And it came to pass, when man began to multiply on the face of the earth” — when man indeed yields to this pluralism of being, and everyone does what he wants, however he wants.

That is the world, if you like, of pornography, of […] and of debauchery in which our society lives — and which our society lives in a very advanced way, because in fact what our society is living through is nothing new. Democracy as it is understood in the Torah is Havu lachem anashim chachamim unevonim: “Bring forth for yourselves men who are wise and understanding” — call upon responsible people, wise and intelligent people, people with virtues, who can be the model of society, and set them at your head, if only so that they may be the moral censors of your society. That is what Moshe says to the people before entering the Land of Israel: choose yourselves an elite, va’asimem berasheichem, “and I will set them at your head” — there will be an authority that will appoint them over you. And within this structure, of course, each person fulfills himself in his own way, according to his sensibilities, his possibilities, his capacities.

But there are barriers, there are safeguards: the Torah has provided for them. That brings me to answer your second question — namely: to bring about a world such as G-d might want, in which man’s intervention would be no different from an animal’s… [as though] G-d needed this world here, in which man, in his passivity, would be merely G-d’s subject and not truly the partner in the work of creation. When we speak of “G-d” — that word troubles me enormously, because today we give it a somewhat idolatrous connotation. I don’t know how to translate it. But know that when I speak of this transcendent, all-powerful spirit, who can do all things and who has ceded His power to man — because it is only through man that He will be recognized, for when He is alone there is no recognition, there is no world, there is nothing…

Why does He need recognition? Recognition is not that of the subject toward the king. Recognition lies in the citizen toward the other citizen, toward the elite, toward the tzaddik. That is recognition. To be a tzaddik for oneself serves no purpose. I mean, where does it lead — where does it lead to live in a world of Gan Eden where there is neither time nor space, where there is no world being realized through the toldot? It answers to nothing. G-d wanted a world in which — dirah batachtonim, “a dwelling in the lower realms” — He Himself would reside in the lower sphere, rather than remaining in the upper sphere. The realization of G-d here below is His presence, His sanctuary, His immanence; it is His presence in you, in the other, in me.

That is what G-d wanted. It is like a father — on a very, very, very reduced scale, of course — when he brings a child into the world: is it to bring trouble on himself, to burden himself with problems? No? — “Yes, but excuse me, Mr. Benizri: why does G-d need recognition? And why does He need this world in order to be recognized, in order to receive recognition?” — So, this recognition that G-d asks for — it is the recognition that you yourself claim. Let us leave G-d aside, let us leave Him in peace, and talk among ourselves. You want me to recognize you, don’t you? Out of this recognition, we will need to recognize one another; and this recognition can only take place by way of this absolute that we have in common — through all our pettiness, our reduced, cramped existence, and our different sensibilities.

Recognition is the recognition of the personality you represent in relation to mine, and of mine in relation to yours, which means that, in sum, we share an absolute in common — […] which is there, which is present. There — I have spoken as… — “Rav Benizri, excuse me, a very practical little question: next week, do we continue with Noach?” — No. — “All right.” — We move on to Lech Lecha. […] — “And the week after?” — Every year, each week, whatever we have finished, we will have finished. And if G-d grants me life and you are still interested, then next year we will continue from where we stopped. I studied this way with my teacher, [Emmanuel] Levinas, when we did Rashi: that is how we did it every Shabbat. Each Shabbat we would take up the parasha where we had stopped the year before. — “So I see only one solution: to be here next year.” — I wish that for myself too. — “Is there still time to ask you one or two questions?”

“We speak of toldot, we speak of the re-creation of the world. Where has Noach’s wife gone — she who should be the very symbol, as you said earlier, the symbol of the renewal of creation? Suddenly, in the parasha of Noach, there is no Chavah, there is no Sarah, there is no Rivkah; Noach’s wife disappears as though she did not exist, when she should be supremely present. She is the one, in fact, who gives the world back, who remakes the world. And yet we speak of Noach, and we do not speak of Noach’s wife.” — Your question jumps ahead of many verses in our program. So listen: in chapter 8, verse 15 — no, verse 18. Did you notice the order?

Vayetze Noach uvanav ve’ishto — Noach went out, and his sons, and his wife: the wife comes in third position, after the children. There is a lesson here, but we said we would keep to the order [of the text]. I will give you a piece of an answer. A piece of an answer is that Noach’s wife took seriously vehu yimshol bach, that curse. […] After the sin, G-d said: well now, say to the woman — yes, you will always desire your husband, and he will rule over you, he will manage you, he will manage you. — Do you manage your wife?

[…] Well, where are we heading? Where are we heading? All right — that is the status of a slave woman. We are not going to speak of it that way; rather, vehu yimshol bach — he shall be for you an example, he shall be for you a model. So this memshalah (rule) must be corrected into mashal (model, parable): this notion of imposing — imposing one’s will — must be translated into the example one is for the other. That’s it, that’s it: moshel — to be a mashal is to become [an example] for the other and to speak for the other, you see? So here we must… What is Noach’s merit? Do you know what Noach’s merit is? It is that he invented the plow. Come now — inventing the plow, is that a merit?

It is not [a merit] in today’s sense; it has been understood otherwise. No — it is that he counteracted the curse, arurah ha’adamah ba’avurecha, “cursed is the ground because of you”; that he sought, indeed, to neutralize that curse and give it a positive meaning, to turn it toward the formation of man, toward the fulfillment of his person through that very curse. For one must not see in man’s exclusion from the Garden of Eden an onesh, a punishment — no: a will to repair, that is all. Well, in the curse too. Have I made myself clear? — “I understand that in the curse, the woman — in quotation marks — had her status diminished, in quotation marks, so that she could rise again afterward. But it is still surprising that in the chapter of the re-creation of the world she is absent.”

Yes, but it is intended by the text. It is intended — it is one of the… we will see: this silence of the woman in the Flood. And take note: it will recur elsewhere — I will point it out again — because with Avraham, yes, we hear Sarah, but Sarah manifests herself only concerning her child; that is when she makes her voice heard. Thank you — not the Jewish mother, the first one […]. Well, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. — “Todah rabbah, todah rabbah.” — Thank you very much. — “Todah rabbah. There — for the people in Brussels, thank you very much. I would just like to announce an activity for the people in Brussels — unfortunately only for Brussels — which will take place on Wednesday the 13th with the Rav at the CCLJ, who will speak to us, as you can see behind me, about Maimonides and his work; and we will also have a reading of texts. Thank you all.” — Thank you.