Parasha Noach

par le Rav Raphaël Benizri

Parasha Noach (נח) — Bereshit 6:9 – 11:32. Read on Shabbat, October 17, 2026.

Summary of Parasha Noach

Noach is presented as a righteous and wholehearted man in a generation in which the earth is filled with violence. G-d tells him of the coming flood and commands him to build an ark of precise dimensions, and then to bring into it his family and pairs of every animal species, with seven pairs of the pure animals. The rain falls for forty days and forty nights; the waters cover the mountains, and every living being outside the ark perishes. The waters prevail over the earth for a hundred and fifty days, and then the ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Noach sends out the raven, then the dove, which finally returns with an olive leaf. After leaving the ark, Noach offers sacrifices. G-d blesses Noach and his sons, permits the eating of meat while forbidding the blood, proclaims the gravity of murder, and establishes a covenant with humanity, whose sign is the rainbow. Noach plants a vineyard and becomes drunk; Cham sees his father’s nakedness, while Shem and Yefet cover it. The parasha then presents the table of the nations descended from Noach’s sons. People, speaking a single language, build a city and a tower at Babel; G-d confounds their language and scatters them. The parasha ends with the genealogy of Shem down to Terach, father of Avram, and the family’s departure for Charan.