Genesis, 6:9-11:32

Portion Summary

The portion, Noah, speaks of sinful people and the Creator, who sends a flood to the world. “Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generations” (Genesis, 6:9). This is why he was chosen to survive the flood.

But he did not survive alone. Rather, he was commanded to build an ark and move into it with his kin and one pair of each animal. They were to remain in the ark for forty days and forty nights until the flood stopped.

The Creator made a covenant with Noah and his family that the flood would never return. As a token of the covenant, He placed the rainbow in the sky.

The end of the portion speaks of the tower of Babel, about the people who decided to build a tower whose head reaches the heaven. The Creator responded by confusing their language so they would not understand one another, and finally dispersing them throughout the country.

Commentary

The portion, Noah, is long, intense, and contains more details and events than other portions. As this portion takes place at the beginning of the Torah, it also marks the beginning of our spiritual path, the most important time in our spiritual development.

These initial stages unfold quite quickly, unlike subsequent events when we begin to actually correct our qualities meticulously. Later on, the events described are far more detailed, as we will see in those that later unfold in the Torah.

Our development takes place entirely over our egotistical will to receive, which we must turn into bestowal. Today we are still in the midst of a process where all of humanity must begin to work with their egos to forge the right connections among people. The struggle to overcome the ego is always a big problem, and appears as waves of a great sea, called Malchut of Ein Sof (Malchut of infinity).

Each time, the ego arises and we do not know what to do, so our only option is to hide in a box, in an ark. This is not merely an escape; it is actually a correction. We build around ourselves a kind of bubble, the quality of bestowal, and hide in it from all of our terrible egotistical qualities. This is how we advance.

When the ego manifests, we walk into the ark, where we adjust our corrections in order to rise above the ego and avoid using it. In the ark, we disconnect from the surrounding world, where terrible things are happening. As we do so, the self-centered desires ferociously bang on our ark’s hull, attempting to pull us into many places and directions, into the depths of the sea. And yet, we stay inside the ark, focused on the desire to remain in the quality of bestowal.

The stay in the ark lasts forty days and forty nights. This is the difference between Malchut and Bina, because all of Malchut, all the desires, are included in Bina. We check ourselves by asking the crow, but the crow does not answer. The dove, however, does answer because it is from the side of Rachamim (mercy), from the right, from the side of peace.

When we receive the answer that all of our desires are controlled by the quality of bestowal, it is a sign that we have survived the flood. It is an indication that all of our desires and qualities, which are called “one’s kin” (the family that is in the ark), have passed the first stage of correction and we are now able to continue with the corrections. The purpose of the whole process, this flow, is for us to correct our egotistical, broken souls and bring them to a state where they are in pure bestowal, and thus in complete equivalence of form, in Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator.

When we go out into the air, to the dry land, the Creator says that He will make a covenant with us regarding everything that we are about to undergo. The covenant is for the future, when similar events might occur, so that we will know that we can use the forces we have used in the past.

The covenant testifies that we cannot correct ourselves and that we are compelled to use the same forces we did in the past. This is why we do not like the token of the rainbow in the sky.

Here is an example: Let us assume that we are in a quarrel and we remember that we used to be friends. Then, for the sake of that past relationship we make peace again. Thus, the rainbow—the covenant—is not a good sign because it marks our entrance into a time of weakness, where further troubles are ahead, for which we will need this covenant.

Noah’s time marks the beginning of a new development. There are ten generations from Adam to Noah. These are the ten Sefirot, and there are ten more generations (Sefirot) from Noah to Abraham. There are many qualities in us that grow within us and then appear, until we again recognize our own egotistical qualities. Apparently, we have forgotten the qualities of bestowal we had while in the ark, so we can no longer cover them with Hassadim, the quality of Hesed (mercy), and with love of others, to be as one family, as it was with Noah in the ark when the whole world was as a family. At that time, everyone was under the canopy of Hassadim, under a canopy of love, collaborating in mutual guarantee.

Now as our egotistical desires grow once more, they lead us back to Babel—a state where we see our egos soar, attempting to have and control everything. The great egoist who controls the person is Nimrod. This is a force that is willing to do anything.

Nimrod wants to control our lives. He does not want to be above, in the quality of bestowal, but only in the quality of reception, as we can see all around us in our world today.

Everything that happened at Noah’s time had to happen because of the rule, “I have created the evil inclination; I have created for it the Torah as a spice” (Kidushin, 30b), because “the light in it reforms them.” In other words, we need to discover the evil in us, and from that revelation of evil we will discover its antidote, since we will not want to remain in the evil. This is why we need to obtain the light that reforms, the special light that the wisdom of Kabbalah tells us how to obtain so we may correct ourselves with it.

All the stories of the Torah prior to Noah’s, such as that of Cain and Abel, describe how the ego intensified. We learn about it from The Zohar, which tells us about the true meaning of the stories of the Torah. The Zohar tells us openly what is simply implied in the Torah. It reveals to us what hides behind every human story, and what the Torah is actually telling us in its narratives. It is with good reason that the wisdom of Kabbalah is called the “wisdom of truth.”

The Torah speaks of our souls, about how we must bring that soul out of hiding. We must discover the soul at every degree of its Aviut, at every stage of its shattering, and we must correct it. Within the corrected soul, we must feel our spiritual lives and remain in them, as it is written, “You will see your world in your life” (Berachot, 17a). We must discover the spiritual world, the Creator, the “me” that is found in the spiritual world, and we must do it here and now, while we are in this world.

However, to enter the next world we must first discover our broken souls. In this process, our souls will grow on the left line. This means that over the ten generations from Adam to Noah, great desires of the will to receive have developed in the soul. At the stage where we finish with the left line—following the Creator’s decision—the right line comes along and begins to correct the left. The left line is the corrupted, broken Malchut, while the right line is Bina, the qualities of bestowal, qualities of love, giving, and mercy.

Subsequently, ten new generations arrive, the ten Sefirot from Noah to Abraham—intended to correct the previous generations from Adam to Noah—meaning ten Sefirot of Ohr Yashar and ten Sefirot of Ohr Hozer. Abraham comes after those twenty generations and receives the beginning of the soul at a level where he can already understand and recognize its purpose. This is why he breaks the statues and begins to fight his own huge ego, which appears to him as Nimrod, as Babylon. With Nimrod on the left, and Abraham on the right, we can begin to fight for the correction of the soul.

All these names and incidents describe what happens to our souls. The Torah speaks of what each of us should go through, and we will gradually discover how we actually go through those stages.

Questions and Answers

Is a flood a bad thing? Today, words such as “tsunami” and “flood” arouse terror.

Yes, it is bad in spirituality, too. A flood implies “evil waters,” or Gevurot. Water is essentially Hassadim, but when connected to an ego that controls it, it becomes dangerous water.

In this story, as well as in the story of the tower of Babel, we learn that the Creator decided to confuse the people; He caused them to sin, and then seemingly punished them.

Of course, nothing happens without Him, for “there is none else besides Him.” What matters is how we react, accept, and partake of what is happening. In each situation, we must be His partners and understand His works. It is like a mother playing with her baby. The mother wants the baby to understand her and play with her as she is playing with her child. Therefore, of course the Creator is behind the whole process, but the question is whether we know how to react to what unfolds correctly at each moment.

Can we react like that baby?

If we look at babies, we will see that they are never at rest. They are constantly striving to grasp the world, examining and learning from it. Childhood is the time of building the man, the time of man’s corrections. After age twenty, everyone begins to grow old and dwindle.

The phases one goes through—the evil water, Noah, and Abraham—put us in terrible restlessness. But in the end, we will all have to go through this process to correct our souls.

That is why the whole Torah, from “In the beginning” to “Israel,” was written for us, so that we can experience it in our inner work. When we correct the soul, we enter the next world.

What is Noah’s Ark, and how does one enter it?

The ark is the quality of Bina. We are told how Bina is built, learn of her qualities and of how the Sefirot, GAR of Bina and ZAT of Bina, connect—meaning the first three Sefirot—Keter, Hochma, and Bina. Then we learn of the seven lower Sefirot—Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. We are also told about the three parts of Bina—the one that belongs to the upper one, the one that belongs to Bina herself, and the one that belongs to the lower ones. Bina is a quality that receives from above and builds herself in order to pass on downward, like a mother who receives from the father and turns what she received into something suitable for the baby.

What does “being in Bina” mean?

“Being in Bina” means receiving the upper illumination. Everything comes from the influence of the upper light, and we cannot find it alone or within ourselves. When we receive this illumination from within, we feel we are inside a special force where the ego cannot harm or deflect us from our path. We are completely protected there, as though in a bubble or a box. It is still not attainment, since we are protected inside the box like a baby in the womb, but then the womb opens and the baby emerges.

Once we are born we discover that our egos have grown tremendously. This is already the time of Babylon, and in this state, Nimrod and Abraham grow within.

Initially, Abraham is controlled by Nimrod. But when he sees that his ego is working against him and he must break free, Abraham exits Nimrod’s authority and tries to establish his quality of Hesed as the ruler of the ego. Although he cannot currently do it, since he must disconnect himself from it, he finally escapes and turns toward the land of Canaan.

What did the tower of Babylon stand for then? And is it different now?

The tower of Babel is the ego that appears in us, smothering us and not allowing us to live. On the one hand there is Nimrod, who wants to grow as high as the sky; on the other hand there is Abraham, who sees that this goal is impossible.

In that state, they part ways. The majority of the qualities follow the ego, with Nimrod. The qualities that can be cut off from the temptation that lies in the tower of Babel—and be corrected by Abraham—are those that we must begin to correct. These qualities (Abraham’s) join our journey toward the land of Canaan, in the partial correction of the soul.

Today, nearly 4,000 years later, we—the “descendants of Abraham” and the “descendents of Nimrod”—are reassembling to create a joint connection. We have built the Tower of Babel once again—our global financial and economic empire. While on the one hand everything is falling apart, on the other, we, the “descendants of Abraham,” are trying to do something to correct it. However, so far no one is listening.

Today we have no choice because we are past the whole process that The Book of Zohar details. Now we must complete the correction so Abraham can govern Babylon, the ego.

Today the world’s powers do not think about changing man. They focus on changing the economic and financial systems to satisfy the ego even more. They do not think beyond it, not even as it was at the time of Noah—entering a bubble of mutual bestowal and avoiding contact with the ego.

They do not think of ceasing the wars and competition because their only interest is to profit from it. To date, none of the world’s powers are ready to listen, since the financial system is a projection of our egotistical connections, hence all the crises along the way. All we can do is learn a great deal from it.

The current crisis is the last one because it describes the totality of the egotistical connections between us, which are about to break down. The message of unity can be circulated when many people talk about the crisis and its cause. It is possible that this period will end well, but it is also possible that it will decline into a war; it depends on the people on Abraham’s side.

So we are the “addition” to the tower of Babel?

We belong to Abraham’s group, the one that left Babylon and moved with Abraham to the land of Canaan. The others, the egoists, belong to the group that came from Nimrod, from Babylon. We must go through this period of the last recognition of evil, which is the war of Gog uMagog, after which we will achieve the final correction of the common soul.

Does the confusion of the languages mark the collapse of the financial system?

The confusion of the languages has been here since Babylon and has lasted until today. It arose because the singular, great ego shattered into myriad pieces to all its inclinations, and each part leaned and pulled to itself. The external manifestation of this is the confusion of the languages.

From The Zohar: And the Lord Smelled the Sweet Savor

“After the flood, ‘I will not again,’ since now the revelation of the evil has been completed, for I no longer need to add fire to disclose the Din (judgment), for the evil has been revealed sufficiently. ‘For the inclination in a man’s heart is evil from his youth,’ and he must not be scolded, and all of the Creator’s punishments are but corrections.”

Zohar for All, Noah, item 243 -

“And all of the Creator’s punishments are but corrections.” If we truly relate to life this way and accept that everything happens for the purpose of correction, we should only know how to take part, how to make ourselves part of this flow, even if just a little, in order to experience a spiritual life filled with abundance.