October 20, 2012

Parashat No•ah, Genesis 6:9–11:32

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Abigail Treu, Rabbinic Fellow and Director of Donor Relations, JTS.

 

The Windows by Constantine P. Cavafy, Greek poet, 1863–1933

In these darkened rooms, where
I spend oppressive days,
I pace to and fro to find the windows.
When a window opens, it will be a consolation.
But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot find them.
And maybe it is best that I do not find them. Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will reveal?


Hovering at the edge of the question of what life on the ark was like for Noah is the problem of the window.

But before we get to that: let's agree that the story of Noah and the ark is a parable, rife with symbolism of our own negotiation of transitions and traumas of all kinds. Let's agree that, like Noah, we struggle to understand that the world we once knew is not the world that endures for our entire lifespan. Let's agree that fear of change is the greatest human dread. And let's agree, too, that at some point in our own survival stories, we find a way to cope and begin again—just as Noah, in the end, sets foot on dry land and plants a vineyard there too.

And now, back to the window.

The ark's window bothered the Rabbis. It is a technical problem: in Genesis 8:6, Noah "opened the window (chalon) of the ark that he had made," but in the very thorough account of the construction of the ark earlier in the parashah, no window was ever made. "What window?" the Rabbis wonder. Rashi glosses that the window is the tzohar of 6:16, which is indisputable because no one knows what a tzohar is and the word does not appear again in all of Tanakh. It is translated by the Jewish Publication Society as "daylight," based on the tradition begun in Targum Onkelos, and picked up by the Rabbis, that it was something that illuminated the ark, perhaps a daylight, perhaps a precious glowing gem. The Vulgate—the Latin translation of the Bible, done in the fourth-century AD—translates it as fenestra, meaning "window," and the medieval Rabbis take that up as exemplified by Rashi's gloss: "The window of the ark that he had made: this is the tzohar, and not the opening of the ark made for entering and exiting." But on the peshat, the literal level, a chalon is not necessarily a tzohar (whatever that is), and if it were, wouldn't we find the same word in both places?

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