Do You See What I See?

By Rabbi Joshua (tellingly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

In memory of my friend, Mordechai Ostwald, who passed away recently in Yerushalayim. May his memory be a blessing.

After the flood, Noach plants a vine, drinks of its wine, and, in a state of drunkenness, reveals his nakedness in his tent. His son, Cham, sees this, and goes out and tells his two brothers, Shem and Yefes, about it. They take a garment and cover their father. Rashi notes that the verb used for taking, “vayikach,” is written here in the singular, rendering it as “and he took”, even though both brothers covered Noach. Citing the midrash, he explains that Shem took the leading role in taking a garment to cover Noach, and only after that initial action did Yefes join in. They both were rewarded for the act, but in different ways. Shem’s descendants merited to be given the tallis of tzitzis, and the descendants of Yefes merited to be buried after the war of Gog. What does this difference in reward tell us about the differing characters of the two brothers?

I once heard Rav Baruch Ezrachi quote his father-in-law, Rav Chaim Shmulevitz zt”l, as saying that Shem covered his father with eagerness and therefore merited for his descendants a mitzvah done by living people. Yefes, on the other hand, joined in more passively, acting as if he were almost dead, and therefore, merited burial for his descendants.

Rav Chaim Shmulevitz’s explanation does not account for the reason that the specific mitzvah of the tallis of tzitzis served as Shem’s reward. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, zt”l, as cited in the recently published Chumash Mesoras HoRav, says that Shem acted out of a source of ethics, doing what is right because it is right, regardless of whether the act occurs in public or in complete privacy. Therefore, Shem’s reward came in the form of the tallis of tzitzis, a garment which is usually worn underneath one’s other garments. Yefes, however, acted out of etiquette, which is based on public appearance, and therefore, merited burial, which is a process rooted in human dignity.

Students of Rav Soloveitchik, zt”l, have noted that he was a great admirer of the Netziv’s commentary, Ha’Amek Davar, and his explanation may reflect what the Netziv says in contrasting Shem and Yefes. He says that Shem felt that what he was doing was a mitzvoh and this motivated him to take the initiative in covering his father, while Yefes, acted out of the promptings of his human intellect, and he joined in the act of covering his father only when he saw that his brother could not do it alone. Rav Solovetichik’s categories of ethics and etiquette may, then, reflect the Netziv’s categories of mitzvoh and logic. In any case, Rav Soloveitchik’s explanation of Shem’s reward focuses on the garment on which the tzitzis are placed, in keeping with the act that Shem did, covering his father with a garment. I would like to suggest an explanation based on the remarks of the Netziv and Rav Soloveitchik, but focusing on the tzitzis themselves.

Rav Yitzhak Arama, in his Akeidas Yitzchok to parshas Shelach, notes that the word “tzitzis” is derived from the verb “lehatzitz,” to look, and the mitzvoh, which comes at the end of parshas Shelach, serves as a corrective to the incident of the spies, recorded in the beginning of parshas Shelach. The lashon hara, the evil report, of the spies came as a result of viewing Eretz Yisroel in the wrong way. As my teacher, Rav Aharon Soloveitchik zt”l (whose 12th yohrtzeit occurred this past Chol HaMoed Sukkos), explained, the spies only looked at the strategic factor, and not at the spiritual aspect of the land. The white strand and the blue strand of the tzitzis represent, respectively, the material, logical and spiritual aspects of life. The two must be taken in together, in order to understand any situation in its full reality. Shem, then, who viewed covering his father as a mitzvoh, saw the whole picture, and merited the mitzvoh of tzitzis for his descendants, while Yefes left out the spiritual aspect, and merited the more mundane process of burial (see Rabbi Menachem Genack’s Bircas Yitzchok on parshas Noach for a somewhat different explanation of the role of the tzitzis strings in Shem’s reward).