“And God saw how great was the evil of mankind in the world and that all the desire of their hearts were only evil all the day long and God regretted that He had made human beings in the world and He was deeply saddened. And God said: ‘I shall wipe out humanity – which I created – from off the face of the earth, from man to beast to creepy-crawly to birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them.’ BUT Noach found favor in the eyes of God.” (Genesis 6:5-8)
The one redeeming personality in the whole word was Noach. Now, he was not great enough – or so it seems – for God to save the whole world in his merit. But he was great enough to be saved, along with his family, to become the new first family of humanity. However, the Torah does not here describe what was so great about Noach.
Rabbi Avi Heller explains: If we look backward in the Torah, we find an intriguing hint about No-ach’s specialness, which is that Noach was special from the time he was born. Not only was he the tenth generation from Adam, but when his father (Lemech) named him, he said: “This [one] shall comfort us from our hard work and the suffering of our labor, from the ground that God has curs-ed.” (Gen 5:29) Among the generations from Adam to Noach, Noach is unique in having an expla-nation given for his name and he is given special attention by the Torah. However, it is possible that none of this is really to Noach’s credit.
First of all, when the people said “this one will comfort us”, they could hardly have meant that they would all die in the flood. According to this, Noach was supposed to SAVE everyone, but in the end he failed and managed only to save himself. Second, there is a delicious double-entendre, for the phrase “this one shall comfort us” has the same He-brew root as the word for “regret”[4], as in: this is the one that will finally convince God to regret having created human beings. When we look forward, we see what Noach’s real value. It is true that he failed to save his generation and that he never lived up to his potential.
But the Torah loves Noach nonetheless and, at the beginning of our portion, it lavishes attention on his name, repeating it five times over the course of three verses. What’s special about Noach is that he focuses on his relationships with God, with his fellow human beings and with his family, his future generations. He finds favor in the eyes of God because he seeks a relationship with Him. As a tzaddik, he upholds justice and integrity, even in a world where everyone cheats and profits thereby. As a tamim (unblemished one), he also understands mercy and generosity, going beyond the letter of the law to help others. But all the time, he retains his humility, walking with God, ascribing his virtue not to himself but to a higher power. Finally, Noach transmits these values to his children.
Noach represents for us a first step, a way of first focusing on our relationship to God, our friends and neighbors and our future (our children).In emulating Noach, we can learn that we must spend time on our own “4 cubits” – building our own ark – before supervising the construction efforts of others.
Prepared by Devorah Abenhaim
