Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parshat Noach 1

Shalom Alim we are studying parat Noah this Torah portion of this week as every Torah portion corresponds precisely to what's happening in the world this week and um it's telling us that Hashem looked at the world and he found only one person who was perfect and righteous that is no and we look at our world and we also don't find too many righteous and perfect people in fact Hashem had to wait 10 generations for Noah to arrive at the scene and then after Noah there was again a desert spiritual desert until Abraham came around another 10 Generations so when Abraham was chosen Hashem said finally I found what what he calls a perfect d Dove a pigeon a dove perfect the Jewish people are compared in the Torah to a dove and we see a connection in this week's para Noah sends another kind of a bird a raven but it doesn't want to do his will and then Noah sends a dove and the dove points to him points out to him that the flood finished and it's safe to come out so Hashem saw Abraham and he said I have found that perfect individual nation that is going to save the world so to say Noah in this week's para he saves Humanity what does it mean saving Humanity it doesn't necessarily mean that every member of humanity Will Survive rather what it means is that humankind what Hashem made one person as long as there is one righteous individual in the world the world will continue to exist and there is hope for future Generations so now now in our times we have one righteous nation and that's all it takes we have we started with 17 nations in times of uh um Abraham and now we have many more than 70 perhaps let's say a number 200 Nations we have about 200 nations in the world and out of those 200 Nations how many know Hashem recogn God and want something to do with him not too many and out of those that do recognize God how many of them go further and say I'm going to dedicate my life to the way that God meant it and more than that I will actually work on myself because it says no was a righteous man perfect in his Generations Noah walked with God he was aware of Hashem constantly and a person who recognizes God serves God the next step is that he wants to be like God God serves as his role model and our sages say that such a person wasn't Noah it was Abraham Noah was almost almost there but Abraham went step further and he said I'm going to be like God not only I recognize God I listen to God and I serve him but I am also going to be like God what does it mean be like God so Abraham showed us one example and that is be as kind as God be as generous as caring as God with Abraham going out of his way to invite um guests and not guests that are going to be a good company it's fun to be with but no the low lowest of the low Idol worshippers he would go out of his way to benefit people not to invite guests so that I have fun I have good time or maybe they'll bring me a nice gift as well no these are people that come empty-handed they come from different culture different religion they worship idols that we despise and still we invite them we beg them to come and we uh serve them that's Abraham and so Hashem saw the Jewish people and he said this is the people who will be like me like God himself so the Jewish people don't stop at just recognizing God and screaming out God is great like our brothers um the Muslims do they don't just recognize God and therefore listen to him and uh try to think about him but we the Jewish people we also go a step further and we say how can I be like God I will look in myself and I will see what separates me and God God you take two objects and you say like uh the game The Children Play and you have to find differences what's different on this picture from this picture find all the differences so we look inside of us and we say let me compare my behavior to the way God would behave let me study how God runs the world he's patient he's kind he's strong and all the characteristics that we can find for God and I will compare myself am I as truthful honest as God am I as kind taking care of the whole world as God does am I as patient even people use God's life and health and air and water that he gives them and they use it against him and he is patiently supplying them with oxygen and their muscles are moving if people disrespect me will I still help them out this is something we see with the with the the Jewish people a neighboring country is sending them Rockets and the Jewish people are sending them water and electricity and all the things they need they're killing their civilians and the Jewish people this is a Jewish trait to be like God so the Jewish people look inside of them and they say what else can I change in myself so that I become more Godly so much so that at the end of his life Moshe our Prophet was called Isha Elohim he is a godly man he's half man half Divine why because he worked on himself especially on his humility mosha being described by Hashem as the the most humble of all man means that he worked on himself it wasn't a just a genetic it wasn't just happened to be be born with a good character he had to work hard and the our sages say that it wasn't when he went to heaven when he went to shamai on Mount Si that he became Divine you have to deserve that God should speak to you when did God speak to Moshe when he was a Shepherd pasturing his father-in-law's sheep and he showed his compassion his kindness his patience to the sheep and God said you ready to be my messenger how did he develop it from the young age some say he was 12 some say 13 some say 18 when he ran away from parro's Palace from Egypt until we meet him at around age 78 when he married seora for 60 years between 60 to 70 years he was not um in the Torah we don't know what happened to him about our sages say that during the that time he was working on himself he was working on his compassion on his patience so much so that when he was um 80 years old God came to him so what we learn from this Torah portion Noah is that unfortunately God created a beautiful world but people did not work on themselves to perfect their character and to become like God God instead what happened the the Torah tells us at the end of parid Hashem saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the Earth and we mentioned it numerous times that where does evil come evil is the product of people it's an invention of people God does not create evil God is righteous and everything he does is righteous God created a beautiful Perfect World created a beautiful perfect human being every system in the world is perfect every system in the human body is perfect but we wake up in the morning and instead of saying what can I do good today not us but some people say who can I take advantage of where can I get unlawful gain from who can I trick lie cheat abuse unfortunately there are people like that and they explain it to themselves that really that's how the world works it's the survival of the fittest they say you see the lion eats the antelope and the large fish eats the small fish God created it like this I am part of the food pyramid and they behave like an animal or worse so Hashem says the wickedness of man was great upon the Earth and every product of the thoughts of his heart was but evil always so Hashem says I have to blot out man whom I created from the face of the Earth and not only man animals also and insects and even birds and only Noah found Grace in the eyes of Hashem this is from last week's paraa and this week's paraa Hashem tells us that by this time Noah had already Three Sons Shem ham and yeed after the mabul the flood these three sons became the three progenitors of races we can call it the way we learned in school you have the Caucasian you have the Mongolian or Oriental and you have the African this is just because we're familiar I don't know if it fits exactly but just to understand that three races came from the three sons of Noah who came from one man Noah we all we are all the whole Humanity come from one person it's not that some of us came from monkeys and some of us came from um another planet no we're all the same there is no human being that can say I am greater than you are because we all cousins distant cousins we all come from Noah but each one of the three sons sh ham and Yeet carry different qualities Shem in Hebrew means the name a name is a philosophical concept with which we describe the essence of the object or an animal or a person ham means hot hot tempered and Yeet comes from the word beauty so each one of the of of the sons of Noah represented another aspect of humanity one represented the Mind One represented the the the heart emotion the beauty music and one represented the heat of the body physicality to be successful a human being needs to have all three we have to use our mind and develop it properly we have to use our emotions our heart our feelings and we have to also keep control over our body and and use our body to make the world a better place and that is why by the way Hashem sends into the world potential for Perfection if the three sons of Noah would work together they would create a perfect world this is similar to the story of Yakov and esav Yakov represented the spiritual world world and esav represented the physical world they were both sons of the same man yak and if they would combine forces they would conquer the world in a good sense of the word word they would bring Utopia and mashia asov would show his might power Financial abilities military strength and with it he would um cause all the nations to pay attention to whom to Yakov to his brother and yakob would then educate them but it wasn't uh to be so it is with Shem ham and yeed together with philosophy together with music and art and um uh Beauty and together with physical abilities might strength body Health Humanity would have been perfect like God wished we would have made the right choices all the time have done the right things created beautiful music and art world can be a perfect place but the world is not a perfect place and one of the reasons is in the S para the paraa starts with people making mistakes and God says enough I'm going to destroy it and the para continues how God destroys the the humanity and the animal and plant and um um birds and insects all of them he saves only the elite small sample size in the Tava in the ark and then he gives them another chance they come out of the Ark after a whole year 365 days they were in that t an entire Jewish month or I'm sorry year of 12 months plus another 11 days to correspond to the solar year the Jewish year is 350 uh days and the solar year is 11 days more 365 so the Maul the flood was on Earth for 365 days in order to purify every day of the year spiritually and physically because as the Earth go goes around its orbit around the Sun every place that the Earth visits if people are righteous it sanctifies that place if people are evil at that moment that day causes that space to be not positively charged weak spiritually and as the earth goes around it passes through the same area even though we're all flying our galaxy is flying but within our Locale we we come back to the same place physically and TimeWise spiritually and if last year at that time we did something negative this year at this time we will feel it this is what we go through when we um celebrate our holidays we're not only remembering but we're actually living through it because time wise and spacewise we're going through the same field and energy so the Maul had to last for 365 days in order to purify the time and to purify the space of the entire solar system and it worked but people repeated their mistakes ham was the first one to fall he and we see that every time that a human being makes a mistake it's a mistake of character and H was the first one to make this mistake of character he saw his father in a less than perfect State his father drank a little too much and went to rest in his uh private tent and his grandson Canan wandered in without permission saw Noah laying there not fully dressed and not covered and he made fun of him and he went and he said to his father ham Noah's son and ham instead of rebuking his son and instead of blocking the door saying no one come in and taking a garment and covering Noah instead he went and he continued making fun of his father perhaps just to give him the benefit of the doubt perhaps he felt that Noah should have done better and he shouldn't have drunk so much but still it was inappropriate for him to um abuse his father and therefore ham was punished Shem and yeffet they did what ham was supposed to do they Protected Their father's dignity they went in without looking and they covered their father and they stood guard that no one should disturb him when no woke up he realized that the mabul didn't help 100% within his family there are still bad character traits that even though they spent a whole year in the ark protected from from the society from the negative effect from society still they didn't perfect themselves and being in the ark wasn't just a you know a getaway just a vacation it was hard labor our sages say that no and his family worked the entire 365 days 24/7 they were working what were were they working on so on a simple level they were working on feeding the animals cleaning after them taking care of the animals but on a deeper level they were working on their animalistic character traits they were working on each one of their traits the trait of a lion perhaps harsh cruel perhaps anger can be associated with a lion and they didn't fix it ham show that he has a flow in his character later yeed also showed he has a flaw in his character and later descendants of Shem some of them also show that they have flaws in their character but ham was the first one the most base and he received the curse now so far if we count we have a few curses in the Torah and we're only in the second para in the first para we have the snake receiving the curse and then we have the ground receiving the curse and we have Ken receiving the curse the snake received the curse for tricking Kava and causing her to eat from the tree the um the ground was cursed because it absorb absorbed the blood of Heaven it was also cursed um commentators say because it didn't listen to Hashem Hashem wanted that the ground should produce trees whose every part is edible tastes the same as the fruit itself and instead the trees only produced a small part that's at edible the fruit but the roots and the trunk and the leaves and the branches and the bark all of that is not edible and God was not happy with that but be as it may we see that God cursed the snake he didn't curse Adam rather he gave him a punishment a a consequence that he has to eat from the the with the sweat of his brow and so on and so forth Hashem didn't curse K rather he said that as a consequence of you listening to the uh snake now you will have difficulty um carrying a child in your womb giving birth to a child and raising the child being dependent on the man so the men and women got consequence quences the snake and the ground got a curse Ken killed heav he got a curse also and in this week's para we have Canan the grandson of Noah the son of ham receiving a curse also already four curses in just two two Torah portions and a curse means that there is something permanent a permanent blemish Adam didn't receive a curse because God saw that he has a chance he can be better K she has opportunity to improve but the snake doesn't have Ken had to die and all his uh uh descendants died no no chance