Parshas Noach 5770

Rabbi YY Jacobson

• October 22, 2009
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• 4 Cheshvan 5770
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  A Tale of Three Brothers and Three Civilizations

  Sensuality, Aesthetics and Transcendence

  Rabbi YY Jacobson

  • October 22, 2009

  A Tale of Three Brothers

  The story is told of a first-grade teacher who was experiencing some difficulty in his Bible class. He was attempting to teach a relatively simple verse (1) -- "And Noah fathered three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth" -- but one five-year-old mind found the concept too complex to comprehend. Finally, the teacher says: "David, you know your next-door neighbors, the Smiths? What's the father's name?"

  "John," replies the child.

  "And how many sons does John have?"

  "Three: Tom, Dick and Harry."

  "Great," says the teacher. "You see, it's not that difficult to understand. John Smith has three sons--Tom, Dick and Harry. Now, long ago, there lived a man called Noah, and he, too, had three sons. Their names were: Shem, Ham and Japheth."

  That afternoon, little David comes home from school. "Mama!" he proudly announces. "Today we learned about the three sons of Noah!"

  "That's wonderful, dear," says his mother. "And who were the three sons of Noah?"

  "Tom, Dick and Harry."

  Charging Rent

  An anti-Freudian professor asked his students, what is the difference between a psychotic, a neurotic and a psychiatrist?

  One student responded:

  The psychotic builds castles in the air; the neurotic lives in them. The psychiatrist collects the rent from both.

  Rebirth

  If last week man was created, this week humanity is re-born. This time it does not begin with Adam, but with Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their wives, the “Founding Fathers and Mothers” of civilization after the great Flood which wiped out humanity. In the words of the Torah (2): “These three were the sons of Noah, and from these, the entire earth spread out.”

  But just who were Shem, Ham, and Japheth? We know little about them as individuals. There is only one episode recorded involving the three brothers and it occurs right after the Flood (3):

  "Noah began to work the land, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and lay exposed in his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the shame of his father, and told his two brothers outside (4). Shem and Japheth took the garment, placed it upon their shoulders, walked backwards, and covered the shame of their father; their faces were backward, and the shame of their father they did not see."

  “Noah awoke from his wine, and he knew what his small son (Ham) had done to him. And he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan (the son of Ham (5)); he shall be a slave among slaves to his brethren.’ And he said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be a slave to them. May God beautify Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be a slave to them."

  These are strange and also harsh words. Noah’s response is recorded in three verses. In each of them he repeats the curse that Ham shall be a slave to his brothers. He finds it necessary to repeat this curse no less than three times! In one of them he blesses not Shem, but the G-d of Shem, and in the other he suddenly decides to extol the beauty of Japheth and blesses him to dwell in the tents of Shem.

  What is the message behind these words? Were these merely words spewed by an old man who just got up from his drunken slumber? If so, why would the Torah record them for eternity? Or, perhaps, we have here one of the profoundest reflections and prophesies on the annals of human history.

  Supporters of slavery in the American South would mistakenly quote the above verses to demonstrate that the descendants of Ham, which included many African tribes and nations, were destined to be slaves. They missed the deeper moral message Noah was communicating to his children at the dawn of a new civilization.

  Three Trends

  Like all biblical characters, Shem, Ham, and Japheth are not only three individuals. They also embody three dimensions within every human psyche. There is a “Shem,” a “Ham” and a “Japheth” in each of us.

  The three brothers also represent three diverse trends in civilization, manifesting themselves in diverse cultures and nations in whose history we can notice the predominance of one of the three streaks.

  Glowing Sensuality

  The name Ham (Chom in Hebrew) means warm or hot. Ham is the person or the society embodying the power of glowing hot sensuality. He is the person who lives out fully all of his or her natural impulses, urges, appetites, cravings and passions. Ham is raw, instinctive, impulsive, spontaneous, and undisciplined. He is not a neurotic, a philosopher or a psychiatrist. He feels his bodily passions and lives them out with no restraint, no repression, no denial.

  Ham is Freud’s id, the most animal-like part of man, man as homo sapiens, an evolved ape, possessing the passion (Ham) and intensity of an animal (6).

  Aesthetical Sensibility

  Japheth (Yefes in Hebrew) means beauty. This name personifies our finer aesthetical sensibilities. When Ham sees his father naked, he celebrates the raw sensual experience (4). When Japheth hears that his father is exposed, he knows that it is not nice. He feels the urge to “clean up the mess.”

  While Ham is the father of raw, hot sensuality, Japheth is the progenitor of aesthetics and culture: music, art, literature, theater, poetry, philosophy and various sciences -- a Homer poem, a Shakespearean drama, a Mona Lisa by Da Vinci, a treatise by Kant, Beethoven’s Ninth.

  The Bible identifies Greece (Yavan) and Germany (Ashkenaz) as descendants of Japheth (7). If we were to ask which nations were most responsible for cultivating culture, aesthetics and art it was ancient Greece and -- in later generations -- Germany.

  Divine Morality

  Then there is a third brother, Shem, the grandfather of Abraham and Moses.

  Shem means “name.” Shem does not focus on sensual passion, nor is he consumed by beauty. His primary interest is in the transcendental realm of reality, in the very “name” – the core identity and essence of every reality and existence. Shem looks at everything and asks one question -- does it express the truth of reality or does it distance us from the truth of existence? Does it reflect G-d or does it eclipse G-d?

  For Japheth, that which is aesthetical is ethical; for Shem that which is ethical is also aesthetical. And if it is not ethical, it is not aesthetical either. Something may be beautiful to the eye, but grotesque to the soul; appealing to the ballad but profane to the conscience. When Wagner’s music is played in Auschwitz to “uplift” the SS who are leading children into gas-chambers, at that moment the beautiful music is transformed into ugly darkness.

  Three Souls

  These three categories hold true in each of our individual lives as well.

  Kabbalah and Chassidism teaches (8) that we have three souls, meaning that we operate on one of three levels of consciousness – the sensual, the aesthetical, or the transcendental. They are known as the animal soul, the rational soul and the Divine soul.

  The animal soul is – as her name implies – an animal. The rational soul can soar to intellectual and aesthetical heights. The Divine soul yearns for the essence, for the truth, for G-d.

  Both Shem and Japheth covered their father’s nakedness. But as the Torah indicates (9), it was Shem who lead the way, and Japheth assisted him. For their motivation was not the same. Japheth felt that it is aesthetically improper and we must “clean up the mess.” It does not look good for your father to be naked. For Shem the issue was far deeper: it is wrong, unjust, and immoral. Japheth approached it with his “rational consciousness,” Shem with his Divine consciousness. Shem was therefore far more passionate and swift about it than his brother Japheth (10).

  How Does One Become a Slave?

  We can now thus appreciate the timeless depth in the words of Noah to his sons upon awaking from his wine: He was giving his children – and us -- astounding historical insight.

  Noah was not cursing Ham, but was rather enlightening him as to the inevitable results of his character and life style, and then directing him to a solution. And Noah was not only addressing the physical person called Ham, but also the timeless “Ham” within each of us, and the cultures who glorified the personality of Ham.

  What Noah is saying is that unbridled passions and uncontrollable temptations will turn you into a slave. A slave to yourself: to every passing whim, to every urge and want, to your habits, appetites and addictions. What is worse: It will make you a slave to others, who will seize on your weakness to control you. When you do not own yourself, others end up owning you. Since Ham is not his own master, Noah warns, he will end up as a slave to other masters.

  Then, in the following two verses, Noah blesses Ham to become a slave his brothers Shem and Japheth. Our animal energy, our sensual passions, our bodily craving are not essentially bad. On the contrary, they have a power and intensity which is raw, naked and real in their own way. What they do need however is proper channeling. We need to harness our intense animalistic energy and sensuality into the rational standards of Japheth, and into the moral goals of Shem.

  Culture Without Ethics

  Noah’s message to Japheth is no less critical to history. “May   G-d beautify Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Shem (11).” There is great value in aesthetical beauty and cultural accomplishment; yet for Japheth to be truly beautiful and ennobling, he must dwell in the tents of Shem. Culture without ethics, beauty without G-dliness, and education without a moral compass is futile and sometimes even destructive (12). Education can make me a knowledgeable person but it can’t make me a good person for the simple reason that it cannot define any absolute values whatsoever.

  A recent report by the faculty of Harvard University declared that the aim of education is “to unsettle presumptions, to de-familiarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.” This is exciting, but it can also lead to the breakdown of all standards and values.

  Aesthetical Barbarism

  Shem reminds us that the gas chambers were not invented by a primitive, barbaric and illiterate people, but rather by a nation which excelled in sciences and the arts, but nevertheless sent 1.5 million children, and 4.5 million adults, to their deaths solely because they had Jewish blood flowing in their veins. SS guards would spend a day in Auschwitz, gassing as many as 12,000 Jews and then return home in the evening to pet their dogs and laugh with their wives. As the smoke of children ascended from the crematoriums, these charming romantics would enjoy delicious wine, beautiful women and the moving music of Bach and Mozart. They murdered millions of innocents in the name of a developed ethic, and they justified genocide on purely rational grounds.

  In "Schindler’s List," there is a scene which takes place during the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto. A little girl hiding in a piano is shot dead by an SS guard. As her little angelic body lay in a river of blood, another guard sits down to play the piano.

  First SS guard: Was ist das? Ist das Bach?

  Second SS guard: Nein. Mozart.

  First SS guard: Mozart?

  Second SS guard: Ja. And they both marvel at the exquisite music.

  This was Nazi Germany at its best.

  Torah as the Gateway to Culture

  This, then, was Noah’s message. He was teaching his future progeny that when sensual and bodily passion is harnessed and channeled into the proper ideals – it is awesome; when beauty is used to inspire goodness and holiness, it is majestic. “May G-d beautify Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Shem.” Japheth will be truly beautiful if he is links to “tents of Shem,” the progenitor of Torah, of law, of Mitzvos, of Divine values and ethics (13).

  What is more, “Shem” allows us to experience “Ham” and “Japheth” in a far deeper way.

  Let me quote a parable the Lubavitcher Rebbe once shared with Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks (14).

  Imagine two people whose job it is to carry stones. That's what they do for a living, they carry stones. One of them carries big sacks of building material, the other one carries little pouches of diamonds.

  Imagine now you give each of these people a bag of emeralds, how do they respond? The person who spent his whole life carrying heavy building materials looks at this sack of emeralds and thinks, 'Another burden,’ whereas the person who carries diamonds knows the stones are precious, so when you give him emeralds, he says, 'Well those aren't diamonds, but they certainly are precious stones.’ They're not like mine, but I have to value them and take care of them.

  So it is with sensuality and beauty. If you really learn to appreciate the Divine core of existence, the G-dly energy in every person, in every encounter and in every existence, then you will be far more sensitive to the music inherent in sensuality and in aesthetics. The more you learn Torah, the more you develop a Torah perspective on life, the more you can appreciate culture, the arts and even sensual pleasures. Because if you are used to diamonds, you will notice the emeralds.

  The Jewish Story

  As the Torah portion of Noah describes in detail, Shem, Ham and Japheth fathered many civilizations. Each has given the world tremendous gifts, and each fills an irreplaceable role in global destiny. The three brothers are all inter-dependant, and when alienated from each other they suffer from a perversion of their own ideal state. Ham needs Japheth and Shem, and conversely.

  The Jewish people, as we know, are Semites, descendants of Shem. Hatred toward the Jewish people is called Anti-Semitism (15). This is not a coincidence. There is something about the Semite, Shem, which our foes abhor.

  Because Shem captures one of the core callings of the Jew: We are called upon to be a “light unto the nations,” a moral compass in troubling and confusing times. The world needs the Jew to serve as a teacher and source of inspiration to all cultures and civilizations, to talk not only about that which is exciting or boring, polite or impolite, nice or not nice, but about that which is right or wrong, good or bad, true or false, G-dly or un-G-dly.

  The world needs the Jew to teach all cultures that the core of all beauty and the core of all wisdom is the awareness that G-d is one.

  Abraham’s Three Wives

  The Bible relates that Abraham -- the grandson of Shem -- married three women: Sarah -- the daughter of Shem; Ketura -- the daughter of Japheth; and Hagar, the daughter of Ham (16). And in fact he married them in the order in which the brothers appear in the Bible -- first the daughter of Shem, then the daughter of Ham, and finally the daughter of Japheth.

  By marrying these three women, the blessing that G-d bestowed upon Abraham, that "all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you" (17), was beginning to be fulfilled. We need to conclude the journey: to bless ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and the world with the gift of Torah (18).

   

   

  ~~~~~

   

  Footnotes:

  1) Genesis 5:32.

  2) Ibid. 9:19.

  3) Ibid. 9:20-27.

  4) It was obvious to the Sages that Ham did more than just witness his father’s nakedness and report it, as the Torah clearly states that Noah knew what his son DID to him. There are two opinions (Sanhedrin 70a; Rashi 9:22) what exactly it was that Ham did. One opinion is that he castrated Noah. (This is learned from the fact that Noah curses Canaan, Ham’s fourth son. Noah is cursing Ham for preventing him from ever having a fourth son himself.) The other opinion is that Ham sinned with sodomy. (This is learned out from a gezeirah shava, a textual similarity, between this episode and the story of Shechem raping Dina.)

  There are some Bible scholars who link this episode with the account in Leviticus 18, where this phrase "to see the nakedness" of an individual is a euphemistic expression for a sexual act. This would indicate that Ham engaged in homosexual activity with his father. Even in the plain and simple reading of the text it seems clear that Ham looked upon his father in his exposed condition, and obviously did so with a leering glance that had a sexual connotation to it. So whether or not there was outright homosexuality, or only latent, it is clear that some form of perversion is present here, either in thought or in act.

  5) Canaan epitomized the traits of Cham. This is also symbolized by the fact that Canaan was conceived on the ark, as mentioned in the following footnote.

  6) The Talmud (Sanhedrin 108b) relates that in sensitivity to the fact that the rest of the world was being destroyed, all marital relations were strictly forbidden in Noah’s Ark to both man and animals. Yet Ham was the only one who couldn’t restrain himself and Cham’s son Canaan was conceived on the ark (the raven and the dog also violated the rule in the Ark.) This demonstrates the nature of Ham.

  7) Genesis 10:2-3.

  8) Likkutei Torah Bechokosei, Maamar Chaviv Adam 5700 (1940), Likkutei Sichos vol. 15 Noach. Why does the first section of Tanya – dedicated to the story of the two souls – speak only of two souls, emitting the third, rational soul? (The author does mention the rational soul twice -- in ch. 3 and ch. 42, but not as a distinct soul). Perhaps this is to underscore the truth articulated in this essay, that the rational soul on its own can be classified as an expanded animal soul (See Likkutei Sichos ibid. regarding a similar point.) Yet the difficulty remains.

   9) Genesis 9:23 and Rashi ibid.

  10) This distinction is also reflected in the rewards granted to Shem and Japheth for covering Noah with a cloak: the descendants of Shem were given the mitzvah of talis, while the children of Japheth, the Greeks, were given a beautiful garment (Midrash Rabah), or merited burial (Rashi ibid.). Why the distinction between the two? For Shem it was a Divine mitzvah, hence his children received the talis, representing the Divine light engulfing the body. For Japheth it was about aesthetics, so his children received either a beautiful garment or burial, for when a corpse is exposed it does not look very good.

  11) This translation is based on Talmud Megila 9b: “The beauty of Japheth shall be in the tents of Shem.” This has fascinating halachik ramifications: Jewish law allowed us to write a Torah Scroll only in two languages: The Holy Tongue and Greek (Talmud ibid. Rambam Laws of Tefilin ch. 1. Rashi explains there, that “the Greek language is more beautiful than all of the other descendants of Yefes.” Cf. Rambam’s commentary to Mishnah Megilah ch. 2)

  See Rashi, Unkelos and Targum Yonosn who translate “yaft” as expand or enhance. This translation also underscores the role of Yefes as focusing on things which expand and enhance the human spirit and imagination. Also the following words “veyeshkon” are translated here based on Targum Yonason and Talmud ibid.

  12) Rashi translates that “he will dwell,” refers to G-d. G-d may beautify Japheth but He will dwell in the tents of Shem. The explanation in this essay crystallizes the point: Beauty is charming and inspiring, but the experience of G-dliness, of holiness, of Elakus is in Shem – in Torah and in Mitzvos. The rational soul can discern beauty and wisdom, but only the Divine soul can experience “rayne Elakus,” pure G-dliness.

  This is why Noah speaks not of Shem, but of the G-d of Shem, because that is exactly what captures the true essence of Shem – his sensitivity to the G-dliness of reality.

  13) Many Semites have committed and continue to commit atrocities, and often in the name of G-d. Christianity and Islam were founded by Semites and in the name of religion have slaughtered millions. Fundamentalist Islam today demonstrates boundless, passionate cruelty. It is what happens when religion become polluted and when G-d becomes an excuse for the most base, Ham-like bestiality. What we are describing is Shem in its pristine and sublime state.

  14) Quoted in his book A Letter in the Scroll.

  15) The term "Anti-Semitism” was coined in 1879 by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in a pamphlet called, "The Victory of Germandom over Jewry." Using ideas of race and nationalism, Marr argued that Jews had become the first major power in the West. He accused them of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879 Marr founded the "League for Anti-Semitism."

  16) Yalkut Shimoni Iyov Remez 903.

  17) Genesis 12:3.

  18) This essay is based on a commentary by Rabbi S.R. Hirsh to Parshas Noach. It is also based on Maamar Chaviv Adam from Shabbos Parshas Noach 5700 (1939) and other sources.
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