Questions for the Shabbat Table: Noah
A printable study booklet: one question per page, the Rav’s answer, its source, and a lesson to discuss as a family.
This lecture sets out from the last verse of Bereshit — “Noah found grace in the eyes of Hashem” — and asks what that grace is worth. Rav Raphaël Benizri begins by placing the verse at the end of a three-stage development: the law of the strongest with Kayin, the search for standards of reference in the generation of Enosh, and finally the loosening of morals. He then devotes most of the lecture to the word hen, grace, and to the question of whether it can be earned. The answer comes at the very end, and it is unexpected: what G-d is aiming at through Noah is Avraham.
The Rav first distinguishes two lineages and two civilizations: that of Kayin, which develops commerce, music and technology, and that of Shet, which develops a spiritual quest. Their fusion produces mighty men, but it fails, because what is served there is not what lies beyond the Name but its derivatives — that is to say, idols. It is this finding that leads to the decision to erase and begin again.
The lecture then turns to a close analysis of grace: the difference between finding grace and inspiring grace, the two ways of acquiring it, the three graces of the world, a tale of Rabbi Nahman about the candelabrum, and the link between grace and Israel’s encampment before Sinai. It ends with the reproach addressed to Noah — that he did not even try to defend his generation — and with the reason he nevertheless escapes the Flood.
What this lecture teaches
Three scourges follow one another before the Flood, and the third is the loosening of morals. The story of humanity’s first steps begins with the law of the strongest, through Kayin. It continues with the adoption of, or the search for, ideals of reference, for standards, in the generation of Enosh. It then passes to a third stage: the loosening of morals. These are scourges that history has known and that we still know, because we have not managed to realize the project of a ben Adam.
The original project was Adam, and man confined himself to ha-Adam. Adam is the name for every human being whose development sets out from the adamah, the earth: just as the earth feeds him, he is fed by his spiritual aspirations. But here he has confined himself to ha-Adam — that is, he has left universality behind and shut himself inside an outlook on life that belongs to him alone. This has been so since Kayin. Since Kayin, we have been dealing with the bnei ha-Adam.
Kayin’s descendants build a civilization; Shet’s pursue a quest. The bnei ha-Adam develop a culture founded on commerce, on music and the arts, on technology and science: Yaval, then Yuval, then Tuval-Kayin, and finally the daughter, Naamah, who will be Noah’s wife and who embodies the civilization of leisure. All of this is the line of Kayin. The line of Enosh, for its part, develops a spiritual quest, borne out by the names of its children. And this line culminates in Noah, the one who brings consolation to everyone and who is to be the new Adam.
The union of the two currents begets mighty men, but it fails. Our Sages say that three conditions are required to be a prophet: wealth, wisdom and gevurah — strength, that is, self-mastery, power. The pursuit of wealth belongs to the children of Kayin, the quest for wisdom to those of Shet. That is why, with this loosening of morals and this will to fuse the two currents together, mighty men were born. But the truly mighty one, as the saying goes, is the one who shows self-mastery.
Within the word shem lies shemamah, desolation. They always remained at the level of the Name, and that was their failure, for one does not serve what lies beyond the Name: one serves the Name’s derivatives. Each person perceives G-d in his own way, and when he addresses Him, he has already confined Him to his own categories of thought, to his requests, to his needs. What this produces is rather a collection of divinities — and those are idols. That is why G-d declares Himself disappointed by this development and decides to erase the man He created — to erase ha-Adam, since there is no ben Adam, no human being who realizes himself from within.
The one who sets this new momentum in motion is the righteous man of the generation. When G-d decides to destroy the rough draft, everyone goes down with it, righteous or not, children and adults alike: the earthquake that sweeps the world to make way for a new order does not distinguish the deserving from the rest, and the new course of history is determined by those who initiate a new direction of thought. It is the righteous man who opens a new path, and his generation cannot measure up to him or follow in his footsteps. As long as there is no new horizon, history marks time; people scrape by, clinging to what has already been gained. But as soon as a righteous man gives history a new thrust, the new orientation is founded upon it. This is what will happen with Noah, what will happen with Avraham, what will happen with Moshe — and these are the messianic moments we live through, one after another, in the course of the toldot.
The first parashah called Toldot ought to have been that of Noah. There are thirteen toldot in the Tanakh, thirteen “begettings.” The first are the story of the heavens and the earth, followed by the two currents of the bnei ha-Adam: that of Kayin, and that of Shet, which will try to recover Adam and to be ben Adam. The one who succeeds is Avraham — which is why the parashah called Toldot is that of Yitzchak son of Avraham. Now the title of a parashah is often tied to its first or second word, and this one does indeed open with the toldot of Noah. But there are no toldot with Noah, since he begets nothing but his own person, and that limits the march of history.
The grace in question has nothing to do with elegance, nor with the Christian notion of grace. It is not a matter of bearing or poise; the verse itself warns that grace is deceitful and beauty vain. The Rav adopts here the definition of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch: an exceptional virtue granted to a person, surpassing his own qualities and abilities. On what grounds is it granted? It is free — indeed the word hen gave rise to the word hinam, “for nothing.” The verse says so plainly: G-d grants grace to whomever He wishes to favor, even if that person does not deserve it.
Finding grace and inspiring grace are not the same thing. Some of our Sages say that this grace is not entirely free, and that it belongs to a will to redeem a situation. Finding grace is a quality within the person himself: a likable person wins you over; you see yourself through him, you communicate with him easily, you take to him readily. Inspiring grace is something else. There is the one who is unappealing to look at, as Esther was — she was not beautiful, yet she inspired grace — and that grace lay in the one who beheld her. The verse says that Noah found grace “in the eyes”: it was in beholding him that G-d decided to endow him with this grace.
The first way to acquire grace is humility, and there are three graces in the world. The Book of Proverbs says that the humble receive it: those who do not seek to impose their way of seeing, and who hold that in this varied world each person carries within some particular spice of grace. The three graces are these: the grace of a person; the charm of a place upon those who live there — that is, of the surroundings one has chosen to live in; and the charm of an object one has bought or chosen. The object need not have every required quality, but it pleases me as it is, it charms me: the choice of a painting, the choice of a car, the choice of a work of art. Grace, then, is not an objective property of the thing one looks at. It lies in the bond between the one who looks and what he chooses.
Rabbi Nahman’s tale of the candelabrum illustrates exactly this. A son leaves his parents’ home for years, goes into exile, and then returns saying that he has learned the art of making a menorah — the art of lighting up the world. He asks that all the artists and people of culture be gathered in an assembly so that he can show them what he has made. His father, who was a king, complies. The candelabrum is fashioned before them, and it wins no one’s approval. The father comes to tell his son that he does not have the secret of persuading everyone of his way of seeing; the son answers that, on the contrary, he now has proof that he has fulfilled his mission, since what he wanted to show was precisely that each person has his own light and his own vision of things.
Israel’s encampment before Sinai is read through this same word. It is said that Israel encamped facing the mountain, and our Sages commented: as one man, with one heart. Yet the verb used should not be understood as a mere encampment: one should see in it the word hen. Each person sought to find grace in the eyes of the other; each acknowledged that every person possesses a grace. It is this communication between different graces and charms that made the revelation possible. The second way of acquiring grace is likewise indicated in the Book of Proverbs: it is the adornment of grace that lights up a face through the wisdom of the Torah.
The rains of the Flood are the reverse side of the rains of blessing. Just as the rains, by watering the soil, give life to the earth, the Torah is called “rains of blessing,” and it is a dew of life: it is meant to revive a person spiritually. But when one cannot absorb these rains and presents oneself like a rock, they accumulate, and one is drowned in the floods, because they are not absorbed. So too with an extraordinary revelation that exceeds the capacity to integrate it: all its benefit is lost. The Flood was thus an expression of G-d’s will to recover a humanity through a sudden revelation — and since that humanity was not capable of it, it vanished, while Noah, alone, came away with nothing but the Noahide law.
Sinai shows, by contrast, why the generation of the Flood was not saved. At the revelation at Sinai, the people too were for a moment deprived of life, unable to bear that manifestation, and a dew gave them the possibility of resurrection. Why was it not so for the generation of the Flood? Quite simply because that generation was divided, filled with violence, given over to every perversion: it was not possible. The generation that witnessed the revelation at Sinai, on the other hand, shared that very same grace, as one man with one heart. And it is that sharing which allowed the whole Torah to be integrated by the Jewish people.
The ark is a withdrawal into the Name, while the others contented themselves with the attributes. The dimensions the Torah takes the trouble to give for this ark — which Noah was to build over a hundred and twenty years, the span of a life, since it had been decreed that man’s life would not exceed a hundred and twenty years — follow the combinations of the Divine Name: thirty cubits in height, fifty in width, three hundred in length, each obtained by multiplying two or three of its letters. This tevah is Noah’s withdrawal into the Name of G-d. The others contented themselves with His various attributes; Noah placed G-d beyond His attributes, and his faith beyond them. It was there that he sought to recreate his world.
Noah sees truly, but always within the order of nature. When he has to choose the animals, he is told to take clean ones, although there was as yet no Torah to define clean and unclean; Rashi indicates that they were destined to become clean, which implies in Noah a farther-reaching and more perceptive vision of what true life with G-d must be. But for him this life with G-d remains within the order of nature, the order of this world’s life, and not a passage to what lies beyond. That is the level of Elokim: he is a tzaddik, a moral man; he is tamim, a man without blemish; he has a wisdom proper to the nature of this world, but it goes no further. He is someone skilled at interpreting events once they have happened, at adapting them, at finding their reference in the text — but he does not anticipate events.
The reproach against Noah is that he did not even try. He curled up within himself and lacked the confidence to tell himself that he might perhaps change the divine decree, enter into debate with the Creator and defend his generation. That is what Avraham did for Sedom and Amorah, what Moshe did for the generation of the golden calf; Avraham did not succeed, Moshe did succeed and changed the decree. Noah did not even try. That is why it is said that in the end he begot no one but himself — and through his sons we shall see the three facets that contend for his personality.
If Noah escapes the Flood, it is because through him G-d is aiming at Avraham. Rashi explains that since the text mentioned him, it tells his praise — “the memory of the righteous is for a blessing” — and, according to another interpretation, that the essential offspring of the righteous are their good deeds, not their children. But this verse of praise comes after, not before: it is therefore not what G-d took into account in granting grace. The full verse sets the memory of the righteous against the name of the wicked, doomed to rot — and the righteous man worthy of blessing is the one to whom it was said, “Be a blessing,” which was said to Avraham. There is thus something of Avraham in Noah: if Noah escapes the Flood, it is because G-d’s vision in this re-creation of humanity is aimed at Avraham, who is the blessing; and it is because Noah benefits from this project that he finds grace in the eyes of Hashem.
Full transcript of the lecture
Last time we stopped at the verse Ve-Noah matza hen be-einei Hashem (Genesis 6:8) — “Noah found grace in the eyes of Hashem.” This verse brings to a close a development in humanity’s first steps through history — one that began with the law of the strongest, through Kayin, and continued with the adoption of, or the search for, ideals, references, standards in the generation of Enosh. And now we pass to a third stage: the loosening of morals. These are scourges that history has known and that we still know, because we have not reached that project — we have not realized the project of a ben Adam. You know that G-d’s original project is to create Adam. Adam is, if you like, the name for every human being whose development sets out from the adamah, the earth; and just as the earth feeds him, he is also fed by his spiritual aspirations. But here he has confined himself to ha-Adam. Ha-Adam means that he has left universality behind and shut himself inside an outlook on life that belongs to him alone — and this already since Kayin. Since Kayin we have been dealing with the bnei ha-Adam, and these bnei ha-Adam do indeed develop a culture, a civilization founded on commerce, on music and the arts, on technology and science. Yaval is the first, Yuval the second, the third is Tuval-Kayin, and the fourth is the daughter, who will be Noah’s wife: Naamah — as her name indicates, from no’am, pleasantness — which amounts, let us say, to the civilization of leisure. But all of this is the line of Kayin. The line of Enosh, for its part, develops a spiritual quest, borne out, moreover, by the names of the children: education (Hanokh), humanity (Enosh), Mahalalel — praise of G-d — and finally Noah, the one who brings consolation to everyone and who is to be the new Adam. There will be a union between these two civilizations: the children of Kayin, the bnei ha-Adam, and the children of Shet — Shet, the one who takes the place of Hevel — and through these two currents they will indeed try to achieve a balance of life that will determine the direction of humanity.
You know, our Sages said that three conditions are required to be a prophet: wealth on the one hand, wisdom on the other, and finally gevurah — strength, self-mastery, power. The pursuit of wealth is found among the children of Kayin, the quest for wisdom among the children of Shet, and gevurah among the children of Noah. That is why, when this loosening of morals comes, together with this will to fuse the two currents, mighty men were born — and the truly mighty one is the one who shows self-mastery. But there is a failure here. Why? Because asher me-olam anshei ha-shem (Genesis 6:4) — “the men of renown of old”: they always remained anshei ha-shem, men of the Name.
Within shem lies the notion of shemamah — desolation, wilderness, ruin. Why? Because one does not serve what lies beyond the Name. One does not serve the Absolute within the Name, but the Name’s derivatives. That is to say, each person has a perception of G-d in his own way, after his own fashion, and when he addresses G-d, he has already confined Him to his own categories of thought, to his requests, to his needs, to his own way of perceiving G-d. And so what this produces is rather a collection of divinities — these are idols. And that is what makes Hashem disappointed by the development of this humanity, and He indeed decides: Emheh et ha-adam asher barati (Genesis 6:7) — “I will erase the man whom I have created.” Erase the man I have created, erase ha-Adam, because there is no ben Adam: no human being who realizes himself from within and who naturally strives to draw toward himself all the forces of creation — and this also through the different people who made up humanity at that time, as today. You know, when G-d decides to destroy the rough draft that has been made, then everyone goes down with it. Righteous or not, children and adults — the course of history is to be remade. And the new course of history, you know, who determines it? It is determined by those who initiate a new direction of thought, by the innovators of a new morality, as history has to move from one notch to the next, from one norm to another. So there is indeed an earthquake in history that sweeps the world, to make way for this new order of history.
And when this earthquake comes about, it does not distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving; it carries everything away. What matters now is the new momentum that will be given to history. The one who imparts this momentum to history is the tzaddik ha-dor, the righteous man of the generation. It is he who opens a new path, and the generation cannot measure up to him, cannot follow in his footsteps. As long as there are no new historical horizons, history marks time: we scrape by, we remain within what we have already acquired. But as soon as there is a righteous man who gives history a new thrust, a new orientation is founded upon it. That is what will happen with Noah, what will happen with Avraham, what will happen with Moshe, and that is why these are the messianic moments we live through, one after another, in the course of the toldot. You know, there are thirteen toldot in the Tanakh — thirteen “begettings.” Yes — it is a structure of creation, a sphere, as it is here.
But the first toldot are be-Avraham: Eleh toldot ha-shamayim ve-ha-aretz be-hibaram (Genesis 2:4) — “These are the begettings, this is the story of the heavens and the earth” — where be-hibaram, “when they were created,” contains the letters of be-Avraham. And then we hear of the two currents of the bnei ha-Adam: on the one hand that of Kayin, and on the other that of Shet, who will try to recover Adam and will be ben Adam — and the one who will succeed is Avraham. That is why the first parashah called Toldot is that of Yitzchak: Ve-eleh toldot Yitzchak ben Avraham (Genesis 25:19). Yet the first parashah called Toldot ought to have been that of Noah. Why? Because here the parashah opens with Eleh toldot Noah (Genesis 6:9). You know very well that the title of a parashah is often tied to its first or second word.
And here, the word that would determine the title of the parashah — that is, of this new chapter in history — would be toldot. But there are no toldot with Noah. There are no toldot. Why? Because Noah begets only his own person. Eleh toldot Noah — Noah: Noah begets nothing but himself. That limits the march of history; it cannot be. The Patriarchs differ from one another in their very essence. Yitzchak has a different matrix from Avraham: Avraham is hesed, lovingkindness; Yitzchak will be gevurah; Yaakov will be emet, truth — another stage of life. Here, when G-d decrees this natural earthquake that will sweep the world away, He concludes with Ve-Noah matza hen be-einei Hashem — “Noah found grace in the eyes of Hashem.” Grace.
Grace — there is something a little Christian about this word. What is it? It is far from objective. Let us not speak of grace as elegance — elegance in one’s gait, elegance in one’s speech, elegance of gesture. No, because of such graces it is said: Sheker ha-hen ve-hevel ha-yofi (Proverbs 31:30) — “Grace is deceit and beauty is vanity.” That is to say, the grace we are speaking of here is the one defined by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who says that it is an exceptional virtue granted to a person, one that indeed surpasses his qualities and his abilities. But on what grounds is it granted to him? It is free. You know that the word hen gave rise to hinam, “for nothing.” And the Holy One, blessed be He, said that He grants grace when He wishes: Ve-hanoti et asher ahon ve-rihamti et asher arahem (Exodus 33:19) — “I will grant grace to the one I choose to favor” — I will grant grace to the one I wish to favor, even if he does not deserve it.
“And I will have compassion on the one I choose to pity.” But what is this grace doing here? Is it really earned? Some of our Sages say that it is not entirely free: it belongs to a will to redeem a situation. Take, for example, the one who inspired grace — for there is a difference between finding grace and inspiring grace. Finding grace: it lies in the person himself, like a likable person. He wins you over. You see yourself through him, you communicate with him easily, you take to him readily. And then there is the one who is unappealing to look at, as Esther was — Esther yerakroket hayetah, “Esther was sallow” (Megillah 13a) — she was not beautiful, but she inspired grace. And that grace lay be-einei, “in the eyes” of the one who beheld her — for that is the meaning of Noah matza hen be-einei.
Noah found grace “in the eyes” — that is, in beholding Noah, G-d decided to endow him with this grace. Is there a way to acquire this grace? There are two recipes. In Mishlei, Proverbs: Ve-la-anavim yiten hen (Proverbs 3:34) — “To the humble He gives grace.” The humble receive this grace: a person who does not seek to impose his way of seeing, and who holds that in this varied world each person carries within some particular spice of grace; and that is why there are things that can please me, which does not mean they please others — but that is my own way of… Our Sages said: there are three hinot, three graces, in the world.
Hen adam, the grace of a person. Hen makom al yoshvav, the grace — the charm — of a place upon those who live there: of the surroundings, the place one has chosen to live. And then the charm of the object one has bought, that one has chosen: it does not necessarily have every required quality, but it pleases me just as it is, it charms me — the choice of a painting, even the choice of a car, even the choice of a work of art I have bought. Well, Rabbi Nahman, in Likutei Moharan, illustrated this way of seeing things — through a son who left his parents’ home for years, went into exile, and then came back saying that he had learned the art of making a menorah, a candelabrum — the art of lighting up the world. He asked that all the artists and people of culture hold an assembly, where he himself would show them what he had made during those years of exile. The father, who was a king, complied; the gathering takes place, the candelabrum is fashioned before them — and in the end it does not win the approval of those present. No one takes to it, and the father wants to find out whether there is not truly some collusion behind this. He comes to his son and says to him: “So — you do not have the secret of persuading everyone of your way of seeing things?” And the son answered: “Now I have the proof that I have fulfilled my mission, because what I wanted was precisely to show that each person has his own light, his own vision of things.” And what matters most is that through this tolerance, through this convergence of lights, we may be able — like the people of Israel — to stand at the foot of Mount Sinai: Va-yihan sham Yisrael neged ha-har (Exodus 19:2) — “And Israel encamped there facing the mountain” — and our Sages said: ke-ish ehad be-lev ehad, “as one man with one heart.” Now this va-yihan should not be understood merely in the sense of hanah, “to encamp”; rather one should see in it the word hen, grace. Each one sought to find grace in the eyes of the other. Each acknowledged that every person possesses a grace, and it is communication through these different graces, these different charms, that allows us indeed to witness the revelation of G-d to the whole world. And the second means of acquiring grace is again in Proverbs: Ayelet ahavim ve-ya’alat hen (Proverbs 5:19) — “a loving hind and a graceful doe.” That is the title given to the Torah.
It is the grace that lights up a face through the wisdom of the Torah. But is it only the anavim, the humble, those who have the benefit of the Torah, who possess this grace? No. This grace remains a mysterious gift. Why? Because in reality a future is projected through that person. What does that mean? That Noah, in principle, did not deserve to survive the Flood. He too was meant to be swept away by those torrential rains. And the rains of the Flood, you know, carry another meaning as well: just as the rains, by watering the soil, give life to the earth, the Torah is called gishmei berakhah, rains of blessing, and it is a dew of life — they are meant to revive a person spiritually.
But when one is not capable of absorbing these lights, these rains, and when one presents oneself like a rock, then the rains accumulate and we are drowned by their floods. They are not absorbed. And the Torah is the same: when there is an extraordinary revelation that exceeds the capacity to integrate it, the whole benefit of that revelation is lost. So this Flood should be seen from two angles as well; but the main point is that, all in all, the Flood was a manifestation of G-d’s will to recover a humanity through a sudden revelation — but since that humanity was not capable of it, it vanished, and Noah, who was the only one, came away with nothing but that Noahide law — it was without the Torah.
So there is a parallel — even a resemblance — with G-d’s manifestation on Mount Sinai, with the revelation at Mount Sinai. When G-d manifested Himself, the people of Israel were for a moment deprived of life. They could not bear that manifestation, and the Holy One, blessed be He, sent down a dew of life that gave them the possibility of resurrection. Why, then, was it not the same for the generation of the Flood? Quite simply because the generation of the Flood was divided; it was filled with violence, given over to everything — ki hishhit kol basar et darko (Genesis 6:12), “for all flesh had corrupted its way” — to every perversion. So it was not possible; whereas the generation that witnessed G-d’s manifestation on Mount Sinai — va-yihan sham Yisrael — Israel shared that very same grace, ke-ish ehad be-lev ehad, like one man with one heart; and that manifestation of G-d on Mount Sinai meant that the whole Torah was integrated by the Jewish people.
Now, I said earlier that Noah ought normally to have disappeared just like his generation, except that he benefited from this metziat hen, this finding of grace. The question is asked, and the first answer is that Noah bore no responsibility for that generation; it was beyond him. It is already very fine that he did not let himself be carried along by the current. He was the object of ridicule for his entire generation, and so what mattered to him was to withdraw into a hut and live his life sheltered from everyone. Whoever seeks to understand even just the dimensions the Torah takes the trouble to give for this ark — which he was to build over a hundred and twenty years, the span of a life, since G-d had decided that from then on man’s life would not exceed a hundred and twenty years —
will find that the length, the width and the height of this tevah follow the combinations of the Divine Name, yud-heh-vav-heh. Heh has a value of 5, vav a value of 6: five times six is thirty. Thirty cubits was the height of the ark. Yud has a value of 10, and heh 5: five times yud is fifty — that is the width of the ark, fifty cubits. The length of the ark is yud times heh times vav: five times ten makes fifty, times vav — six times fifty — makes three hundred. That is to say, the ark is Noah’s withdrawal into the Name of G-d, while the others, the anshei ha-shem, contented themselves with G-d’s various attributes; he placed his G-d beyond His attributes, his faith beyond the attributes, and it was there that he indeed sought to recreate his world. At first it was in order to give it life — to give life. But no. The second attempt: when he has to choose the animals, he is told — no, you must take behemah tehorah, clean animals, seven of each kind. That is to say — but at that time there was not yet any Torah to define clean and unclean; and Rashi explains: those destined to become clean — because he had a far more distant, far more accurate, far more perceptive view of what true life with G-d must be. Except that this true life with G-d, in Noah’s case, is et ha-Elokim hithalekh Noah (Genesis 6:9) — “Noah walked with Elokim.”
And this walk nonetheless remains within the order of nature — that is, within the order of the life of this world, and not a passage from life to the beyond. That is what Elokim means. Noah has three qualities. He is a tzaddik, a moral man; he is tamim, a man without flaw, pure; and et ha-Elokim hithalekh Noah — the Baal ha-Turim expounds: what are the final letters of et ha-Elokim hithalekh Noah? Het, kaf, mem — hakham, wise: he has a certain wisdom. Et ha-Elokim — a wisdom proper to the nature of this world, but one that goes no further. That is to say, he is a person who has, indeed, the art of interpreting events.
Once they have happened, one tries to adapt them, to find the reference in the text, and so on. But he does not want to get ahead of events, and that is why the reproach we address to Noah is that he curled up within himself and did not have enough confidence to say: “But still, perhaps I could change the divine decree. I could enter into debate with the Creator and defend the generation” — as Avraham did with Sedom and Amorah, as Moshe did with the generation of the golden calf. Now Avraham did not succeed, but Moshe did succeed; he changed the divine decree. Noah did not even try, and that is why it is said that Noah, in the end, begot no one but himself.
And we shall see, through his children — Shem, Ham and Yefet — the three facets, as it were, that contend for Noah’s personality. That we shall see in the next lecture; but what matters now is to say that the metziat hen, the grace he found, is summed up in the first Rashi: Ho’il ve-hizkiro siper be-shivho, she-ne’emar: zekher tzaddik li-verakhah — since the text mentioned Noah, it recounted his praise, as it is said, “the memory of the righteous is for a blessing.” Davar aher: lelamedkha she-ikar toldoteihem shel tzaddikim ma’asim tovim (Rashi on Genesis 6:9) — another interpretation: to teach you that the essential offspring of the righteous are good deeds; not their children, but their good deeds. So what is this Rashi getting at? For the question Rashi is asking is this: matza hen be-einei Hashem — he found grace in G-d’s eyes — but he had every reason to! After all, he is a tzaddik, he is tamim, et ha-Elokim hithalekh Noah. So he has these three essential qualities, and his offspring are the good deeds he performed; the memory of the righteous is for a blessing — he deserves the blessing, he deserves Ve-Noah matza hen be-einei Hashem.
In principle, then, this verse ought to have come to justify Ve-Noah matza hen be-einei Hashem. Yet the fact that it is said — that it is reported only afterwards — proves that this is not what the Holy One, blessed be He, took into account when He granted this grace to Noah. What, then, did He take into account? For one speaks of “for a blessing” only when there is a contrast. The verse says: Zekher tzaddik li-verakhah ve-shem resha’im yirkav (Proverbs 10:7) — “the memory of the righteous is for a blessing, but the name of the wicked shall rot” — condemned to rot, to putrefaction, to decay. To bring out the contrast between the resha’im and the tzaddikim, one says zekher tzaddik li-verakhah. But no. Who, then, is the tzaddik, if it is not Noah? For we are saying that Noah did not even intervene on behalf of his generation, and a tzaddik who does not intervene on behalf of his generation does not deserve to be called a tzaddik.
The tzaddik who is worthy of the blessing is the one to whom it was said ve-heyeh berakhah (Genesis 12:2), “and be a blessing.” Ve-heyeh berakhah was said to Avraham. So there is something of Avraham in Noah. And if Noah escapes the Flood, it is because G-d’s vision in Noah, in this Flood, in this re-creation of humanity, is aimed at Avraham, who is berakhah, who is zekher tzaddik li-verakhah. So it is because Noah benefits from this project of Avraham — who will be the toldot, who will truly set the history of humanity in motion; it is he who will be that, not Noah — that Ve-Noah matza hen be-einei Hashem, Noah found grace in the eyes of Hashem. If you have any questions…
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