Shabbat Morning Service
Saturday, November 2
Parashat No’ah 5785 / נח
Genesis 6:9-11:32
As a devastating deluge looms, Noah, following God’s command to save a remnant of terrestrial life, builds an ark and brings into it his family along with pairs of male and female animals, thus ensuring their procreation. The storm lasts forty days; a resulting flood, which covers the entire land mass, takes months to subside. All life on earth except what is in the ark perishes. When the waters start to recede and land becomes visible, Noah sends out a raven and then a dove to assess, from their behavior, whether the terrain is sufficiently dry to sustain habitat. After returning with an olive branch, the dove departs and does not return – these are signs that the earth can support life once again. Noah releases all the animals from the ark and makes sacrifices to God, who, forgiving our propensity toward evil, vows never to annihilate humankind again, and, blessing Noah and his sons, sets a rainbow in the sky as a promissory emblem: a reminder of His covenant with all living things. God further stipulates a code of moral conduct (the so-called seven “Noahide Laws”), including the basis of Judaism’s system of kashrut and a strict prohibition of murder. Noah plants a vineyard, drinks wine and, in a drunken stupor, strips naked. One of his sons sees the exposed father, who, upon waking and finding out, curses that son, Ham, and all his descendants, condemning them to eternal servitude (this episode is, unfortunately, the basis of a racist trope since Ham is the ancestor of dark-skinned Africans; Canaanites – who descend from this cursed family line – were early inhabitants of, and gave their name to, what later became the land of Israel). Genealogies of Noah’s three sons – the other two being Shem and Yefet – follow. Shem is the ancestor of Ever (from whom the “Hebrew” nation derives) and, eventually, as the parashah goes on to mention in its summary of Noah’s family line, Avram (who, with his wife Sarah, mentioned here without genealogical reference, is ancestor of the Jews). At a brief interval of this genealogy, the Torah inserts a powerful cautionary tale: the Tower of Babel. It relates the ironic consequences of collective hubris and offers a rather cynical explanation for the fact of cultural diversity. The story (possibly a historical reference to the ruins of ziggurats seen by Jewish exiles in ancient Babylonia) relates how all the people speak one language and gather in one place to show off by building a tower that will reach Heaven. Seeing these people trying to outrival Him, God foils their plan by confounding their speech and preventing them from communicating with one another so that they can’t follow through to complete the tower, and they separate and scatter across the world. This building project intended to strengthen humanity’s sense of common purpose has inadvertently sabotaged it!
Torah Blessings
Rabbi Seth has prepared the attached recording for those who wish to practice the Torah blessings ahead of being called up for an aliyah at our services. The recording includes both versions - Reconstructionist and traditional - of those blessings and explains the ritual "choreography" that goes with their recitation. Please CLICK to contact Rabbi Seth if you have questions or need help in learning how to do this mitzvah.