Genesis and Infertility
Nov 1, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah
My aunt and uncle never had children. In a very real sense, my sister and I were their surrogate family. We visited them often, stayed with them in the summers and loved them dearly. In Germany, my uncle had been a textile salesman. When they came to America in 1937, he decided to work with dogs, his lifelong passion, rather than fabrics. Eventually, they acquired a kennel for dogs out in Yaphank, Long Island, and quickly endowed it with renown by dint of hard work. They boarded, bred and even showed dogs.
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God’s Evolution
Nov 5, 2005 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Noah
Our sacred canon serves as the touchstone for tradition.
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Small Crimes, Big Punishment
Oct 29, 2011 By Charlie Schwartz | Commentary | Text Study | Noah
This week’s midrash has a rather shocking answer to the question of why the world deserved to be wiped out in the days of Noah.
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Why Noah?
Oct 28, 2006 By Sharon Keller | Commentary | Noah
When we think of Parashat Noah, we envision a story that everyone is familiar with from early childhood. In our mind’s eye we can see the ark with its tiered decks and Noah swathed in a white robe, looking out the window as a dove flies off toward a rainbow in the background. If that image is not familiar, a trip to any local bookstore (especially one with a children’s section) will provide a variety of options. Noah figures prominently in our mental version of the story, as he does in Genesis, but is the text focusing on him and his actions, or is the Bible emphasizing something else?
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Sexual Immorality
Oct 12, 2002 By Lauren Eichler Berkun | Commentary | Noah
The Flood story in Parashat Noah is a frightening account of divine punishment.
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Chaos and Creation
Nov 1, 2003 By Melissa Crespy | Commentary | Noah
Striking me, on this year’s reading of Parashat Noah, were the two following verses: “God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided” (Genesis 8:1), and “But the dove could not find a resting place for its foot (v’lo matz’ah ha-yonah manoah), and returned to him to the ark, for there was water over all the earth” (Genesis 8:9).
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A Lesson From Sarajevo
Oct 9, 2010 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Noah
It was raining when we visited Mostar, a city enshrined in memory by Christiane Amanpour reporting for CNN while standing in front of the ruins of the historic bridge that had united the city before the war devastated Yugoslavia. In 1993, that bridge was destroyed by shelling after standing for 427 years. On one side lived Christians, and on the other, Muslims. Before the war, Christians and Muslims freely crossed the bridge. They did business together, rejoiced together, married one another. Families had extensive ties on both sides of the Neretva River (see photo below). As the Bible might say, they shared “the same language and the same words.”
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Noah’s Repetition and Contradiction
Oct 24, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Commentary | Noah
Read the Noah story—the whole thing, from the very end of Genesis 5 and not just from the beginning of the parashah—and you will immediately sense that there is a problem. Why are there so many repetitions, tensions, and outright contradictions? Why are we told twice about Noah’s offspring (5:32 and 6:10)? Why does the story offer two explanations for God’s decision to destroy all creatures, removing them from the face of the earth—one explanation relating to the transgression of the divine/human divide and the wickedness of the human heart (6:1-7), and the other relating to human violence (6:11-12)?
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