I am very excited for the opportunity to share words of Torah with you. Each week, in this spot, I look to share an idea I've found that speaks to me and that I think will resonate with you as well. This week, I share with you an article by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Z"L entitled "The Light in the Ark" that gives deeper meaning to one particular question in the detail of the construction of Noah's Ark.
Amid all the drama of the impending flood and the destruction of almost all of creation, we focus on Noah building the ark, and hear one detailed instruction:
Make a tzohar for the ark and terminate it within a cubit of the top. (Gen. 6:16)
There is an obvious problem understanding what "tzohar" means, since the word does not appear anywhere else in Tanach. Everyone agrees that it is referring to a source of illumination. It is what will give light within the ark itself. But what exactly was it? Rashi quotes a Midrash in which two Rabbis disagree as to its meaning:
Some say this was a window; others say that it was a precious stone that gave light to them.[1] The precious stone had the miraculous quality of being able to generate light within the darkness. [...] It remains fascinating to ask why the Rabbis of the Midrash, and Rashi himself, would spend time on a question that has no practical relevance. There will be - God promised this in this week's parsha - no further flood. There will be no new Noah. In any future threat to the existence of the planet, an ark floating on the water will not be sufficient to save humankind. So why should it matter what source of illumination Noah had in the ark during those tempestuous days? What is the lesson for the generations?
I would like to offer a midrashic speculation. [...] It seems to me that the Rabbis of the Midrash were not so much commenting on Noah and the ark as reflecting on a fundamental question of Torah. Where and what is the tzohar, the brightness, the source of illumination, for the tevah, the Word? Does it come solely from within, or also from without? Does the Torah come with a window or a precious stone?
There were certainly those who believed that Torah was self-sufficient. If something is difficult in Torah it is because the words of Torah are poor in one place but rich in another.[2] In other words, the answer to any question in Torah can be found elsewhere in Torah. Turn it over and turn it over for everything is within it.[3] This is probably the majority view, considered historically. There is nothing to be learned outside. The Torah is illuminated by a precious stone that generates its own light. This is even hinted at in the title of the greatest work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar [...]. There were, however, other views. Most famously, Maimonides believed that a knowledge of science and philosophy - a window to the outside world - was essential to understanding God's word. He made the radical suggestion, in the Mishnah Torah (Hilchot Yesodei ha-Torah 2:2), that it was precisely these forms of study that were the way to the love and fear of God. Through science - the knowledge of "He who spoke and called the universe into existence" - we gain a sense of the majesty and beauty, the almost infinite scope and intricate detail of creation and thus of the Creator. That is the source of love. Then, realising how small we are and how brief our lives in the total scheme of things: that is the source of fear. [...] This view, articulated by Maimonides, was developed in the modern age in a variety of forms. Devotees of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch called it Torah im derech eretz, "Torah with general culture." In Yeshiva University it came to be known as Torah u-Madda, "Torah and science." Together with the late Aaron Lichtenstein zt"l, I preferred the phrase Torah ve-Chochmah, "Torah and wisdom," because wisdom is a biblical category. [...]
[...I]t was precisely Maimonides' breadth of knowledge of science, medicine, psychology, astronomy, philosophy, logic, and many other fields that allowed him to be so creative in everything he wrote, from his letters, to his Commentary to the Mishnah, to the Mishnah Torah itself, structured differently from any other code of Jewish law, all the way to The Guide for the Perplexed. Maimonides said things that many may have sensed before, but no one had expressed so cogently and powerfully. He showed that it is possible to be utterly devoted to Jewish faith and law and yet be creative, showing people spiritual and intellectual depths they had not seen before. That was his way making a tzohar, a window for the tevah, the divine word. On the other hand, the Zohar conceives of Torah as a precious stone that gives light of itself and needs none from the outside. Its world is a closed system, a very deep, passionate, moving, sustained search for intimacy with the Divine that dwells within the universe and within the human soul.
So we are not forced to choose either the one or the other. [...] I believe that the challenge for our time is to open a series of windows so that the world can illuminate our understanding of Torah and Torah guide us as we seek to make our way through the world.
Hoping and praying for a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Davies
Rabbi@SOICherryHill.org
