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Noah Repaired the Animals38

The First Man repaired all the beasts and the animals by assigning names to them, as is written, “(And the Lord God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky,) and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; (and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts . . .” Gen 2:19–20).

And so following his fall and failure, although he later repented and on the holy Shabbat even sang the Psalm for the Shabbat39 [Psalm 92, understanding the infinitive l’hodot in the second verse of the Psalm not as “to praise,” but rather as “to confess”] and repaired everything and was forgiven for everything, that act of repair (tikkun) did not essentially effect the beasts and the animals. And it was for this reason that it was initially forbidden to eat meat (Gen 2:16), something that became permissible only in connection with Noah (Gen 9:3).

It is written in the holy Zohar that “Noah and the ark are one” [interpreting Noah’s entering the ark as representing union between the masculine and feminine s’firot40]. These words convey, in brief, that the ark of Noah included also the Tablets of the Decalogue and the Ark of the Covenant, as the tzaddik, as is known, is required to bring all that is outside within the realm of the holy. And Noah made the ark, which included all things belonging to this world, inert phenomena and plant-life along with animals, and he brought these into what is holy. This is the meaning of the “building of the ark,” which refers actually to the Ark of the Covenant: Noah entered into the ark and took everything with him, for the human being, as is known, includes all that exists—all the created things, all that is inert along with plant-life and animals and humankind [literally, “that which speaks,” possessing language]; he took everything with him into the ark and repaired them by means of his own repentance. . . . He took them with him, as is known that a human is called a microcosm. [The conception of man as a microcosm, found in ʾAvot deRabbi Natan (recension B, ch. 31) and present also in various ancient Greek philosophical texts, entered into the writings of medieval Jewish figures such as Saadya Gaon, Moses Maimonides, Isaac Israeli, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and Bahya ibn Pakudah.41]

For this reason Noah, unlike Adam, was permitted to eat the flesh of living things because Noah took all the created things with him and repented [of his earlier indifference to the fate of all living things], as we learn in the Midrash.42 And in this manner he repaired everything—all that is inert and the plants and animals and humankind—and therefore Noah and his sons were permitted to eat animal-flesh. The First Man, it is true, repaired them in the sense of giving them names. But he did not “take them with him” to repair them (on a deeper level). And so when he sinned and all the creatures fell with him, though he repented and recited the Shabbat Psalm, the creatures themselves were not truly repaired until the time of Noah and his sons when Noah repaired and brought everything with them into the ark. Noah brought into the realm of the holy all the Fallen Sparks found within all that is inert and all that is found in plants and animals and human beings, and everything became unified as it is written (in the Zohar) “that Noah and the ark became one.”

Comment: In Hasidic texts, Noah often emerges in quite a negative light. He is contrasted to Abraham who pleaded with God on behalf of the cities of the plain (Gen 18:22–33), whereas regarding Noah, the biblical account itself includes no mention of his protesting God’s bringing a flood to destroy the rest of life on earth (Gen 6:11–22). But Maʾor va-shemesh, following a precedent in the Zohar, compared Noah, instead, to Adam, and consequently Noah emerges not only as a significantly more positive figure, but as one with mythic connotations.

In this homily, both Adam and Noah engaged in tikkun (repair). Kalonymus Kalman viewed Adam’s act of tikkun in regard to animals as much more superficial in nature, as it was accomplished simply by Adam’s assigning names to all the various animals (Gen 2:19–20). Noah, in contrast, took the animals with him into the ark. And the homilist explained that it is for this reason that Noah and his descendents, unlike the earlier generations, were permitted to eat the flesh of animals.

Noah’s taking his assortment of animals and birds and the like into the ark which he had built acquires also a symbolic dimension, that of bringing everything that comprises the world within the realm of the holy. This is viewed, in the passage, as Noah’s work of cosmic repair. And in its view of man as containing within himself all that is in the world, the homily reflects, in its own way, the conception of man as a microcosm, a miniature replica of the entire world.

Kalonymus Kalman echoed this concept in that through man’s repentance, all is repaired; the fallen Sparks within all aspects of reality are lifted up and redeemed, allowing for a unification of all that exists. That conception expresses a sense of the complexity of the human being who is understood as including all levels of the larger reality in which he lives, including inert nature and plant and animal-life—all these are viewed as being part of the human being. (Although the Kraków master and those whose interpretations influenced him had no awareness of the theory of evolution, the reader might overhear an implication of evolution in this conception.) Hence, Noah’s coming into the ark together with the animals both symbolizes and exemplifies his bringing all of earthly existence into the realm of the holy.

The homily views the biblical portrait of Noah through the lens of a kabbalistic worldview in a way that makes of Noah a supreme spiritual hero. And beyond that, the use of the word tzaddik (“righteous”) in reference to Noah (Gen 6:9) invites the homilist to perceive in Noah a kind of prototype of the Hasidic holy man striving for the repair of existence precisely by bringing the totality of life within the realm of the holy.

The reader can easily hear in this homily an intrinsic human connection with the entire world of life and even with inert matter.

38. Maʾor va-shemesh, I, 6b.

39. Midr. Pss. 92:4, 5, 7; Pirqe R. El., ch. 18.

40. Zohar, I, 59b.

41. Tanḥ (P’kudei), #3. See Altmann, Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, 19–28.

42. Tanḥ-Yelamdenu, 52 (on Gen 6:14); Zohar hadash (No’ah), 29a; Ginzberg, Legends, I, 165, V, 186, n. 49.