“You [Noach] shall come into the ark, you, and your sons,
and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” (Bereishit/Genesis 6:18)
The wife of Noach is not named here, but Rashi, citing the
Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 23:3), identifies her as Naama through the
genealogical information in the previous Torah portion. This provides a great deal of insight and
information.
“And Lemech took himself two wives; one was named Ada and
the other was named Tzila…And Tzila, she, too, bore Tubal-cain…and Tubal-cain’s
sister was Naama.” (Bereishit
4:22)
Naama’s father, Lemech, is a fifth-generation descendant of Adam
and Chava’s son Cain. Lemech marries two women at once, Ada to bear his
children and work in the house, and Tzila to remain beautiful, child-free and
available to Lemech. Despite Lemech’s plans, Tzila does bear children.
Rashi characterizes Lemech’s behavior as part of the morally
reprehensible practices that cause G-d to send the flood and destroy everyone
in the world but Noach and his family. Writes
Rashi: “So was the custom of the
generation of the flood, one [wife] for propagation and one for marital relations.
The one who was for marital relations would be given a potion of roots to
drink, so that she should become sterile, and he would adorn her like a bride
and feed her delicacies, but her companion was neglected and was mourning like
a widow.”
Writes Rabbi Ari Kahn on aish.com: “To divide the [wifely
roles of mother and lover] is to objectify women based on utility. This is not
the ideal to which the Torah ascribes, not the ideal toward which mankind is meant
to strive. A wife, a partner, a helpmate
– a soulmate – is both a mother and a lover.”
It is a common misconception that all of the descendants of
the murderous Cain (who killed his brother, Hevel/Abel) and the immoral Lemech (who
ends up murdering Cain) are destroyed in the flood. However, this fails to account for the
marriage of Noach, a descendant of Adam and Chava’s son Shet (Seth), to Naama. (Shet,
incidentally, is conceived as a replacement for his murdered brother, Hevel,
who dies childless. Naama’s half-brothers, Yaval and Yuval, and her brother,
Tuval-cain, are named for Hevel.)
Writes Rabbi Kahn: “Naama was not ‘incidentally’ the sister of
Tuval-cain. She was the final link in the chain which began with Cain and is
traced through Lemech, who bestowed upon his children the legacy of Hevel. This
very Naama will facilitate the merger of the genealogical lines: a descendant
of Cain, a stand-in for Hevel, she marries Noach, a descendant of Shet, himself
a replacement for Hevel…Even after the great flood which purges the world of
sin and restores purity and equilibrium, Naama carries the line of Cain into
the world. Naama, the wife of Noach, survives; the line of Cain lives on.”
Why is the line of Cain preserved? Is it Naama who redeems
the line? Our Sages have differing opinions. “Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said, ‘[She
was called Naama] because her deeds were ne’imim, pleasing. The Rabbis
said …the name [Naama] denotes that she sang, man’emet, to the timbrel
in honor of idolatry.”
The later Midrash and the mystical Zohar relate that
Naama is the most beautiful woman in the world, so much so that she causes the angels
to fall for her, for they think she is one of them. “The sons of G-d saw how
beautiful the daughters of men were.” (Bereishit 6:2)
Is Naama a temptress/seductress, or the fitting wife of the most
righteous man of his generation? Rabbi Kahn
points out what we learn about Naama from our opening verse (Bereishit
6:18). He writes: “The syntax of this
verse is curious: rather than stating ‘you and your wife, your sons and their
wives,’ the order of the relationships seems unnatural: ‘you, and your sons,
and your wife, and your sons’ wives.’ Rashi learns from this syntax that
conjugal relations were prohibited on the ark; the men and the women were
segregated.” (Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 108b) By preserving abstinence and holiness on the
ark, Naama rectifies the sins of her father Lemech and becomes worthy to be the
progenitor of the new world that arises after the flood.
http://www.aish.com/tp/i/moha/64722247.html
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