A.
Our parasha deals with the end of the first major period of human development and the beginning of the current period; the transition between the two is marked by the cataclysmic event called the Mabbul, described in our parasha, often very misleadingly translated into English as “The Flood.” Some inkling of its true character may be drawn from the derivation of the word mabbul from a root which means “confusion, chaos”; with the Mabbul, the physical laws were suspended and the entire universe reworked.
The central character in this awful drama is Noah, whom our parasha introduces as follows: אלה תולדת נח נח איש צדיק תמים הי' בדרתיו את האלקים התהלך נח (“These are the products of Noah; Noah was a perfectly righteous man [ish tzaddiq tamim] in his generations; Noah walked about with G-d”; VI, 9). This sounds like high praise indeed, and it appears to be echoed by G-d a bit later, when He personally tells Noah: כי אתך ראיתי צדיק לפני בדור הזה (“...for you do I see righteous [tzaddiq] before Me in this generation”; VII, 1).
Yet Hazal famously see ambiguity in the first statement, expressed as a mahloqeth, a dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Laqish, the former seeing in the word bë-dorothav, “in his generations”, that Noah was a tzaddiq only by the rather low and depraved standards of his time, but in other times should not have been so, whilst the latter sees praise in this word, too, learning that Noah was a tzaddiq despite his origin in the debased age immediately preceding the Mabbul (סנהדרין ק"ח.).
The sharp-eyed reader will have noted a couple of other nuances in comparing the two verses cited above:
1. Why does the first verse tell us that Noah was a tzaddiq tamim, whilst later G-d uses the word tzaddiq only, without the additional attribute?
2. Why should the first verse use the peculiar plural term bë-dorothav, when we would have expected simply bë-doro, “in his generation”, not least because G-d refers to him as living ba-dor ha-ze, “in this generation” (and not “in these generations”)?
B.
The third Ozherover Rebbe, Rabbi Arye Yëhuda Leibush ha-Lévi Epstein זצוק"ל, asks our questions in the Birkath Tov. To grasp his answers, a bit of background helps.
The great 20th century physicist Louis de Broglie demonstrated that behind every physical object or phenomenon lies an abstract mathematical wave-function, capturing the essence of the phenomenon in such features as the magnitude, amplitude, wave-length, and so on, of the wave.
The metaphysical reality which generates this wave-function in the physical realm, and thus produces all the phenomena of what we consider to be reality, lies in the tzirufei ha-othiyoth, the combinations and permutations of the letters of the words in the Holy Language which describe those phenomena, and the various means of calculating gimatria, the numerical values of those words and letters.
With this in mind, consider the Holy Alphabet. Of its 22 letters, five, known by the acronym מנצפ"ך, have two forms, one occurring initially and medially in a word, the other occurring only finally. In a sense, then, they increase the size of the Holy Alphabet by adding five additional characters to the set, for a total of 27. For this reason, Hazal tell us, these letters designate Ha-Shem’s gëvuroth, His acts of overwhelming power and judgment (זה"ק ק"א. בסתרי תורה וע"ע עץ חיים שער י"ח פ"ה ושער כ"ה דרוש ב').
If we now return to our parasha and read on a bit, we find Ha-Shem telling Noah: קץ כל בשר בא לפני וגו' (“The end [qétz] of all flesh comes before Me....”; VI,13). The sëfarim ha-qëdoshim note that the gimatriya of qétz (190), can also be expressed by the othiyoth ha-gëvura tzadi-pé-chaf (עיי' שער הכונות דרושי ר"ה סוף דרוש ז' ודרוש ט' ופרי עץ חיים שער השופר פ"א ); the Rebbe adds: וכאשר לא הי' המתקה באותיות אלו גרמו למבול לבא (“and when there was no amelioration of those letters forthcoming, they caused the Mabbul to come”).
The key lies in the Rebbe’s pregnant words. Noah the navi’ was allowed to see the gathering storm clouds, as it were, before they became self-evident in the dramatic astronomical phenomena which immediately preceded the event itself (עיי' ברכות נ"ט.) in order that he do something to head it off.
Indeed, he managed to delay the looming disaster for a time. Noah was engaged in the construction of the teiva for 120 years (cf. Rashi on VI, 14 and VII, 4). This, Ramban suggests, is the reason that Noah is called a tzaddiq tamim bë-dorothav, “his generations” because, were it not for Noah’s zëchuth, no-one born within that 120-year period would have come into existence.
The Rebbe goes on to note that the salient quality of a supreme tzaddiq is encoded in the very word, for if we rearrange the four consonants which make up the word slightly, we find that they spell qétz dai. The word dai indicates a sufficiency, a completeness, as Hazal suggest in their definition of the Divine Name Shad-dai as מי שאמר לעולמו די (“He Who said to His world, Enough! [Dai!]”; חגיגה י"ב.), thereby halting the universe’s expansion from the initial, central point which had come into existence and shattered, expanding with a speed beyond that of light until, as the Ramban writes, הזמן תפסו, “time seized it,” and the familiar laws of physics took hold, including the limiting speed with which electromagnetic energy propagates in a vacuum, 300,000 km/sec. Thus, for 120 years, Noah’s tzidqiyuth was the deciding factor holding the catastrophe at bay.
C.
But he found no response, no resonance from amongst his contemporaries; Hazal characterize all of the antediluvian generations as מכעיסין ובאין, progressively angering and provoking G-d (אבות פ"ה מ"ב). The continued depravity and debasement of those generations exerted such a profound, countervailing force, warping the fabric of the cosmos, that the zëchuth of Noah’s personal tzidqiyuth was overwhelmed by it.
The Rebbe summarizes the matter: ובזה אתי שפיר דברי הכתוב "נח איש צדיק תמים הי' בדורותיו" רוצה לומר באלו הדורות אשר חי, ואם כי היו רשעים אף על פי כן זכותו הגין עליהם והוא בחינת צדיק תמים דהוא בבחינת "קץ די", שאמר לקץ די, שלא יחריב העולם כו' ואך אחר כך כאשר בא המבול באותו הדור ולא יכול עוד זכותו להגין עליהם ולומר די, אזי אינו בבחינת תמים במדה שנקרא צדיק בבחינת "קץ די" (“And with this the words of Scripture fit well, ‘Noah was a perfect tzaddiq in his generations”, i.e., in those generations in which he lived; and even if they were rësha‘im, nonetheless his zëchuth protected them, and he was the exemplar of a perfect tzaddiq who is the exemplar of qétz dai, in that he said to the qétz “dai”, that it not destroy the universe... And only afterwards, when the Mabbul came in that [final] generation and his zëchuth was no longer able to protect them and say, "Dai," then he was not in the class of tamim, in the sense that a tzaddiq is called the exemplar of qétz dai”).
Hence, Noah was a tzaddiq tamim for 120 years, throughout those generations which could be called “his”, for he defended them and made them possible. It was only on reaching that final, fateful generation, when his tzidqiyuth no longer availed to save anyone but himself and his immediate family, that he was stripped of the attribute tamim, for the cataclysm overwhelmed him.
D.
Rashi characterizes the mahloqeth supra as a contrast between Noah’s generation with that of Avraham, recasting Rabbi Yohanan’s argument: לפי דורו הי' צדיק ואילו הי' בדורו של אברהם לא הי' נחשב לכלום (“according to his generation, he was a tzaddiq, and had he been in Avraham’s generation, he would not have been considered anything”).
The reference invites comparison, for Avraham’s generation, too, was filled with rësha‘im, as we are reminded, for instance, in the episode of Sëdom and ‘Amora. Avraham prayed desperately on their behalf but, unable to find 10 decent inhabitants of the cities whose names have since become a synonym for depravity, his zëchuth, too, was only sufficient to save his relative Lot.
The point of contrast, I believe, can be discerned by comparing the language of our verse – צדיק תמים כו' את האלקים התהלך נח – with what G-d later says to Avraham: אני א-ל שד-י התהלך לפני והי' תמים (“I am É-l Shad-dai, walk about before Me [hithhalléch lë-fanai] and be tamim”; Genesis XVII, 1). The language is so strikingly similar that our attention is immediately drawn to the subtle difference between walking “with” (eth) G-d and walking “before” (li-fnei) Him.
In comments on Numbers XXII, 12 and 20, the Ha‘améq Davar notes the two words in the Holy Language translatable “with,” eth and ‘im, explaining that the first is a purely comitative expression of accompaniment – “I went with you to town” – whilst the second signifies whole-hearted unity of purpose – “I’m with you”.
Noah certainly worked diligently to build and stock the teiva; as Rashi explains: למה הטריחו בבנין זה כדי שיראוהו אנשי דור המבול עוסק בה ק"כ שנה ושואלין אותו מה זאת לך והוא אומר להם עתיד הקב"ה להביא מבול לעולם אולי ישובו (“Why did He bother him with this construc-tion? So that people of the Mabbul generation would see him occupied with it 120 years, asking him, What is this to you?, and he would tell them, The Holy One, Blessed is He is going to bring Mabbul to the world; perhaps they would repent”). They had to come to Noah.
Now watch Avraham at work. When the mal’achim left his tent to overturn Sëdom and ‘Amora, Avraham accompanied them, aware of their mission, ועודנו עמד לפני ד', “still standing li-fnei Ha-Shem” (XVIII, 22), remonstrating with them: Will tzaddiqim suffer with rësha‘im? What if there are 50, 45, 40, 30, 20 tzaddiqim.... Only when it became clear that there was no-one worth saving but Lot did he stop.
That is the difference between the rather passive hithhalléch eth ha-Eloqim, and the active, dynamic hithhalléch lë-fanai which G-d clearly considers the prerequisite for establishing and maintaining the tzaddiq tamim, and with it the power to say dai. This was what G-d really wanted from Noah (as the Rebbe implied above), not the mere passive announcement that the Mabbul was coming, “perhaps they would repent.” Like everything else in this world, without constant attention and input, tzidqiyuth falls prey to entropy, withers, and dies.
Through Noah’s tziddqiyuth, exemplary in so debased an age, the final antediluvian generations were “his,” his “products” or “offspring (both possible translations of the word tolëdoth in the first verse. But through his passivity, the quality of his tzidqiyuth gradually decayed, so that the rish‘uth and consequent fate of those generations were also, in some measure, his tolëdoth.
No comments:
Post a Comment