Torah of Recovery: Noah

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Genesis Rabbah27:4

Rabbi Yehoshua asked "What did you do [when your son was born]?" He said "I was happy and made everyone happy". Rabbi Yehoshua said "But didn't you know that your son will die in the end?" He said "At the time of joy I am joyous; at the time of mourning I am mournful". Rabbi Yehoshua said "So too is the work [of creation] before the Holy One blessed is He." As Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says "The Holy One blessed is He mourned over the world for seven days before the Flood came". What is the reason [for comparing sadness to mourning]? It says "and He was sad to His heart" and there is no sadness without mourning, as it says "[The king] was sad about his son" (I Shmuel 19:3).

Rabbinical Association and USCJ, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 42

Why did God command Noah to build an ark? Surely God could have saved Noah and his family by supernatural intervention. Perhaps God hoped that the project would serve as a warning, moving onlookers to contemplate the threat of destruction and mend their ways. Or perhaps God wanted Noah to participate in some way in his own salvation, as the Israelites would - many centuries later - at the time of the Exodus.

Sanhedrin 108a

With regard to the verse: “These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a righteous man, and wholehearted in his generations” (Genesis 6:9), Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Relative to the other people of his generation he was righteous and wholehearted, but not relative to those of other generations. And Reish Lakish says: In his generation he was righteous and wholehearted despite being surrounded by bad influences; all the more so would he have been considered righteous and wholehearted in other generations.

Rabbi Andy Kahn, in The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 11

Noah, according to the midrash, brought order to the world with his very birth. His presence in the world changed the ways of nature from a chaotic hodgepodge of planted seeds sprouting randomly as other grains, animals of all species mating with each other, and tides fluctuating wildly, to the laws of nature we see today. This change reflects a line well cited throughout Jewish literature: Tzadik y’sod olam (צַדִּיק יְסוֹד עוֹלָם), “The tzadik is the foundation of the universe” (Proverbs 10:25). These midrashim point to tzedek as an inherent quality of Noah’s very existence. By his mere birth, the natural order became clearer—tzedek was established throughout the fabric of Creation.

Rabbinical Association and USCJ, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 43

A corrupt, lawless society brings destruction on all of its citizens, innocent and guilty alike, and on the environment around it.

Rabbinical Association and USCJ, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 43

This is the first use in the Bible of the Hebrew term b'rit (covenant), one of the core concepts of biblical theology regarding the relationship between God and mortals.

When does Noah actually speak? Does Noah talk to God?

Rambam on Genesis 6:18

...the b’rith is everlasting, the word being derived from. In the beginning G-d ‘bara’ (created). Thus brithi (My covenant) is similar to b’riyothi (My creation), and the word is alike in construct form because it is adjoined to the times there were before us. He thus commanded that the b’rith exist and be with the righteous one [Noah]. In a similar sense are the verses: As for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you; My covenant was with him.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p. 40

The great emphasis on Noah's difference from his contemporaries serves an obvious moral purpose. It justifies his exemption from the universal disaster, and the choice of him to found a new race of Adam. In a creative project that has proved a total failure...there is yet one detail that can be salvaged and can provide a basis for a reworking of the idea. God's act in destroying and saving is seen to be ethically coherent: there is an unarguable logic to the ruthlessness of the artist who shreds all unsuccessful drafts and retains only the one that approximates his original intent.

Rashi, in Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bereshit, p. 71

When he caused it to descend He caused it to descend with mercy, so that in the event of their repenting, the rain would be one of blessing. When they did not repent, it turned into a deluge.

Rabbinical Association and USCJ, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 45

The world is being returned to the condition that preceded creation (1:2)

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p, 62, 63

Over twelve months, the ark becomes a crucible in which a new type of sensibility is nurtured. It is a closed interior, cut off from the raging waters outside. Entering this interior is not simple...Indeed, the narrative emphasizes, after the several variations of the clause, 'Noah came into the ark,' 'And God shut him in' (7:16). An ambiguous slam of the door, protecting, imprisoning...The ark is to be a laboratory of kindness, of attentiveness to the needs and the enjoyment...that are the 'contents of life.'

Bereshit Rabbah 30:6

(6) ... And one who acquires souls is wise”—this is Noach, who acquired souls, and was nourishing them and feeding them . . . The twelve months that Noach did in the ark, he did not taste the taste of sleep, not in the day and not in the night, for he was busy feeding the souls that were with him, so “one who acquires souls”, this is Noach.

Midrash Tanhuma Noach 9:1-2

Go forth from the ark (Gen. 8:16). Scripture says elsewhere in allusion to this verse: Bring my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks to Thy name; the righteous shall crown themselves because of me; for Thou wilt deal bountifully with me (Ps. 142:8). Bring my soul out of prison refers to Noah, who was imprisoned in the ark. R. Levi said: Neither Noah nor his sons were able to sleep during the entire twelve months (in the ark) because they were obliged to feed the animals, the beasts, and the birds. R. Akiba stated that they even brought into the ark tree branches for the elephants and glass beads for the ostriches. Some of the animals had to be fed at the second hour in the night and others at the third hour of the night. (2) Further proof that they did not sleep is presented to us by R. Yohanan. He tells us in the name of R. Eliezer the son of R. Yosé the Galilean that because Noah once delayed feeding a lion, the lion bit him so severely that he left the ark crippled, as it is said: And only Noah was left (Gen. 7:23). The word ah (“only,” also “to be afflicted”) indicates that his body was no longer whole. He became, thereby, unfit to bring sacrifices to the altar, and his son Shem had to do it in his stead. Concerning him it is said: Behold, the righteous shall be made whole in the earth (Prov. 11:31).

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, The Everyday Torah, p. 14

What is it then that God 'remembered'? According to the midrash, God didn't remember Noah (the person) or even the living things (the animals). God remembered ethical action: 'what did God remember in Noah's favor? That he provided for the animals the whole 12 months in the Ark...'God remembered Noah' and the spirit of justice approved it.

Legends of the Jews, 1:4:51

The upper waters rushed through the space left when God removed two stars out of the constellation Pleiades. Afterward, to put a stop to the flood, God had to transfer two stars from the constellation of the Bear to the constellation of the Pleiades. That is why the Bear runs after the Pleiades. She wants her two children back, but they will be restored to her only in the future world.

Genesis Rabbah 34:6

But he [Noach] did not accept the order to go out, saying, ‘Am I to go out and be fruitful and multiply for a curse?’ Until the Holy One, blessed be He, swore to him that He would not bring another flood upon the world, as it says, 'For this is the waters of Noach to Me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noach should no more go over the earth (Isa. 54:9)'

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p, 58, 59

If we are in any doubt about who Noah is, we have only to consider the central fact of his silence. From the beginning to the end of the Flood narrative, Noah says not a word...the impact of Noah's silent acquiescence in the destruction of the world is devastating... Within the intimate but teeming space of the ark, Noah becomes, in the midrashic view, a new person - effectively, and retroactively, a person whom the Torah can describe as a tzaddik, a righteous man...The midrash treats Noah as one among five cases of people who are described as 'seeing a new world,' on the one hand, and 'feeding and sustaining,' on the other. To see a new world, in the case of Joseph, or Moses, or Job, or Mordecai, is to be understood metaphorically; these men underwent radical changes of fortune, so that their entire perspective on the world was transformed. In the case of Noah, of course, quite literally, the world itself was transformed around him.

Where did Noah get the wood for the burnt sacrifice?

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p, 68

Why are burnt offerings, specifically, the instinctive response of Noah?...Would a thanks-offering (shelamim) not have been more plausible? One answer is suggested by Radal, quoting the Zohar. Noah offers burnt offerings (which are considered atonement for wayward motions of the heart) because of his apprehension during his time in the ark, that he would be left in the lurch, that he had, in a sense, exhausted all his credit with God in being saved from the Flood...What Noah experiences, when he is released, is the subtle gratitude of one who now realizes the implications of where he was and where he is. The burnt offering articulates the evolution of consciousness that is now part of the human repertoire. The history of Noah is, then, the history of man's first exercise in self-construction...he sees a new world, but he remembers the old world, he has a sense of choices that have gone to the making of his evolving identity.

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 150

The sacrifice was not offered by Noah with his own hands; the priestly services connected with it were performed by his son Shem. There was a reason for this. One day in the ark Noah forgot to give his ration to the lion, and the hungry beast struck him so violent a blow with his paw that he was lame forever after, and, having a bodily defect, he was not permitted to do the offices of a priest.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep, p. 76

Adam, created by the hand of god, is, in some sense, created also in the image of God; Noach, who has witness the collapse of that creation, has become conscous that he is created in God's image. Just when flesh and blood have become valueless, as apocalypse has ruined the beauty and significance of the human face, God for the first time tells a human being of the divinity marking that face. God's message challenges Noach's imagination with a counterintuitive sense of value....at this moment, he knows, as no one has before him, that he is made in the divine image. Heir to the stumbling generations, he becomes conscious of a mystery within himself. Uncannily, he becomes conscious of being beloved, and commits himself to releasing the secret meanings of his state.

Hizkuni & Sforno, per Carasik, The Commentator's Bible: Genesis, p. 91

The vine branches that Rashi (when he went into the ark, Noah brought with him vine branches and fig shoots) says he brought onto the ark were one of the kinds of food he prepared; elephants eat them. He 'began' (וַיָּ֥חֶל) with something he should not have, which led to further things that should. not have been done. A small error at the beginning can eventually cause great harm.

Abarbanel, cited by Carasik, The Commentator's Bible: Genesis, p. 91

He had good reason to never want to see water again, let alone to drink it.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 52-53

Overwhelmed by the task of rebuilding a destroyed world, finding himself virtually alone and friendless in a nearly empty world, or perhaps burdened by a sense of guilt at having survived when so many others perished, Noah turns to drink.

Nachmanides, cited in Carasik, The Commentator's' Torah, p. 91

Was the first to plant a vineyard. Previously only individual vines had been planted. He was the first to plant many vines together, row after row. Wanting wine, he did not plant a vine as one plants other trees, but went ahead and made a vineyard.

Rambam on Genesis 9:20

And so the Rabbis have said in Bereshith Rabbah: “A man of the ground [is so called just] as the castle guard is called by the name of the castle.” And the Rabbis also said that Noah had a passion for agriculture. Thus [the word ish is here used to signify] a relationship. The meaning of the word vayachel (and he began) is that he commenced the planting of vineyards. The preceding men had planted single vines, but Noah began to plant many rows of vines, which together comprise a vineyard. On account of his desire for wine, he did not plant the vine singly as other trees; rather, he made a vineyard.

Midrash Tanhuma, Noach 13

1) And Noah, the husbandman, began and planted a vineyard (Gen. 9:20). Noah degraded himself when he began to till the soil. R. Judah the son of R. Shalum said: At first Noah was called a righteous and perfect man, but now he is described as a man of the earth. And he planted a vineyard; that is, after he planted the vineyard he was called a husbandman. (2) Three men toiled upon the earth and degraded themselves thereby. They were: Cain, Noah, and Uzziah. It is written of Cain: He was a tiller of the ground (ibid. 4:2), and that is followed by the verse: You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth (ibid., v. 12). Noah, as it is written: And Noah, the husbandman, began, and planted a vineyard (Gen. 9:20). And soon thereafter he disgraced himself: He drank of the wine (ibid., v. 21). Our sages held that on the very day he planted the vineyard, it bore its fruit, he harvested it, pressed it, drank the wine, became intoxicated, and exposed his private parts. (3) Our teachers of blessed memory stated: While Noah was planting the vineyard, Satan appeared before him and asked: “What are you planting?” He answered: “A vineyard.” “What is it?” inquired Satan. “Its fruits are sweet, whether moist or dry,” he answered, “and from them one produces a wine that causes the heart of man to rejoice, as it is written: And wine doth make glad the heart of man (Ps. 104:15).” Satan suggested: “Come, let us be partners in this vineyard.” And Noah replied: “Certainly.” (4) What did Satan do? First, he obtained a lamb and slaughtered it beneath the vineyard. Then, he took a lion and slaughtered it there, and after that he obtained a pig and an ape and slaughtered them in the same place. Their blood seeped into the earth, watering the vineyard. He did this to demonstrate to Noah that before drinking wine man is as innocent as a sheep: Like a sheep that before her shearers is dumb (Isa. 53:7). But after he drinks a moderate amount of wine he believes himself to be as strong as a lion, boasting that no one in all the world is his equal. When he drinks more than he should, he behaves like a pig, wallowing about in urine and performing other base acts. After he becomes completely intoxicated, he behaves like an ape, dancing about, laughing hysterically, prattling foolishly, and is completely unaware of what he is doing. All this happened to the righteous Noah.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep, p. 62, 62, 64

Significantly, his first planing in the new, death-razed world is a vineyard. That is, he has prepared ahead of time a form of anesthetic to dull the terror of being alive...For Noach, the anesthetic is necessary because of the cumulative despair of the disenchanted world. Haunted by a double loss, he takes refuge in a fragile euphoria. Clinging still to the gates of Eden, with some consciousness of his inevitable despair, he prepares the vine shoots ahead of the Flood; they will ease his passage into the new world. Where to these vine shoots come from? - 'They were banished from Eden.' A vestige of Eden, they promise primal bliss...the condition that Kristeva calls 'despondent intoxication' well describes him...Noach drinks, becomes drunk, and (literally) unspeakable things happen to him...Intoxication blinds one to limits, distances, gaps; but it is precisely these painful experiences that generate self-awareness, desire, and language...real power is developed in the conscious struggle to overcome the void...The 'illusion of real creation' is the barren gift of alcohol to those whose minds cannot bear the void. Noach prepares his vine shoots for the day after the Flood...Drunk, he is 'interplanetary,' or, as the Talmud puts it, 'he looks down on the whole world as a plain.' Sublimely isolated from any actual dialogue...whose resistance might lead him to knowledge, he ultimately lacks a God - the God who is acessible to those who acknowledge their lack....[Noach], in his 'despondent indoxication,' is a 'radical, sullen, atheist.'