Parashat Noah, Gen. 6:9-11:32

This week's parasha is sponsored by Susan Gerhard
in loving memory of her grandparents Reuven and Golda Kreitzman, parents of her father, Harry Kreitzman.

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Make for Yourself a Tzohar in the ark

Study with Baruch Sienna

 

This week is the famous story of Noah and the flood. God is fed up with the violence (hamas) of humanity (JPS has: lawlessness; Fox renders it: gone-to-ruin; Altman suggests outrage). I don't know if the Hebrew is related to the Arabic, but it is hard not to make a connection. According to a CNN Q&A article on Terrorism, the word "hamas" means zeal in Arabic and is also an acronym for "Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya," or Islamic Resistance Movement.

In our parasha, in response to this violence, God commands Noah to build an ark. Curiously, Noah is a major character of the early chapters of Genesis who never actually speaks. Not a single word. Not even 'yup,' when God says "I want you to build an ark. (The brilliant 'midrash' and classic skit by Bill Cosby (Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow... Right) fills in that lacuna and imagines what Noah might have said. The text of the skit can be found here; but it's worth hearing the track; you can even purchase the track online and download it if you want to hear it.

In Hebrew, the Bible uses the word 'teivah' for Noah's ark, the same word Sephardim often use to refer to the Ark where the Torah is kept. Ashkenazim prefer the term 'aron' which is unrelated to 'teivah', although ironically, we use the same English word to refer to both arks [of Noah] and the 'Ark of the Covenant'.

After the instructions to build the ark, so many cubits wide and long, God commands Noah to make a tzohar. Look at these English translations for verse 16:

Make an opening for daylight in the ark (JPS)

A skylight you are to make for the Ark (Fox, Schocken)

Make a roof for it (New International Version)

You shall make a window for the ark (New American Standard Bible)

A light shalt thou make to the ark (American Standard Bible)

 

Generally, a good rule of thumb is that when translations differ widely, we should sit up and pay attention. The Hebrew word 'tzohar' here is translated as: window, light, opening, skylight, and roof. We don't know exactly what Noah's ark looked like, and the word 'tzohar' appears only once in the entire Bible. There is actually a technical term for a word that appears only once in a written text: hapax legomenon, and this term is a favourite among biblical scholars. In the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Songs and the Book of Job, for example, both have a very high occurence of hapax legomena, thus making these sections much more difficult to understand. There are 400 strict hapax legomenona (see the online Jewish Encyclopedia article for a list), meaning words that do not have even a related 'partner' or word with the same root. I love noticing such singletons as I read Torah, as they are often a rich source for creative midrash and interpretation; they also remind me how tentative and speculative our understanding of Torah sometimes is. For example, the ark was constructed of atzei gopher (another hapax legomenon), and often left untranslated and simply transliterated as 'gopher wood'. It has nothing to do with the animal that is called gopher in English, but probably refers to cypress wood. I'm sure we'll encounter other hapax legomena over the course of this coming year's columns.

These singletons raise important questions of interpretation, since with only a single example, it may be difficult to determine what a word means. On the word tzohar, Everett Fox notes in his translation The Five Books of Moses: Hebrew obscure. Such unusual and difficult words cannot be understood from context, and have to be figured out using etymology or comparing similar words in related languages, which is not always foolproof. The Etz Hayim commentary (which uses the Jewish Publication Society translation) retains the traditional understanding that it was a window/opening for light, but adds in a note: "The Hebrew word tzohar refers here to a "roof," as it does also in Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Arabic." Luckily today, modern scholars have access to other ancient Semitic languages, and I agree that it makes sense (with all that rain) that the ark would need a roof! However, the Notes on the JPS translation quotes the biblical scholar Driver,  that "roof is doubtful; it is based upon the meaning of the corresponding word in Arabic, back."

But before tzohar was identified with 'roof' it was thought to be some sort of light. Ibn Ezra, whose commentary often includes grammatical insights, suggests it was an opening for light and connects the word to the Hebrew tzohorayim, today used for [after]noon. The tzohar then, was a window, or a skylight, as indeed found in many translations. Rashi's commentary, based on Breishit Rabbah, suggests two possibilities: "Some say it was a window; some say it was a precious stone that provided illumination." For the latter, I imagine a crystal prism that reflects light so they could see where they were going. A kid's joke goes like this: "What kind of light did they have on the Ark? Floodlights!"

Seriously though, what will be our reaction to the violence and lawlessness in the world around us? When we feel inundated, we need to build for ourselves an ark, a safe space that will nurture the precious seed of future life. These special enclosures serve as incubators while we weather the storm. But when we feel like we are in such 'arks' we must also build a tzohar, in all its meanings.

In addition to the need for protection, we must also construct a window to communicate with the outside world, and allow its influence to infuse our inner life with light. We need a source of inspiration that will illuminate the darkness while on our journey.

And, we should make sure that we have a roof over our heads to protect ourselves from the rain.

Thanks to my sister-in-law Bonna Haberman for the original inspiration and her insight into this Rashi.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

BDS