OzTorah

No’ach is described in the famous words, No’ach ish tzaddik, tamim hayah b’dorotav: et haElokim hit’halech No’ach – “No’ach was a righteous man, wholehearted in his generations: No’ach walked with God” (Gen. 6:9).

The sages regarded Abraham as a greater tzaddik: where No’ach walked with God, Abraham walked before God (Gen. 24:40).

There is an analogy: as a young child walks with its parent, but an older child is trusted enough to walk a little ahead of the parent, so No’ach was not yet as morally mature as Abraham was.

There is another comparison, according to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev.

One type of tzaddik is devoted to God and to human beings, but another type is devoted to God and not so much to humans.

The second type is No’ach, who for all his piety is too ready to give up on other people.

The first type is Abraham, who never ceases to endeavour to bring his contemporaries to God. Abraham and his wife Sarah dedicated their lives to what today is called outreach; No’ach gave up and settled for safety in the ark and the hope that a new day would dawn.

Both types are alive and well in our own day; some say, “Let me at least preserve my own and my family’s religious standards,” whereas others keep on trying to bring their contemporaries under the proverbial wings of the Divine Presence.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, if he were alive today, might suggest that there are two types of the Abraham model.

Some follow an outreach method which comes on rather too heavy, being a little too superior and patronising. Others work more subtly, by example rather than what looks like propaganda. Both seek the same goal, but one is more gentle and constructive.

Baruch HaShem, both bring new strength to Judaism, but there are valid ethical questions about how best to pursue the goal.

“Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. 9:6) – there is no doubt about it: murder is wrong, and its punishment is severe.

Though later generations were reluctant to apply the full force of the law by imposing the death penalty, our revulsion against murder is undiminished.

There is a second level on which the law applies. The Talmud says, hamalbin p’nei chavero barabbim, ein lo chelek la’olam haba – “One who publicly shames a fellow human being has no place in the World to Come” (Bava Metzia 59a). Literally hamalbin p’nei chavero means, “One who makes a person’s face white”. By shaming a person publicly so that the blood drains from their face and they become deathly white, you lose your place in the World to Come.

Insulting or gravely embarrassing another person is not literally murder, but you have destroyed their reputation and dignity and the punishment is severe.

Q. Why does the Mishnah have such a low opinion of doctors that it says, “The best of the physicians is destined for Gehenna”?

A. The Mishnah is not being mischievous, cynical or provocative, but warning doctors to recognise their awesome responsibility and human limitations.

Doctors do not deal with ciphers or pawns but with human life. Their judgments affect not only the immediate patient but whole families and indeed the entire community for generations to come, or possibly generations that will never come to birth if a doctor’s deeds or diagnosis should so ordain it.

The doctor’s work demands a liberal dose of humility, compassion and conscience. For should a doctor make an error of judgment, there may be account and reckoning before the law; there will certainly be answerability to the Heavenly Physician in the World to Come.

Q. Why does the Torah sometimes have a samech or peh at the end of a section, without any tie-up with the beginning or end of a chapter?

A. The chapter divisions are not of Jewish origin. They were introduced by Christian scholars and sometimes disturb the logic of the Hebrew text.

For example, the paragraph about Shabbat at the beginning of Genesis 2 should not have been separated from the previous chapter. Nor should the story of Creation have been interrupted to start a new chapter, Genesis 3, unless the purpose was to make Adam’s sin much more important than it is in Jewish thinking.

Jews adopted the Christian chapter numbers reluctantly in the Middle Ages when they were forced into public disputations and both sides needed to identify the verse they were debating about.

The Jewish way of dividing the Torah was into larger and smaller sections. The latter are p’tuchot – “open” sections, marked with a peh, which have an open space between paragraphs, and s’tumot – “closed” sections, marked with a samech, with only a small gap between paragraphs. The divisions follow the logic of the text.

Traditionally, a Jew does not say, “You find such-and-such a word in Genesis 21” but “You find it in the sidra Vayyera“.

Q. Why is it that in the Shema we affirm that God is one, but at the end of Alenu we look forward to the day when He will be one?

A. The Shema proclaims the Jewish belief that “The Lord is one”. For Jews that is axiomatic. God cannot possibly be other than one. Indeed the Divine oneness is the underlying principle of the universe: Leon Roth said, “There is a unity and harmony in the structure of things because of the unity of their source.”

To us this is obvious, and we eagerly await the day when, for the whole of mankind, “The Lord will be one and His Name one”.