The Torah proceeds to tell us that Noach, "Ish HaAdamah,' or man of the earth, begins to plant a vineyard.He then drinks from the vine, becomes exposed within his tent, and is shamed by one of his sons. The rabbis criticize Noach for this entire incident, saying that he should have engaged in another activity,rather than the planting of a grapevine, as his initial act of renewing the world.This criticism, however, is a bit difficult to understand.After all, the very first thing Noach did when he left the ark, as we have seen, was to build an altar and offer sacrifices to God upon it.Wine can be offered to Gd as a libation upon that altar.Perhaps, then, Noach was merely following up his original act of giving thanks to God by creating an agricultural eneterprise that could be exploited for that purpose.True, he misused the produce, but why should his endeavor be so sharply criticized? I believe that by understanding another difficult midrash we can explain this one, as well.
As we have seen, the torah refers to Noach, in his capacity as a planter of the vine, as a man of the earth. The midrash contrasts Noach with Moshe. What is said of Moshe, we are told , is greater than what is said of Noach.While Noach, in th beginning of our parsha, is referred to as a man of God, he is eventually known as a man of the earth.Moshe, on the other hand, was referred to, as a young man who aided Yisro's daughters in a time of need, as an Egyptian man, and is eventually known as a man of God.There are several ways of understanding this midrash, all of which can give us an insight into the differing personalities of Noach and Moshe, and help us understand the rabbis criticism of him for planting a vine as his initial act of rebuilding the world.
One way to understand the contrast of the midrash between Moshe and Noach is along the lines of a well-known parable of the Kotzker rebbe.He said that if two people are on a ladder and one is on a higher rung than the other, that doesn't necessarily tell us who will reach the top first.The person on the higher rung may be on his way down and the person on the lower rung may be on his way up.The idea is that the direction in which a person is going can tell us more about his character than his current location or situation may indicate.Someone who appears to be on a relatively lower spiritual level than his acquaintances may actually be on a higher level, depending on their respective starting points and current direction. Thus,although Noach initially appeared in our parsha as a man of God, and the first thing he did upon leaving the ark was to build an altar and bring sacrifices upon it to God, his focus shifted to the desolate world around him, thus gaining him the title 'man of the earth.' As a man of the earth, he became discouraged by the post-deluvial desolation that he saw, and sought a means of escaping the grief it caused him by planting a vine.His focus in planting the vine, then, was earthly rather than Godly, and constituted a fundamental change in his personality.
Another approach to the contrast betwen Moshe and Noach can be given based on the work Derash Av by the famed Rabbi Avraham Aharon Yudelevitch (d.1930) , who served for some years as spiritual leader of the historic Eldridge Street Shul on the lower east side of Manhattan in New York City. He writes that for one to reach the heights of spirituality he must first act kindly towards people. Moshe's first act as a mature young man was to assist a fellow Jew in the face of Egyptian persecution. He then broke up a fight between two fellow Jews, and, finally assisted a group of non-Jewish women, who were total strangers to him, from the harrassment of a group of non-Jewish shepherds. It was these women who referred to him as an "Ish Mitzri,' an egyptian man.Moshe assisted them,not out of any national loyalty or group identification, but simply because they were human beings in need of help. Eventually, Moshe became the man of God, par excellence. Noach, on the other hand, began as a man of God, who was not influenced by the corrupt practices of his generation,and therefore merited to be delivered from the flood.However, as the rabbis point out, he did not plead with God to avert or delay the planned catastrophe, and did not actively attempt to correct people's ways. He was a man of God, but he was not dedicated to the spiritual welfare of those outside his immediate circle. Perhaps his experience in the ark, having to take care of the daily needs of all its inhabitants, was meant to cure him of this approach. However, when he left the ark, even though he correctly thanked God through the bringing of sacrifices, his next act should have been to take care of the basic needs of humanity.It was not the time to think about sophisticated means of enhancing his sacrifices to God. Such an approach can, perhaps, be viewed, in a sense, as arrogant and selfish, focusing on enhancing one's own relationship with God while ignoring his fellow man's needs. This self-centeredness eventually led to the use of the vine he had planted for his own personal pleasure, rather than for a libation to God.The kind of spiritual focus exhibited by Noach, one that ignored the predicament of humanity, is one that will eventually self-destruct, bringing the fomer man of God down to the level of a debased man of the earth, wallowing in his tent in a drunken stupor.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, of blessed memory ,wrote that there are two levels of ethics: mussar enoshi, and mussar eloki-or basic human ethics and spiritual ethics. Basic human ethics are certain standards of decency that are inherent in the human being, implanted in him by God. Spiritual ethics are a higher level of deportment, through which one strives to establish a relationship with God. For Jews, of course, mussar eloki is embodied in the Torah.There are , however, within Torah, many different approaches to one's proper deportment. Moreover, people of other nations also strive for spirituality. A basic test for the validity of any system of spirituality, says Rav Kook, is its compatibility with mussar enoshi, with the basic standard of decency implanted within every human being. Any system of religion that contradicts this basic set of standards is fundamentally flawed and invalid.The midrash notes that whereas, before the flood, Noach is referred to in the Torah as 'Ish HaElokim,' or man of God, after the flood he is called Ish HaAdamah, or man of the earth.His approach to spirtuality,which did not sufficiently focus on the predicament of his fellow man, was in basic contradiction to mussar enoshi,and, therefore, doomed to failure.