Parsha for Kids: Noach 2022
Below is the transcript for this week’s episode of Parsha for Kids, Noach 2022.
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Hello! My name is Chana, and this is Parsha for Kids. The Parsha of the week is Noach. Noach is the name of the main character in this week’s story. Noach is the son of a man named Lemech. He was named this because his father hoped he would grow up to be a person who would bring rest, menucha, to the world. The pasuk in Bereshit Chapter 5 verse 29 says
וַיִּקְרָ֧א אֶת־שְׁמ֛וֹ נֹ֖חַ לֵאמֹ֑ר זֶ֞ה יְנַֽחֲמֵ֤נוּ מִמַּֽעֲשֵׂ֨נוּ֙ וּמֵֽעִצְּב֣וֹן יָדֵ֔ינוּ מִן־הָ֣אֲדָמָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵֽרֲרָ֖הּ יְהֹוָֽה:
This means “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands from the ground, which the Lord has cursed.”
You may be wondering why the ground was cursed. This was because of Adam and Chava’s rebellion. When they decided to eat from the Etz Ha’Daas Tov v’Ra, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were each punished when it came to their ability to create and generate new life. Adam would now have trouble making food grow from the ground because the ground would produce thorns and thistles instead. And Chava would experience pain when she would give birth to a baby.
So when Lemech named Noach, he hoped that Noach would be the one to break the curse. He thought that Noach would give the people menucha, rest, from their work.
In the end, Noach does accomplish this- although NOT the way that Lemech thought he would!
TRANSITION SOUND
Noach lived ten generations after Adam. You may be wondering what a generation is. Imagine your grandparent, then your parent, and then you. That’s three generations. In Noach’s case, Adam lived ten generations before him.
How had earth changed since the time of Adam?
Unfortunately, it had not changed for the better. God tells us that the earth became corrupted and that it was full of chamas.
What does chamas mean? It’s a Hebrew word.
Sometimes when we don’t know what a word means, we can look at a commentary who will help explain it to us. Commentators, also known as parshanim or meforshim, are people who studied the Torah for many years and knew it very well. Nowadays, we have the Internet, and it’s easy to compare different pesukim in the Torah that have the same words, but these parshanim knew the Torah so well that they could do that before the Internet was invented. Think about researchers or scientists or doctors who spend so much time studying that they know whatever they are researching really well. That’s what the parshanim were like, but even more so- since most of them studied Torah from the time they were extremely young.
One famous parshan is called Rashi. His real name is Rabbi Shlomo ben (which means son of) Yitzchak, and he was also known as Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki. He lived in France from the year 1040 till 1105. Rashi wrote explanations on pesukim in the Torah to help us understand them better. Sometimes he includes explanations that he learned from others who came before him, such as the Baalei HaMidrash. Other times he gives his own explanation.
Who are the Baalei Hamidrash? These are individuals who read the Torah very carefully and were able to learn important lessons from it. Their lessons are usually based on noticing something odd about the Hebrew. Maybe they notice that the same idea was repeated twice, or the grammar is wrong in the sentence. Think about the sentence in English, “They goed to the store.” We would notice that doesn’t make sense. It should be “They WENT to the store.” Close readers of the Torah would notice this kind of thing and wonder about why the sentence was written that way. They would search for clues and come up with answers. Many of their answers provide more information and details about the story and include lessons for us on how we can live our lives.
So let’s go back to Rashi. Rashi will help us understand what the word chamas means. He tells us it means gezel, which is Hebrew for robbery.
If human beings were stealing from one another, then they were not being kind to one another. And God got very upset about this.
You see, there are different kinds of ways that people can make wrong choices. People can make a wrong choice when it comes to God. For example, instead of worshiping God, they could decide to worship something else, like the sun or the moon. They could even worship an idol. An idol is a statue that a human being makes out of wood or stone or gold and then bows down to. This is a sin against God.
But there are also sins against human beings AND God. Stealing from a human being is an example of that kind of sin. You are taking something that does not belong to you, and taking it away from the person it DOES belong to.
Which one do YOU think is worse? A sin against just God or a sin against a human being plus God?
TRANSITION SOUND
God decided to destroy His creations because He was so upset by the chamas that had filled the world. However, He decided He would save some people. These were the people who had made good choices and who were not stealing. God didn’t want the world to go back to the emptiness that had been there before Bereshit.
One of the people God decided to save was Noach.
He told Noach to build a Teivah, a big ship called an ark. The ark would include Noach, his wife, his three sons and their wives, and pairs of all the animals and birds in the world, plus food to give them to make sure they would survive.
This seems like an odd way for God to make sure that human beings and animals would live on. Why did he want Noach to do so much work? God could have saved the people in a different way. He could have decided that there would be a plague and everyone except for Noach and his family and the animals and birds would simply have died. Or God could have lifted Noach and his family and the animals and birds up on a special cloud while the rest of the earth was destroyed.
Why did Noach have to build the Ark himself? That would take many years to complete!
What do you think the answer is?
Rashi also wondered about this. He researched this question and this is what he discovered. God deliberately wanted Noach to work on the Ark for many, many years. That way, all of the people who lived during Noach’s generation would come up to him and say “What are you doing?”
“Building an Ark,” Noach would answer.
“Why?” the people would ask.
“Because God is upset about the choices people are making and He plans to bring a flood that will destroy the whole Earth,” Noach would reply.
Maybe when people heard this, they would get scared and change their behaviors. Maybe they would decide to serve God properly. Maybe they would do teshuva. Teshuva means to return to God, although some people translate it as “repent.” If people returned to God and stopped stealing, then maybe God would not bring the flood!
Unfortunately, this is not what happened. The people did see Noach building an Ark. But they did not change their ways and the flood did come.
TRANSITION SOUND
How do you think people reacted when they saw Noach building the Ark?
They must have been puzzled. Maybe they even thought he was acting strange. Whenever people do something new or unusual, there are doubters who don’t believe in their vision.
Noach was a partner with God in acting as an inventor. God told him exactly what to do, and Noach did it. But at the time, people must have thought he was very strange for building that invention.
If you study history, you will see that this pattern repeats itself. Many people who invented something new - like Thomas Alva Edison, who invented a long-lasting filament for the light bulb, or the Wright Brothers, who invented the first planes with motors, or Philo Farnsworth, who invented the television- were surrounded by people who did not think what they were doing was possible. Sometimes these people even laughed at them and their ideas and said they were crazy. That’s because those people couldn’t imagine the future the way that these inventors did.
We learn an important lesson from this week’s parsha. Just because an idea is new does not mean it is crazy. People who are willing to invent new things can help our entire world get better and progress. And this is especially true in the case of Noach, who had God on his side!
If you have an idea for something new, and would like to invent it, I encourage you to try it- even if some people might think it’s silly!
TRANSITION SOUND
The Mabul, or Flood, lasted a long time. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and not only did it rain, but the hot springs from within the Earth opened up as well. Water surrounded the Ark on every side. The water reached so high that it even covered up the mountains!
During this time, Noach and his family were very busy. They had to feed every single animal, which took a lot of time and involved a lot of work. Plus, not every animal ate the same kind of food. In addition, the animals pooped, so Noach and his family would have to transfer the poop to a different area of the ship. Noach and his family were busy from day until night. The fact that the animals survived was dependent on Noach’s and his family’s efforts.
Why do you think God made it that Noach and his family had to work so hard to keep all the animals alive? Couldn’t God just have given Noach a magical food, like Man, which all the animals could have eaten?
God could have done that, but I don’t think He wanted to. I think there were a couple of reasons He wanted Noach and his family to work so hard.
First of all, this would keep Noach and his family busy and occupied so they wouldn’t have time to simply sit and be sad about the destruction of the whole world. Sometimes, when you are going through a hard or difficult time, the best thing you can do is to keep on doing the normal activities that you are used to- like work or school- as a way to get through it.
Second of all, after the Flood, God decided to give Noach and all future humans permission to eat meat. Until then, Adam and Chava and all the generations that came before had been vegetarians, only eating fruits and vegetables.
Why did this change? Because the animals would not have survived the flood without Noach. Since they only existed because of his hard work, he was now permitted to eat them.
So the next time you bite into a juicy hamburger remember that you got your ability to eat it because of Noach’s hard work!
TRANSITION SOUND
Eventually, the Earth dried up and Noach and his family emerged from the Ark. They needed to rebuild and repopulate the Earth.
They were successful in doing this. Noach DID break the curse and the earth was no longer only producing thorns and thistles, so the meaning of his name came true!
Several generations later, people decided to build a very tall tower. It was called the Tower of Bavel.
At that time, everyone spoke the same language. So they all understood one another and worked happily on building this tower.
But why were they building the tower?
There are many suggestions as to why they were building it and what they were trying to do. Rashi’s understanding is that they decided to build a tower in order to reach all the way to the sky. They wanted to make a war against God!
Remember we talked about how there are different kinds of wrong choices? Some wrong choices and sins are against God, like worshipping idols. Others are against humans and God, like stealing. In this case, what was the wrong choice?
You’re right! It was against God, since these people wanted to climb their tall tower and fight against God.
At that point, God had to decide what to do. He had made Noach a promise He would not destroy the whole world again with water. But maybe He could destroy it in fire.
But that’s not what God decided to do. Instead, God decided to change people’s languages so they could no longer understand one another. Because of this, they would not be able to work together and cooperate to build the Tower. Instead, they would be scattered across the Earth, each with their own group that spoke a language they understood.
Why was God’s punishment more lenient in this case than it had been when it came to Noach’s generation?
Rashi explains
אלא שדור המבול היו גזלנים והיתה מריבה ביניהם לכך נאבדו, ואלו היו נוהגים אהבה וריעות ביניהם, שנאמר שפה אחת ודברים אחדים. למדת ששנוי המחלוקת וגדול השלום:
That is because the Generation of the Flood were robbers and there was strife between them, and therefore they were destroyed. But these behaved with love and friendship among themselves, as it is said (verse 1): “one language and uniform words.” Thus you learn that discord is hateful, and that peace is great.
God was willing to be more lenient with the Generation of the Tower of Bavel, the Dor HaFlagah, Generation that was Scattered, because they had been KIND to one another. Even though they were kind and all uniting together to fight against God!
This shows the importance of kindness, peace and helping one another. God can tolerate sins against Him- and forgive them when people do teshuva- but gets very upset when people hurt other people. It is so important to be kind to other human beings!
TRANSITION SOUND
So here’s what we learned today!
Noach was named after his father’s hope that he would bring menucha, rest, to the world by making it easier for the ground to produce fruits and vegetables. In the end, he did live up to his name!
The word chamas means stealing and robbery.
There were a lot of different ways that God could have saved Noach and his family and the animals. He made Noach and his family work very hard to give the people of the Generation of the Flood an opportunity to do teshuva and return to God, and also to make sure that Noach and his family would not spend too much time being very sad about the destruction of the world.
We are only allowed to eat meat because Noach and his family saved all the animals, so they earned the right to eat meat.
There are different kinds of sins- sins against God and sins against other humans. While both are a problem, God gets even more upset by sins against other humans. It is SO important to be kind, cooperative, helpful and bring peace between human beings.
If you have any questions or comments on this week’s episode, please email me at parsha4kids (at) gmail.com. That’s parsha the number 4 kids at gmail.com. Good Shabbos!