Parshat Noah 5768: What Else was on the Ark?

This week we come to the story of Noah and the flood. God becomes dissatisfied with all flesh on the earth, and thus plans to destroy them. But he does save one family, that of Noah, who was the most righteous of his generation. Noah is commanded to build an ark that will house male and female of every species and a few extra of the clean species. The floods come; everything is wiped out except what is on the Ark. God promises not to do that again, sealing the covenant with a rainbow. Noah, on the other hand, gets drunk and stupid. After the unpleasantness of this incident, a few more generations are born. With only a rainbow as a contract, these later generations don't completely trust God not to wipe them out too. They decide to make a tower at Babel to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. God intervenes, and soon no one can communicate with one another. These peoples are scattered across the world, becoming the various nations of the world. Following the genealogy of Noah's son Shem, we end introduced to some interesting characters: Abram, his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot.

Prior to the flood God tells us the manifest of animals on the ark:

1. And the Lord said to Noah, Come you and all your house into the ark; for you have I seen righteous before me in this generation. 2. Of every clean beast you shall take to you seven pairs, the male and his female; and of beasts that are not clean one pair, the male and his female. 3. Of birds also of the air by seven pairs, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. 4. For in another seven days I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. 5. And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him 6. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. 7. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 8. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of birds, and of every thing that creeps upon the earth, 9. There went in two and two to Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

Was there anything else on the ark besides animals and Noah’s family? If we go back in the genealogies of last week’s portion, its clear in the flood only the descendants of Seth, Adam and Eve’s third son, survive the flood. Apparently Abel is murdered before he had children. Reading the genealogy of Cain we get some interesting stuff:

17. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. 18. And to Enoch was born Irad; and Irad fathered Mehujael; and Mehujael fathered Methusael; and Methusael fathered Lamech. 19. And Lamech took for himself two wives; the name of one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20. And Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents, and of those who have cattle. 21. And his brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who handle the harp and pipe. 22. And Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, forger of every sharp instrument in bronze and iron...[Genesis 4:17-22]

All metals technology, musical instruments, and animal agriculture are the products of the sons of Cain, not Seth. Yet all of these people died in the flood, yet those ideas continued. Did the children of Cain perish off the face of the earth? According to one Midrash, the answer is no. If you noted above, I left off the end of Genesis 4:22. The whole verse reads:

22. And Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, forger of every sharp instrument in bronze and iron… and the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.

The birth of girls is not often mentioned in genealogies, which usually indicates they are significant in some way. The Targum Pseudo Jonathan tacks on an extra bit about Naamah:

…and the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah, she was the mother of lamentations and songs.

While Jubal was the first musician, Naamah was the first singer. But even with the addition that she was the first to sing, the questions remains: Why does a woman get mentioned in a genealogy which are exclusively men? One rabbi in the Midrash had an answer:

AND THE SISTER OF TUBAL -CAIN WAS NAAMAH. R. Abba b. Kahana said: Naamah was Noah's wife; and why was she called Naamah? Because her deeds were pleasing (ne'imim). [Gen R 23:3]

R. Abba b. Kahana ties our two passages together. While the sons of Cain die, the daughters did not. They survived in Naamah.

One of those things I wanted to do and never had the time to do while in grad school was to leyen Torah. Though I tried and failed due to too little time on several occasions, I’m learning to sing the words of the Torah. It’s an interesting thing singing Torah. You remember the words better when you put a tune to it. Let me give you an example. What is the last word of this phrase: Hine ma tov? If you are like most people you sang the song to get to yachad.

I picked that song in particular because of another interesting thing about song and memory, once accessed it doesn’t go away easily – it’s a sticky memory. For a repetitious round like Hineh Ma Tov once there, you cannot get it out of your head. It’s viral, and like a yawn, if you sing it around others who know the tune then you’ll spread it. The ark did not just contain animals, but contained human memory as well. Much of it stored in a form for easy transport and recall: it was stored in song. Song does not just transmit data, but emotion as well. I’m listening to iTunes right now, and as the player shuffles between Elvis, West African drumming and chant, Home on the Range in Yiddish, Hawaiian ukulele, Cuban sambas, and even the practice passages for my Upcoming Torah reading, you don’t need to know the meaning of the words to get the idea of the songs. The tower of Babel is meaningless when it comes to song. Had they sung to each other, the tower would have been completed.

Genesis 7:11 says it was in the 2^nd month on the 17^th day the flood began. Genesis 8:14-16 tells us Noah, Naamah and the kids left the ark in the 2^nd month of the next year on the 27^th of the month. Was there 375 days of silence on the ark? I think there was 375 days of music, some expressing pain and fear, some expressing thanksgiving, some ballads, some ningunim, even an instrumental or two. While they fed animals that sang while cleaning up after animals they sang. When they were just kicking back, then too they sang. Song was there as a release from the terrible things around them, of a world destroyed, and the joy of walking into a beautiful new world safe and sound.

One of the problems of the electronic revolution is how few experience that idea personally. We live with background music, often not paying attention. Before radio and records, iPods and music videos, people played music. Very few were professional, but singing was what you did when working. Picking up an instrument and jamming was what you did when the work was done and the chores for the day were completed. Families and neighborhoods played and sang. Labor unions and congregations sang. They were not worried about winning on American Idol or scoring a big record contract, but being part of a community. They told each other the stories of their world to each other in song, teaching the next generation its values and dreams in both cautionary ballads and joyous songs.

Songs are precious and many are sacred. In the Temple, in a world without amplifiers, the book of Psalms we not muttered, they were sung. It was not just one singer singing, but multitudes with the volume to reach the heavens. The Song of the Sea was sung by all the people, it was not a solo performance by Moses.

Parshat Noah is often about the animals in many synagogues. It’s a time some congregations will talk about protecting animals from extinction due to our carelessness. Although when the Torah reader will read the song of the sea sometime this winter, we call it the Sabbath of Song, every Shabbat should be. All too often I see congregations that let the cantor perform and passively listen. Naamah her husband Noah and their kids sang their way to Ararat, and kept song and memory alive as much as keeping all those species below decks alive.

Woody Guthrie once defined folk music as the music folks sing. This Shabbat, lets not let the folk song called prayer become an endangered species. SING!