Noach

Noach - Stewart Brookes

Stewart Brookes has a PhD in medieval literature from King’s College London, and is currently teaching Old English at University College London. His research interests include Hebrew manuscript art, Midrash, and the textual transmission of the Tanach. He is Chair of Ohel Avraham, an independent, Orthodox minyan in Hendon.

In the cliffhanger ending to last week's parashah, we were told that just as God is about to blot humankind and all the animals from the earth, Noah 'finds favour/grace' in God's eyes (Genesis 6.8).

Writing in the first century CE, the Jewish philosopher Philo questions what it means to 'find grace', suggesting that there are those who find what they formerly had, and those who discover what they never had before. Philo rejects the idea that God gifted Noah with a special divine grace, or that Noah was especially worthy, and concludes that the meaning of the verse is that Noah had preserved untainted the grace with which he was born ('On the Unchangeableness of God').

Josephus (c. 37–100CE) offers a more positive portrait, stating that God found favour in Noah because he had made efforts to persuade his contemporaries to change their wicked ways, even to the point of risking his life (Jewish Antiquities, 3.1).

While Philo and Josephus address the question of 'why Noah?', the main focus of the commentaries has been the Torah's statement that Noah was a righteous man 'in his generation' ('bedorotav'; Genesis 6.9). Picking up on this nuance, the rabbis ask whether 'in his generation' implies criticism or praise. Most conclude that while Noah is certainly better than his neighbours - God did judge him as worth saving, after all - he would not have stood up to scrutiny alongside Moses or Samuel. Others argue, however, that if Noah could manage to achieve greatness in a corrupt environment, how much more might he have accomplished in an age of righteous people (Bereshit Rabbah, 30.9; Sanhedrin, 108).

The problem with taking a positive view of Noah is his seeming silence about the death of his world. Showing visitors around the Sacred exhibition at the British Library last year, I was struck by the consequences of this silence when I studied the depiction of the ark in the fourteenth-century (BL Add. MS 47682, f. 8r). The images of the floating dead are intensely disturbing. There is, of course, a famous midrash which states that Noah spent 120 years planting and cutting down cedar trees in order to build the ark. In doing this, he signalled a warning that the end of the world was nigh, but his neighbours mocked him and refused to mend their ways (Bereshit Rabbah, 30.7). This would seem to mitigate Noah's actions to some extent, but there is an ambiguity about whether he really set out to warn people, or whether it was God who planned it that way.

One of the most telling midrashim on the subject of Noah’s silence is that supplied in the Zohar (a mediaeval work of Jewish mysticism). When Noah comes out of the ark the Zohar has him weep at the destruction and ask God why he created human beings in the first place if he was only going to destroy the world as a result of human wickedness. God replies that Noah is a fool to ask this after the fact, and reveals that he had purposefully lingered with Noah when he told him about the Flood in the hope that he would request mercy for the world. Noah remained silent once he heard that he would be safe, however, and God tells him it is too late to ask questions and make pleas now the world has been destroyed. Clearly silence does not sit well. Later on in the Torah, Abraham offers another paradigm, calling God to account in audacious words over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah: 'Shall not the Judge of all the world act justly?' (Genesis 18.25).

We are often faced with difficult choices when looking at the world around us. There are times when it might seem appropriate to follow Abraham's model and to speak out against perceived injustice. But is there room to hold God to account? To question God's will and purpose? Even Abraham ultimately has to accept God's decision. Often, the greatest challenge is to preserve our faith when tragedies occur, and perhaps in this Noah shows us the way: to take refuge and hold back enough of the flood of despair in order to allow life to continue.