Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:00 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Welcome back everybody to the weekly partial review. We are now in Parshas Noach, the second portion of the Torah, the second portion in the Book of Genesis. There are 153 verses, 1861 words and 6,907 letters, as we mentioned last week. The reason we count these is because there's no extra letter, no extra word and there's no extra verse in the Torah. Every word that's in the Torah, every letter that's in the Torah, is either meant to be there or meant not to be there if it's not there. There are no mitzvahs, no performative or prohibitions in this Torah portion and the first thing we see is that God loves righteousness. Hashem loves righteousness. When he sees good, he loves the good. And you see, by the way, who does God focus on in the Torah? God doesn't focus on the wicked people, he focuses on the righteous people because God loves righteousness. That's one of the lessons that we learn from the Torah is.

01:12
The author of a book writes about what interests them, what intrigues them. Whether it be any author that you can think of, in any book series, their books always carry the same theme because that's what intrigues them. That's what interests them. God is the author of the Torah. What interests Hashem? Righteousness. And you see, the Torah is always focused on those who are righteous. We have Noah, we have Abraham, we have Isaac, we have Jacob, we have Joseph, we have Moshe, we have the Jewish people, the righteous ones, those who are not righteous. We'll usually hear about them at the end of a portion where we just need a list off their descendants. God focuses on the righteous. Noah was righteous.

02:03
Now it's very interesting that in the Torah it says in his generation. And a beautiful idea I heard yesterday. If you look at Rashi, rashi says there are two ways to read that. Either that in his generation only he was righteous, but had he been in a different generation he wouldn't be righteous. Or he was, in his generation, righteous. If he would have been a different generation, he would have been even more righteous. Why? In his generation, everyone was wicked, he didn't have a good example of someone to grow from, but had he been in the generation of Abraham he would have been even greater. Why? Because he had Abraham to teach him and to educate him.

02:41
So if you look at what Rashi says in his commentary so beautiful it says when it brings these two, there are those of our sages that see it in a positive way, and then there are those that see it in a negative way. Why does it say by one of them? If you notice, by one of them? It says some of our sages see it in a positive way and some see it in a negative way, and that's why we don't see sages anymore, because the sages always see the positive in. When the sages see something, they see the positive, they see the potential, they see the greatness. If we want to be great people, if we want to be like those sages, always see the positive in people. I think it's a very beautiful idea. So what did he contribute to the world? He contributed morality to the world. He was a good person. He stayed away from bad, he stayed away from trouble. And again, he took that lesson from last week's Torah portion of reward and punishment and realized I want to do good, I'm going to get good. I want to do bad, I'm going to get bad, I'm going to get punished, and chose his decisions based on that.

04:06
Naach was married to Naama. They had three children Shem Chum and Yafas. Now, interestingly that there's a flood warning. You get on your phone. You get those notifications when someone is a silver alert. Someone's kidnapped out in Kingwood with a silver Mitsubishi. You get those notifications on your phone. Well, guess what? There's a flood warning for the world where Hashem is forewarning them that something is going to happen.

04:35
Hashem doesn't like the wickedness of the generation and plans to bring a flood. He instructs Naach build an ark 300 Amos, which is about 600 feet long by 50 wide, which is about 100 feet wide and 30 height, which is about 60 feet high. That's an incredible, an incredible edifice. It is a very large construction. It took him 120 years. Why did it need to take him so long? God could have made a miracle and boom, he has it. Well, god wanted it to serve as a warning to the people, people of the past. Like, what are you building? He says well, god says that the people are wicked and he's going to bring a flood. You might also want to build an ark. And they're like, ah, you're wasting your time. And now could he have done a little bit more in perhaps persuading them to do better? Do an outreach, the Torah Outreach Resource Center, of whatever location he lived in the Holy Land, you know wherever the torch of his generation perhaps?

05:41
But Naach maintained a goodness for himself and his family. He gathered one set, as per God's instruction, one set of all non-coachur animals and seven sets of coachur animals. So the obvious question is one second the Torah wasn't given yet we don't have the instruction what is and isn't coachur? What did we say before last week when we spoke about the? What preceded the Torah? What preceded the Torah? The creation of the world, I'm sorry. What preceded the creation of the world? The Torah. The Torah was in existence, it just wasn't given yet to the people. Naach was able to access that Torah to know and to learn what is and what isn't coachur. The world has flooded with rain 40 days and 40 nights and it took one year to recede. Everyone, except for Noach and his family, died. Now the flood ends, the earth dries. Noach sends a dove. It comes back with an olive branch and then it is sent back later and it doesn't return.

06:51
Hashem commands Noach to leave the ark. Noach brings a thanksgiving offering as a thanks to Hashem, and then there's a covenant. The covenant is Hashem makes a rainbow to be a sign of peace between Hashem and mankind. Now the rainbow is very interesting. Why is that chosen? Many, many years ago we gave a class about this, but why was the rainbow, specifically chosen as the symbol of peace between God and mankind, because at a rainbow there's no specific point where you can point at the rainbow and say, oh, there's the red, there's the blue. It's just a blend of all the colors, where Hashem is showing that Him and God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and mankind are one blend and you can't distinguish between God and mankind in the sense that you can't separate us. Just like you can't separate the colors of the rainbow, you can't separate God and His creations anymore.

07:50
Exiting the ark, noach gets intoxicated. Ham, his son. He had three sons Shem, ham and Yefeth. Ham laughs, he mocks his father. Shem and Yefeth cover their father. They back up with a cloth and without seeing their father's privates and they cover their father. Noach sobers up and he curses Ham and blesses the others.

08:14
Noach dies at age 950, he's 950 years old and all the descendants of Noach are listed. So we see, something very special about Noach is that there's a lesson to be learned here. Many times we have incidents that happen to us and we don't necessarily take proactive measures to ensure that we don't fall into those mistakes again. Noach takes a measure, he takes a step and ensures that the world doesn't get into this problem again. What does he do?

08:55
We have the seven Noachid laws Don't eat a limb removed from a living animal. So you can't just go to a cow, chop off a leg and put it on the grill. It has to be killed properly we're not talking about the laws of kosher yet but it has to be killed. Then you can take a limb and you can eat it. This is also, by the way, the first time that mankind was allowed to eat meat. Adam didn't have that. He wasn't able to eat meat. He wasn't allowed. Yet Now it was permitted by the Almighty.

09:32
The second of the seven Noachid laws, these are the laws for all human beings, not only Jews, but all human beings. So someone who's a non-Jew, who wants to get under the wings of God, so to speak. These are the seven laws. So, number one Averminachai do not eat a limb removed from a living animal. Number two do not curse God. So a person needs to be careful. Be careful where you insert God's name. Number three is gazelle do not steal. Number four do not be sexually immoral. Number five do not murder. Number six set up courts and bring offenders to justice. So all of the court systems, police, all of those are under the canopy, so to speak, of the seven Noachid laws. These are the basic rights. There should be justice. And number seven do not worship false gods. So these are the seven Noachid laws, which were instituted immediately after the flood. This is the new standard, so that people shouldn't fall into the same trap that the generation of the flood fell into.

10:53
Then we have the dispersion, and the dispersion is that all of civilization, all of civilization, spoke one language, the holy tongue with which the world was created with that. That's the language we speak in the Torah. It's similar to Hebrew, but it's not. It's not 100% like Hebrew. Hebrew is, like, I would say, a dialect of the holy tongue and the world was created with that language. You have to understand that the letters of the alfabet, constructed in a certain way, have unbelievable powers. It can bring life to people, it can bring death to people, it can create things all by the combination of letters of the alfabet, very, very powerful. That is the holy tongue.

11:42
Unified, the sinners traveled to the valley of Shinar to build a huge tower of Babel against Hashem. Some of the commentaries say that Nimrod wanted this because he was the king at the time and he wanted to show his power against God. So God had a very I think it's funny punishment for this generation 70 languages for 70 nations that were going to be the 70 nations of the world. You know how amazing that is, that imagine you're all building this tower against God and you're telling the guy hey, pass me another brick, pass me another brick, pass me another brick, let's go, right, let's go. I need some more cement.

12:26
And suddenly, like that, a snap of a finger, they don't speak the same language. And he says what's your name? And he says how is that Right? And each person is like they can't communicate. So they're like I don't know what he's saying and they're like forget it, I'm done with you. I'm done with you. I'm going to my place and they go to Spain, and they go to Germany and they go to China and they and that's the dispersion they all go to their own place because we don't know what anybody else is speaking and you didn't have, you know, these translation companies to teach you and have all these dictionaries to know what other people are talking about. So this is the dispersion and this is what became the 70 nations of the world. You try to go against God. There is a reward and punishment.

13:14
Then we have the 10 generations that passed till Avraham not Avraham, it's not Abraham. Yet We'll see that in next week's Torah portion. We have Shem Arpahshad, shalach, aether, pelig Reu, surug, nachor Teraach, and then Avraham Teraach had three children and, interestingly, Abraham. We know that Abraham was cast into a burning oven and they look into the oven and they see Abraham walking around. He wasn't being consumed by that fire. So his brother says, hey, I'm going to go do that as well, his brother Charon. But he didn't do it for the same reason that Abraham did it and he was burnt to a crisp. He died and he left over two daughters. One daughter was Sarai, who became Abraham's wife, and one daughter was Milko, who became Nachor's wife, his brother. So both brothers married their nieces to restore their brother's name in the world.

14:21
Sarai was very righteous she's our matriarch and Sarai was also barren. The Torah tells us she was barren. She was not capable of having a child. Not that she didn't have a child, they had some, you know some fertility issues. She wasn't capable. Our say to ourselves, she didn't even have a womb. She didn't have the necessary tools to carry a baby. We know later she had Yitzchak. That was a total miracle and she had it when she was 90 years old. We'll see that later. They leave Orchazim and they arrive in Haran and Tarrach, abraham's father, dies in Haran.

15:07
So now there are a couple of things that we need to, important lessons that we need to extract from this week's Torah. Portion Number one is that there is a constant struggle in this world between light and darkness, between spirituality and physicality, between materialism and holiness. It's a constant struggle. The first verse in the Torah tells us Beroecius in the beginning, god created the heavens spirituality and the earth the physicality. We always have the struggle of these two forces fighting for our time, for our attention. Should I go to the class? Should I watch a movie? Should I go hang out with my friends? Should I listen to a podcast? It's always a struggle between the physical and the spiritual, and the Yetzahara is very crafty in finding ways to entice us.

16:08
This is the story of our life. We constantly have the struggle. We see this with Noah and his generation. We see the constant struggle of the spiritual and physical that are constantly in a battle, and it's not always going to be fear teams. You're always going to have an equal choice, but it's not always going to be fear teams. Sometimes it will look so much better on a physical level, but then you think about it.

16:34
This is what God wants me to do, and every person has their own compass, where they can, where they're those scales, where they can weight it, the prophet versus the loss. Should I do this? Should I not do this? That's point number one. The second, which can't be stated enough reward and punishment. You know, if you walk into a bank and try to rob the place, a couple of things might happen. You might sit in jail, you might get shot and killed. There are things that might happen. There is a reward and punishment. A person needs to know. If they do the right thing, there's a reward, it's guaranteed. And if a person does the wrong thing, there's a punishment it's guaranteed. The punishment may be instant, the punishment may be later, but no one is off the hook. Everybody is bound by the rules of rewards and punishment.

17:22
We mentioned that Noah learned Torah. He had a preview copy of the Torah before it was given to the Jewish people. One of the things that we see is that the Torah always uses a clean language. It doesn't say the kosher and the tray food. You know the kosher animals and the non-kosher, the non-kosher. The Torah uses a shah in Anatohorah, which is not pure. Torah always speaks in a clean language, teaching us something we should always use nice words, always use a clean language. Holy people use holy words.

18:05
I had a friend of mine. He once asked me he says we were talking about the trait of honor and dignity and he said to me Rabbi, do you think that I carry myself with a proper honor and dignity? And I said this is a CEO of a company. I said you carry yourself in the most dignified, honorable way till you open your mouth. He had a toilet bowl mouth and the words that came out of his mouth and I understand you're in the business world. I understand that this is things, the way people talk, and it's just like, yeah, it's okay, it's just us, the boys, you know. But it talks about you. The words you use speak volumes about you and the choice that we make of the words that we choose is very, very critically important. So, choose your words. It should be clean words. It should be uplifting words, encouraging words.

19:01
The next thing we see is the taking responsibility for others. We saw that Noah was righteous in his days. Let's assume that it was in the negative interpretation we said there were two types of interpretation either that in his generation he was righteous. In other generations he would have been even more righteous. Or only in his generation he was righteous, but had he been in another generation he would have been considered righteous. Why not? Because you have to take responsibility for others. Take responsibility for others.

19:31
You hear something good. Share it with the world. You're inspired by something. Share it with the world. Don't just leave it for yourself. Be selfish. It's just me, me, me, me. It's only me. I take it. You go to a class, you're inspired. You learn something good. Share it with the world. Don't keep it for yourself. We should always be focusing. You know what? Who would be inspired by this? Who would like this idea? Share it with others. And the last point is take a step. Always be taking a step. Challenge yourself to grow.

20:06
Noah, immediately after leaving the ark, takes a step. He says we have to change. Something's got to change here. You know, if someone God forbid is in an accident, I had someone once told me that they were in a, in a fender bender. I said what happened? They said, well, I was looking at my phone and I hit the car in front of me. So take a step, take upon yourself to not touch your phone while you're driving.

20:34
But if a person doesn't take that step, they're like, well, I'll just be more careful, but I'll continue. No, no, no, no, it's gonna happen again. Take a step, take a significant. You know it doesn't have to be a big step, but a significant in meaningfulness. It should be something meaningful to change. If you got into a certain habit, you can change that habit. The same way you got into it, you can get out of it. So we see that by Noah, we see that by Abraham. You make a mistake, that's fine, but what do you do after the mistake is the real question Are you gonna change? You're gonna take a step to change or you're just gonna continue to fall the same way you did the first time? My dear friends, that concludes the partial review for Partius Noah. Thank you so much for joining us.