Noyakh / נח

This is a weekly series of frum, trans, anarchist parsha dvarim [commentaries]. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns (or worse: is) Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is both true to the source material (i.e. doesn't invert or invent meaning to make it say what I want it to say) and uses Torah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

There's a lot happening this week: the ark; the animals and their genders; the world's first seed bank;בראשית ו:כא
Bereshis 6:21 the raven and the doves; the Tower of Bovelaka Tower of Babel (more on that in a minute); and near the end, we meet our first matriarch and patriach, Soroy and Avrom.aka Sarah and Avrom, soon to be Abraham
בראשית יא:כו
Bereshis 11:26

The first part of the parsha is dedicated to Noyakhaka Noah and the flood. I'm mad at Noyakh. He is “just" and "perfect" compared to the violence and corruption that surrounds him. When Hashem tells him that he will flood the Earth and kill everyone except for Noyakh's immediate familyבראשית ו:יח
Bereshis 6:18, Noyakh doesn't protest. He "walked with God". I'm mad at God too.

The Zohar is also mad at Noyakh. In Bereshis, he's not held accountable, but it's our tradition to remedy that: Yishayohuaka Isaiah literally names the harm of Noyakh's negligence. It's right to be angry where our ancestors—those in Torah, and those commenting on Torah—fail to do right by us.

Likewise, it's right to be mad at Hashem when he threatens to—and carries out the threat—to destroy almost all life on Earth. To accept such blunt violence without anger at its injustice would be an insult to our collective intelligence and, more importantly, to the ethical values we hold so dear.

After the flood, Noyakh comes out and does burnt offerings. Hashem likes it and promises not to curse the ground again, nor to smite its inhabitants.בראשית ח:כ–כא
Bereshis 8:20–21 He declares that rainbows will serve as a reminder of the covenant between Hashem and all living creatures, and a reminder not to kill us all.בראשית ט:יד–יה
Bereshis 9:14–15 The fact that such a reminder is necessary is distressing.

Despite all the killing He's done, Hashem warns us that we are not to kill each other, unless it's in revenge for an earlier murder. This pasuk is the basis on which we justify revenge killings. Ibn Ezra tells us that בָּאָדָם (“by man") can mean "in front of witnesses", "in front of people", or "because a man was killed." I'm deeply uncomfortable with any justification for killing, especially one that lends itself to a cycle of violence where each side feels righteous.

More narrative: Noyakh grows a vineyard, drinks too much and passes out, naked, in his tent. His youngest son Homaka Ham sees his naked father, and tells his brothers Shem and Yefesaka Yefet. The older brothers cover their father's nakedness without looking at him, walking backward into the tent. Noyakh wakes up, knowing what Hom did—see him—and curses Hom's son Knoan.aka Kena'an
בראשית ט:יד–יה
Bereshis 9:18–27

What are morals are we supposed to take from such a parable, almost post-modern in its imagery? The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that, "unlike Hom, whose own debasement was reflected in his vision of his father, their [Shem and Yefes'] entire reaction to their knowledge of what had transpired lay in what they must now do to correct it. The shame of their father, however, they simply did not see." In other words, every fault we see in others is a projection.

I say that Noyakh is the first drunk, abusive father. Its unfair to blame Hom for witnessing his dad's excess, and even less fair to curse Knoan. This is the end of Noyakh's story: lived until the age of 950 years and then died.

The second part of the parsha is devoted to the Tower of Bovel. ⊕ A digression, if you'll indulge me: today, speaking a Jewish language other than modern Hebrew is derided as divisive, kitch, and (if that language is Yiddish) "Ashkenormative". It is incredibly insulting for Zionists to accuse Yiddish speakers of erasing linguistic diversity for daring to speak what is, more often than not, our ancestral language, when for years the state of Israel suppressed all languages other than modern Hebrew. Yiddish is a vastly under-resourced language and it is a testiment to its richness that it survives among native- and heritage-speakers alike. We should be encouraging the proliferation of all minoritized Jewish languages; but that would undermine the carefully constructed ethnonationalist narrative which says that we are "one people" with a single, shared language (modern Hebrew) and culture (Israeli). To my reading, there's a clear parallel between Bovel and Zionism: self-worship, a single language, a focus on survival above all else, and creating a name for ourselves lest we be scattered. Zionism—as destructive as it is—is an understandable (if not rational or excusable) reaction to trauma. At its loftiest, Zionism imagines itself to be a project of Jewish self-determination, a reconnection between the people and the land, and a guarantee of our continued survival through cooperation and solidarity among our people. The Rebbe offers this comment on Bovel in a sikhaaka שׂיחה, sicha, "conversation" in 1959:

At its heart they planned a tower which would be visible for miles, a landmark to beckon to those who had strayed from the city, and a monument to inspire commitment to their common goal—survival. ... Where did they go wrong? But precisely that was their error: they saw survival as an end in itself. Let us make a name for ourselves, they said; let us ensure that there will be future generations who will read of us in their history books. But why survive? For what purpose should humanity inhabit the earth? What is the content of the name and legacy they are laboring to preserve? Of this they said, thought and did nothing. To them, life itself was an ideal, survival itself a virtue. ... We, too, are a generation struggling to recoup after a holocaust of destruction that threatened to erase us from the face of the earth. Reconstruction and survival are uppermost in our minds, and together, with G‑d’s help, we are succeeding. At a time like this, it is extremely important that we not repeat the error of the builders of Babel. Rebuild we must, but the objective must be more than a more enduring name, a greater city, a taller tower. If we are to survive, we must give import to our survival, reiterate the why of our existence. We must fill our name with value, our city with significance, and crown the tower of our resurgence with the higher purpose for which we were created.

We can see a connection in the Rebbe's comments between Bovel and the ethnonationalist project of Zionism.I wouldn't yet venture to make a comment about the Rebbe's stance on Zionism; that's for another essay. We must reconstruct and we must survive, but we've grievously erred in exporting European statescraft and colonialism to Palestine. That we have proves that Zionism is, and always has been, dominated not by utopic socialist kibutzniksTo oversimplfy, kibutzim were Jewish agricultural communes in Israel/Palestine ranging in political ideology, but eventually they were all privatized. Kibutzim were foundational to creation of the Israeli state. For a detailed history about their leftist origins which doesn't apologize for their Zionism, see "A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement" by James Horrox but by fervent racists. The rhetoric now obscures its origins—they wanted to band together and create a beacon of hope to Jews and all the world's downtrodden, "the only democracy in the Middle East", "the most moral army in the world"—but instead they created a government which goes against Jewish values, against everything it's supposed to stand for. Every affront to decency is in the name of "Jewish safety". I deeply believe that there is much to preserve in Yiddishkeyt, that we have good cause to want our cultures—as well as our people—to survive. But Zionism flattens global Yiddishkeyt into a single experience of desperation, a need for a "homeland" in the form of a state despite Jews living there for thousands of years without one. Zionism is more interested in שלילת הגלותshlilas hagolus, "negation of the diaspora", than in Jewish safety. If the state cared about Jewish safety, it wouldn't keep a concentration camp on its borders, and wouldn't conscript its children into the meat grinder of war. As a Jew, that's the most insulting lie about Zionism: the unacceptable cost—the apartheid, the violence, the death, the staining our collective soul—it doesn't even keep us safe, and it wouldn't be worth it if it did.

If we accept the premise that Hashem is good and only does us good thingsTo be clear, I do not accept this premise., then Bovel holds a simple lesson: homogeneity is bad; pluralism is good. It is good that we were scattered, that we have different languages and different cultures. We celebrateread: tokenize diversity and delight in the different ways to read Torah and the old axiom "two Jews, three opinions". Unless, of course, your opinion is critical of medinas Yisroel.מדינת ישׂראל, the state of Israel, as distinct from the land of Israel or the "Israelites" (Jews as a whole) Disagreement on Israel/Palestine is grounds for harassment, firing, and being kicked out of shul. The BDS Movement—a peaceful protest, leveraging the "soft" power of consumer choice—is decried as antisemitic. It goes without saying that violent resistance is unacceptable. In silencing dissent—an anti-war movement—as if it were hate speech, we've made violence out to not only acceptable but morally necessary. For all our "Never again"s, we've made it very difficult to speak out against the current genocide.

I want to make a distinction: resistance is not justice. Resistance is what we do in the absence of justice. The question of whether or not any or all of the victims of the October 7 attacks "deserved" it is a flawed framing. Resistance catches everyone in its wake: the guilty, the complicit, the innocent, and those who fight for the shared goal of liberation. The reality is, where people are oppressed, they will resist by any means necessary, and it will be messy. If we don't like the resistance, we should unequivocally be calling for justice.

Instead, the Jewish world today is banding together to create a tower: a mountain of dead, punishing Palestine for the crimes of Europe, and flattening and stealing coastal land on which to build hideous condos. People are more offended by the Holocaust comparisons than by the mass death. Is over 41,000 dead not enough? Will we only care when it reaches 6 million?

This is a parsha full of divine intervention. The world is corrupt, and Hashem steps in—more than once—to purge it with great violence. Hubris is punished. Where is Hashem now? More urgently: where are we?