This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary Rosh Yeshivah Rabbi Jonah Rank, has been sponsored anonymously.
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In an era when Americans had felt deeply polarized over the ideal legal structure of a society, the radio host Randy Williams wanted out. In 2021, he purchased for $19,000 an 11-acre plot of land in the Californian desert and announced the independence of his own micronation, the Republic of Slowjamastan. Through varying degrees of semi-stable barbed wire, the disc jockey delineates the boundaries of this safe haven he has built. Well-known over the airwaves as R Dub!, the Sultan of Slowjamastan practices a benevolent dictatorship and occasionally consults an online parliament or cabinet composed of individuals whose applications he has accepted. The laws in the Republic mirror the Sultan’s pet peeves and therefore include prohibitions on wearing Crocs, placing one’s feet on a vehicle’s dashboard, and eating string cheese from specific angles. A single violation of any of these laws could lead to the Chicago-born monarch banishing any of the more than 5,000 citizens who, like the Sultan himself, live abroad. (The punishment is flimsy, to say the least.)
Whether or not we count ourselves among the Slowjamastani people and faithfully abide by their leader’s dictates, our primary moral compass must take into consideration the laws of the lands where we live. Communities seek the guarantee of safety through rules a society accepts: speed limits, prohibitions against demeaning or otherwise harming our neighbors, or the means by which we pay (or do not pay) taxes. In a certain sense, a good law might redirect our personal choices or even restrict us in certain ways, but a good law must also have a purpose that, in some fashion, protects people.
Before human civilizations could learn this lesson, as this week’s Torah reading demonstrates, cultures had to cycle through terrifying experiments of lawless living and, at best, societies built on laws that insufficiently regulated people’s needs. Back in the Garden of Eden, God had laid out just two responsibilities: stewarding the earth, and eating from any tree (except for one tree, from which Adam and Eve eventually ate anyway) (Genesis 2:15–16 and 3:6). Amidst the mythic tales of our species’ cultural evolution, Parashat No’ach picks up with a planet that has turned to corruption (Genesis 6:11). This immorality had festered so severely that God articulated a plan to destroy all of Earth’s inhabitants and eventually followed through, making an exception only for the family of Noah and some lucky animals (Genesis 6–8).
When our text tells us that Noah’s family and band of fortunate animals emerged as survivors from a flood that wiped away the world (Genesis 8:18–19), we immediately learn that Noah took one of each ritually pure land animal and each ritually pure airborne animal and offered them as sacrifices (Genesis 8:20). In turn—and in a moment never to be repeated in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible—וַיָּ֣רַח יְהֹוָה֮ אֶת־רֵ֣יחַ הַנִּיחֹ֒חַ֒ (vayyarach Adonai et rey’ach hannicho’ach, “God smelled the smell of pleasure”) (Genesis 8:21). If we pore over every verse of the Hebrew Bible, we will encounter 42 more references to some רֵיחַ נִיחוֹחַ (rey’ach nicho’ach, “smell of pleasure”)—the smell of a well-done sacrifice. Yet, Parashat No’ach presents the only biblical moment testifying that God inhaled this pleasing odor. In this moment of feeling appreciated, God sets forth a few rules for the future of the universe:
- God would no longer curse the land or harm living creatures (Genesis 8:22);
- humanity should reproduce (Genesis 9:1 and 9:9);
- non-human animals should come to understand the dominance of humanity (Genesis 9:2);
- humans could eat animals or vegetation (Genesis 9:3), but no blood (Genesis 9:4);
- murderers should be prepared to face deadly consequences (Genesis 9:5–6); and
- God would designate a rainbow to emerge from a cloudy mist so that humanity might always remember these laws and this moment of mercy (Genesis 9:9–17).
Our Torah portion traces this covenant to a God with a newly developed sense of empathy for humanity, who now understands that humans are bound to make serious mistakes—in God’s words—“כִּ֠י יֵ֣צֶר לֵ֧ב הָאָדָ֛ם רַ֖ע מִנְּעֻרָ֑יו” (“because the development of the human heart is bad from its early days”) (Genesis 8:21). But, even after this covenantal intervention, God’s laws remained very few and—except for warning humans not to murder—these laws barely incentivized any more ethical a life than Noah’s now-deceased neighbors had experienced before the flood. Still without laws governing, for example, public spaces, rights to private property, or the sanctity of marriage—the post-flood life still held plenty of room for harming other people and their belongings. Despite God’s promise not to harm humans, our Torah portion shares that, not long after the flood, God actively put the kibosh on the human efforts involved in building the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9). Although the Biblical account does not suggest a lawless society, a medieval rabbinic work asserts that the humans who died in the process of building this tower received no attention, but every brick that dropped was mourned (Yalkut Shim’oni 62:1). Humans did not instantly learn how to become humane. As recounted, starting in the Book of Exodus and ending in the Book of Deuteronomy, it would take many generations past Noah’s before God would find humans worthy of giving a robust code of law in the form of the Torah.
The earliest of rabbis—who shaped so much of our religion by analyzing little details in our sacred literature—recognized that, when our Torah tells us that God found joy in Noah’s sacrifices, we must confront a serious challenge to the very idea of law. Because these sages grappled with the question of whether fulfilling a mitzvah constitutes adherence to an applicable law or performing a virtuous act with no legal ramifications—our spiritual forebears wondered if God does not care for the sacrifices God had commanded in the Torah. Is it possible that God truly preferred Noah’s voluntary sacrifices? After all, the Hebrew Bible only mentions God’s loving the smell of Noah’s sacrifices—and there exists no other biblical report of a divinely approved scent of a sacrifice. In a rabbinical anthology edited around the 7th century C.E., despite acknowledging that Noah’s sacrifices lead to God’s pleasure in a way that no other sacrifices do, several sages gathered to turned to an allegory to make sense of what God’s favorite sacrifice really is. These rabbis likened Noah and the people Israel each offering pleasing sacrifices to a king who requests to eat the dish of only one of two equally pleased taste-testers, each tasting a different dish. As these sages saw it, like a monarch who only asks for one of two separate appetizer options, God could have asked for more of Noah’s sacrifices (the first ‘dish’); however, the sacrifices detailed in Leviticus (the second ‘dish,’ long after Noah’s first ‘dish’) constitute a menu of on-demand food (Pesiketa DeRav Kahana 6:3). Why would God order something that brings displeasure—or even just relative dissatisfaction?
We should not be alarmed by God’s joy in a sacrifice God did not demand, but we should pay special heed to what God does demand. In the Babylonian Talmud—compiled around the 6th century C.E.— Rav Yosef reflected that he had once felt happy believing that he, as a blind Jew, was not bound by certain Jewish laws; he found joy in the idea of upholding laws that might not have applied to him. As he learned more, he realized that his blindness did not exempt him from most Jewish responsibilities, yet he still found happiness because he believed that fulfilling one’s duties in life should yield good reward. (See Bava Kama 87a.) Whether or not there are heavenly rewards, we each know from experience that we are more likely to be treated respectfully in turn when we approach others with respect. For this reason, a society with laws that aim to uphold human dignity bears inherent holiness.
But God might not have given us laws—or another chance—had Noah not offered sacrifices that God valued. Around the 9th century C.E., a sage in the Land of Israel concluded that what distinguished Noah’s sacrifices from the later sacrifices of the ancient Israelites was that this particular sacrifice, for the first time in history, aroused God’s sense of empathy for God’s creatures. In the words of this sage, “עַכְשָׁיו מְקַבֵּל מִלְּמַטָּה” (akhshav mekabbel millemattah, “God would now receive from [the world] below”) (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 5:1). Inasmuch as God’s smelling this sacrifice immediately preceded God’s declaring the first ever covenant in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 8:21–9:17), it seems that, in order for God to believe in the future of humanity, God may have needed an act of kindness beyond what God was prepared to mandate.
As important as law is—for laws can codify the highest values of a society—there will always be room for going above and beyond the law. A single extra step of Noah’s unsolicited gratitude towards God inspired God to give a few new laws, but these laws were not enough. With time, God would grant more laws to the Jewish people and humanity writ large. Yet, if we can notice injustices or suffering in our environs, then we know that we neither have enough laws that protect us nor a legal system incapable of hurting us. When Rabbi Yochanan—who likely survived Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 C.E.—was asked why Jerusalem fell, he warned that a society that does not conduct itself lifnim mishurat haddin (לִפְנִים מִשּׁוּרַת הַדִּין)—”beyond the letter of the law”—is doomed to collapse (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzi’a 30b). With better laws, better legal systems, and more outstanding individuals brave enough to perform acts of kindness and justice beyond what laws demand—we give God reason to believe in us.
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