From: JoshHoff@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 11:29 PM
To: JoshHoff@aol.com
Cc: Kisenf@aol.com; TorahWorld@gmail.com
Subject: Netvort:parshas Noach, 5769
Hard
to Believe
By Rabbi Joshua (unbelievably known as The Hoffer) Hoffman
The Torah describes
Noach's entrance into the ark with his family just before the flood began in a
peculiar way. We are told, " Noach and his sons , and his wife, and his
sons' wives with him went into the ark because of the waters of the flood"
( Bereishis, 7:7). Rashi, commenting on the words ' because of the waters of
the flood, understands this to mean, as the Ramban points out, that the waters
of the flood actually pushed him into entering the ark.Why did he wait that
long? Rashi, citing a midrash, says that Noach was one of those of little
faith. He believed , but not completely, and so waited until the waters
began to fall in earnest before actually entering the ark. This midrash is hard
to understand in its simple sense. Could it be that Noach, to whom God referred
as a perfect tzaddik, and who heard of the flood from God Himself, had any
doubt that the flood would actually come?
Rabbi Yosef Salant, in his Be'er Yosef, explains that,in fact,Noach did not
doubt God's ability and intention to bring the flood. However, he was convinced
that the people would, in the end, repent, and therefore avert the pending
disaster. It was only when , as the Midrash Rabbah says, the waters
reached his ankles that he relaized that they were not going to repent, and so
entered the ark.The great tzaddik and advocate for the Jewish people,
Rabbi Levi Yitzchal of Berditchov, in his Kedushas Levi, offered a
related but somewhat different explanation of the midrash, which gives a
different twist to the meaning of Noach's non- belief.
Rav Levi Yitzchak refers to the Zohar, which criticizes Noach for failing to
pray for the people to be saved. why didn't he pray for them? Rav Levi Yitzchak
says that Noach didn't pray because he didn't believe in himself. He felt that
if, as God told him, he would be saved from the flood, he couldn't be any
better than th erest of the people, and, therefore,they would also be saved ,
and there was no need to pray for them. It was only when he saw that the flood
was actually coming that he realized that his thinking was incorrect, and he
entered the ark under force of compulsion of the rising floodwaters.
In another piece, Rav
Levi Yitzchak again cites the Zohar, which says that Noach's failure to pray
for the people was corrected later by Moshe, who prayed to God to spare the
Jewish people from destruction after the incident of the golden calf. In his
prayer, he told God that if wouldn't spare the nation, then He should erase him
out His book, meaning, from the Torah. The Zohar points out that the
words for ' erase me' uttered by Moshe to God have the same letters as
the words ' mei Noach,' or 'waters of Noach,' that occur in this week's
haftarah reading taken from the prophet Yeshaya ( 54:9). The
prophet attributes the flood to Noach, according to the Zohar,
because Noach did not pray for the salvation of his generation, and, as a
result, the flood came and wiped them put. Although Rav Levi Yitzchak does not
say this, perhaps we can apply his explanation of Noach's lack of faith in
himself to the correction that Moshe made, and say that Moshe did believe in
his ability to pray for the people to be saved. Moshe, however, as we know, was
the humblest of all men. How, then, did he have faith in his ability to save
his generation, while Noach did not have this kind of faith in himself?
We have explained,in the
past (see Netvort to parshas Tetzaveh, 5763), that when Moshe asked God
to erase him from his book, he was arguing that the reason that the people
turned to the golden calf was because he had not appeared on the scene when
they thought he would, and they believed that without him, they were lost , and
so they needed another force to guide them. Moshe wanted them to understand
that, in fact, the opposite was the case, and that he drew his strength from
them. as Rabbi Mordechai Gifter points out, in his Pirkei Torah to parshas
Tetzaveh, any special position that exists among the Jewish people comes as a
result of the people themselves. Moshe was arguing that if he emerged from the
Jewish people, it was only because of the innate spiritual strength of the
people. Therefore, he asked that his name be erased form the Torah, so that the
people would realize that he drew his strength from them, and, so, they had the
inner resources to carry on in their spiritual devotion to God even if Moshe
would disappear from the scene.
Based on this
explanation of Moshe's prayer on behalf of the people, we can understand how it
was a correction of the mistake of Noach, as explained by the Kedushas Levi.
Noach felt that he was certainly no better than the rest of his generation, and
if he was going to be saved, they would certainly be saved. In this way, he did
not believe in himself. Moshe , however, knew what his strength was but did not
become arrogant because of it, because he felt that he drew his strength from
the people. With this in mind, he prayed for them, in the hope that they would
understand that if he could reach a certain level in his devotion and
closeness to God, then they could also, since he drew his strength from
them. Moshe, thus, wanted to teach the people to believe in themselves, in
contrast to Noach, who had no belief in his own spiritual accomplishments, and
therefore felt that any prayer that he would offer on behalf of his generation
would be of no avail.
Netvort archives are temporarily available at http://www.yucs.org/heights/torah/bysubject/
Please address all
correspondence to the author (Rabbi Hoffman) with the following address -
JoshHoff @ AOL.com.
To subscribe to Netvort, send a message with subject line subscribe,
to Netvort@aol.com. To
unsubscribe, send message with subject line unsubscribe, to the
same address.
Plan your next getaway with AOL Travel. Check
out Today's Hot 5 Travel Deals!