A.
At the end of last week’s parasha we were introduced to Noach ben Lemech, the protagonist of this week’s parasha. נח איש צדיק תמים הי' בדרתיו, the Torah tells us: “Noach was a righteous, perfect man in his generations.” (VI, 9)
The Talmud (סנהדרין ק"ט.) picks up on that tell-tale phrase “in his generations,” and records a controversy which has come down through the centuries. As Rashi summarises it: יש מרבותינו דורשים אותו לשבח, כל שכן, שאילו הי' בדור צדיקים הי' צדיק יותר, ויש שדורשים אותו לגנאי, לפי דורו הי' צדיק ואילו הי' בדורו של אברהם לא הי' נחשב לכלום (“There are some of our rabbis who interpret this as praise, so much so that had he lived in a generation of tzaddiqim he would have been even more righteous; and there are those who interpret it as shame: In his generation he was a tzaddiq, but had he lived in the generation of Avraham he would not have been considered anything”).
The Midrash Tanchuma appears to come down on the latter side of this issue, telling us: תמים הי' בדור המבול ובדור הפלגה, שאילו הי' בדורו של אברהם אבינו לא מצא ידיו ורגליו (“He was perfect in the generation of the Mabbul and the Dispersion, but had he been in the generation of Avraham our father, he would not have found his hands and feet;" פרשת נח סי' ה').
The usage of the midrash is curious; in Talmudic usage, “he would not find his hands and feet” implies helpless confusion (עיי' למשל גיטין מ"ח. ויבמות ע"ז:). Yet, our midrash does not seem to say that Noach would have been confused, but that he would have been a lesser tzaddiq than Avraham. So what does the peculiar wording mean?
B.
To begin our search for understanding, we turn elsewhere in the Tanchuma, where we find: אשריכם ישראל שבכל אבר ואבר שבכם נתן מצוה (“Happy are you, Israel, for apposite each and every limb in you [G-d] has given a mitzva;” פרשת שמיני סי' ח').
Indeed, as Chazal understand human anatomy there are 248 “limbs” (évarim) in the human body, one for each of the 248 מצות עשה (“positive mitzvoth”). As he goes through his daily life, performing mitzvoth as they come to him, the observant Jew can truly sing, along with King David כל עצמותי תאמרנה ד' מי כמוך (“All my bones say: Ha-Shem, who is like You?”; Psalms XXXV, 10).
Very well, but which mitzvoth apply to which évar? Do we have any idea how that assignment was decided?
Next week’s parasha tells us, amongst other things, of the War of the Five Kings. The kings of five Canaanite cities, amongst them Sdom and Amora, had been tributary to Kedorlaomer, king of Elam. They raised the flag of revolt, and Kedorlaomer launched a punitive expedition into Canaan against them, in alliance with three other powerful states. The invading allies won the initial engagements, sacking the cities of Sdom and Amora. Among the captives taken was Avraham’s nephew, Lot.
When Avraham learnt that his nephew was a prisoner, he mounted a rescue operation. Catching the invading army in camp at night, he routed them, and they fled in panic northwards out of the country, abandoning their booty and captives. The king of Sdom tried to reward Avraham for his actions by offering him the booty, but Avraham refused, saying: אם מחוט ועד שרוך נעל ואם אקח מכל אשר לך ולא תאמר אני העשרתי אברם (“Not a thread or a shoe-strap will I take of yours, and you will not say, I enriched Avram;” XIV, 23).
To understand Avraham’s refusal, remember that Sdom and Amora were cities with deservedly bad reputations for cruelty and rapacity, so much so that subsequently, when the “outcry” of Sdom and Amora had “reached G-d” (Genesis XVIII, 20-21) and Avraham learnt of the Divine intent to destroy these evil places (which Avraham had shunned since coming into the Holy Land), he was unable to find ten decent people amongst their citizens (ibid., 32ff.).
Avraham therefore wanted nothing of the plundered wealth of Sdom, much of which itself had been looted or plundered by one means or another from others. He preferred to rely upon the providence of Ha-Shem. Accordingly, the midrash tells us: בשכר שאמר אברהם אם מחוט ועד שרוך נעל זכו בניו לשתי מצות (“As a reward for Avraham’s saying ‘not a thread or shoe-strap’, his sons merited two mitzvoth”). The midrash goes on to discuss what the two mitzvoth were, concluding רצועה של תפילין ומצות חליצה (“the strap of t'fillin and the mitzva of chalitza”; ילקוט שמעוני רמז ע"ו).
T’fillin are of course the leather boxes bearing verses from the Torah referred to in Deuteronomy VI, 4: וקשרתם לאות על ידך והיו לטטפות בין עיניך (“And you will bind them as a sign on your hand and they will become frontlets between your eyes”; cf. also Exodus XIII, 16) with leather straps. Chalitza, the ceremony through which the widow of a man who has died childless and the man’s brother are freed from the obligations of yibbum (“levirate marriage”; cf. Deuteronomy XXV, 9-10) is performed with a shoe.
Returning now to our original quotation from the Midrash Tanchuma, one may, it seems to me, legitimately say that through his refusal to accept even the hint of ill-gotten gain, Avraham had found his “hands” (t’fillin) and his “feet” (chalitza).
But why should the midrash imply that Noach might not have?
C.
Noach lived during the last few centuries of the “heroic period” of human history, before the Mabbul, a period remembered by all the peoples of antiquity whose records have come down to us, however dimly, in inchoate and disjointed legends, as a time of immense cruelty, rapacity, and chronic warfare.
The Torah affords us two glimpses of what this time was like: In Genesis VI, 4 we find a laconic reference to גבורים אשר מעולם אנשי השם (“heroes who were of old, men of hashém”). Rashi explains the last term as referring to אנשי שממון ששממו את העולם (“men of destruction, who laid waste the world”). The second is in our parasha, where we read ותמלא הארץ חמס (“and the earth was filled with chamas”; VI, 11), a word which Rashi renders gezel, i.e., forcible expropriation, in support of which interpretation he adduces Jonah III, 8, in which the king of Assyria, bloodiest conquerors of the ancient Middle East, adjures each of his subjects to desist מדרכו הרעה ומן החמס שר בכפיהם (“from his evil ways, and from the chamas which [was] in their hands;” ע"ע אבן עזרא עה"פ שבפרשתנו).
In such a time, judged Chazal, Noach was a tzaddiq. He did not participate in the chronic conflict and associated looting which characterised the age in which he had been born and raised.
Certainly to be uncompromised in a debased age was no small thing. But Avraham also lived in a depraved era: One reason adduced by the midrash that Avraham was known as Avraham ha-Îvri (XIV,13) is that, morally and ethically, כל העולם כולו מעבר אחד ו מעבר אחד (“the entire world was on one side [éver] and he on the other”; ב"ר פמ"ב סי' י"ג ).
Chazal judged that Noach may have lacked the insight and vision to eschew the much more subtle moral compromise implicit in the Sdomi king’s offer to Avraham, insofar as it was “legally” offered by the sacked town’s sovereign in gratitude for his intervention. Our midrash seems to say that, had Noach been in Avraham’s shoes, he might have become confused, missed this opportunity for qiddush Ha-Shem, and as a consequence two mitzvoth would have gone missing from the Torah.
Why these two?
D.
The imagery and symbolism of t’fillin seem clear enough. By binding G-d’s word to his hand and forehead as one of the first actions of each morning, the Jew dedicates hand, heart, and mind to holy purposes. The metaphysical mind is nonetheless subject to physical influence, through sensory perceptions, etc., in this world. Therefore, the hand leads the way; binding physical actions to Divine service, subordinates the physical body to spiritual imperatives. It becomes the servant of the mind in sanctity, not the reverse.
Chalitza is more subtle. A reading of the passage in Deuteronomy cited supra clearly shows an intent of the ceremony to humiliate a recalcitrant yavam who refuses to carry out his duty to help his deceased brother complete the establishment of the household which he had started to build (cf. Sforno ad loc.).
Yet, as the Torah Tmima asks, that makes sense only if the yavam has a choice. In our day, for various reasons, chalitza is mandated. Even if the yavam yearns to fulfill the duty of yibbum with all his heart, béyth din prevents him; chalitza is his only option. Why, then, should he be humiliated?
The Torah Tmima notes that the Yerushalmi Yevamoth XII, 6 compares Deuteronomy XXV, 10 (ונקרא שמו בישראל בית חלוץ הנעל, “And his name shall be called in Israel the house of the one whose show was removed”) with Genesis XLVIII, 16 (ויקרא בהם שמי, “and they shall be called by my name”), and comments: בזה"ז מצוה בחליצה יותר מיבום כו' שבח הוא לו שציית דינא וחולץ במקום שרוצה לייבם (“at this time, chalitza is more of a mitzva than yibbum... It is praiseworthy that he obey the ruling and do chalitza when he wishes to do yibbum”). There is no longer any embarrassment or humiliation in chalitza.
Yet it still cries out for a deeper explanation, and some Rishonim offer one. The reason for yibbum may be found in Chazal’s pronouncement אין מיתה בלא חטא, “There is no death without sin.” There was some Divine calculus which brought about the untimely death without offspring of the one brother. By siring a son who will bear the deceased’s name, the yavam is enabling the gilgul (“reincarnation”) of the deceased’s neshama, providing him a second chance to make it in this world, and keeping it “in the family” (עיי' למשל פי' רבינו בחיי עה"ת וכתבי הרמב"ן שמארןכןם שם בזה).
Chalitza releases the right to provide a second chance for the neshama ha-mithgalgeleth so that anyone in Israel can marry the young widow and provide it. All of Klal Yisra’él become thereby one family, as it were, collectively responsible all the nishmoth Yisra’él.
Gezel constitutes a transgression which harms individuals and harms the society as a whole. By being so fastidious as to avoid even the merest shadow of impropriety, the midrash tells, Avraham was m’zakkeh Klal Yisra’él in the mitzva of personal dedication to Divine service (t’fillin) and also in the mitzva of the klal, our collective responsibility for us all; כל ושראל ערבים זה לזה (“All Israel are responsible for one another”).
Which Noach might not have merited to do.
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