OCTOBER 27 • 2022 | 47

He says the Ark’s higher purpose was 
to create an environment pervaded 
with chessed, lovingkindness. Noah and 
his family spent virtually the entire 
duration of their time on the Ark 
looking after the animals, and so the 
entire focus of the Ark was chessed. 
The sheer scale of feeding and cleaning 
and caring is difficult to imagine. And 
there weren’t many people to share the 
load. Rav Gifter explains that contained 
within the Ark was the kernel of the 
new human society that was to be 
established after the flood. Indeed, 
he says this value of lovingkindness 
is the foundation of any flourishing 
human society, and that God wanted to 
begin the new civilization based on the 
kindness they had learned in the Ark.
It’s worth pointing out that the 
generation of the flood was one 
characterized by the opposite of 
kindness. It was a society in which 
violence and theft and extortion were 
rampant, which is why the process of 
restoring human civilization, of getting 
the project of creation back on track, 
had to begin by building a world of 
lovingkindness. Rav Gifter explains that 
is why Noah and his family had to wait 
for God’s instruction to leave the Ark — 
because although the flood waters had 
subsided and the danger had passed, it 
wasn’t yet clear that the higher purpose 
for which they had entered the Ark 
had been fulfilled. Had they immersed 
themselves in, and inculcated, this 
value of chessed to the necessary extent? 
God’s instruction to exit the Ark was an 
indication that they had.

TWO DIMENSIONS
Let’s reflect for a moment on these two 
approaches to the Ark — those of Rashi 
and Rav Gifter. According to Rashi, the 
Ark was essentially a platform to reach 
out to and engage with the world. For 
Rav Gifter, the Ark was an opportunity 
to look inwards, to build strength of 
character from within.
These two dimensions, the outer 
and inner, are, in fact, reflected in the 

different Torah mitzvot we perform. 
We have mitzvot that are reflective and 
self-replenishing — prayer, for example, 
in which we turn inward, reconnecting 
with God and with our own spiritual 
essence. Learning Torah is another 
example in which we use our minds 
to understand the world from God’s 
perspective and realign the way we 
think about and relate to our world. In 
many ways, Shabbos is another internal 
mitzvah — a day in which we withdraw 
from the world in a certain sense and 
replenish our inner reserves; deep, 
spiritual “quiet time” that refreshes and 
reinvigorates us. It is a day in which we 
reconnect with God, with our closest 
and most important relationships, 
with our loved ones, with ourselves. 
These are all acts of withdrawal and 
renewal — of intellectual, emotional 
and spiritual replenishment. Through 
performing these mitzvot, we are 
essentially creating an Ark for 
ourselves.
But, we also have mitzvot that are 
outward-looking, which require us 
to engage with the people and the 
world around us. Most of the mitzvot 
“between man and his fellow” fall 
into this category. We are tasked 
with reaching out to others, with 
alleviating human pain — with, as 
the Talmud explains, comforting 
mourners, visiting the sick, burying 
the dead, clothing the naked. There 
is the mitzvah of tzedakah, which is 
about reaching out to the poor and 
providing them with the support they 
need to face life’s challenges. There 
is the mitzvah of teaching Torah, of 
sharing God’s wisdom with as many 
people as possible. There is the mitzvah 
to establish all of the civil institutions 
necessary to uphold justice and 
establish a functional society. And so 
we have this dual dynamic — in-reach 
and outreach, inner replenishment and 
external influence.
The Midrash on our parshah quotes 
the verse from Kohelet with which 
we began: “There is a season for 

everything, and there is a time for 
everything under the heaven.” The 
Midrash says there was a time to enter 
the Ark and there was a time to exit 
the Ark. In the context of what we 
have discussed, it means that there 
was a time to replenish, to nourish, to 
realign with God’s values, and there 
was a time to go out and rebuild human 
civilization.
Every day of our lives, we enter the 
Ark and we exit the Ark. We enter the 
Ark when we enter the shul and the 
Beit Midrash and even our homes, and 
when we take in Shabbat and enter a 
haven of stillness and rest. Inside the 
Ark, we replenish and realign, and then 
— drawing on this renewed energy, on 
this renewed clarity and realignment 
— we emerge to impact, to influence, 
to engage with the world around us, 
making it into a better place.
With this principle, we can perhaps 
gain some insight into a mysterious 
verse in the parshah. Included among 
the detailed instructions for building 
the Ark is the requirement to create a 
tzohar (literally, something that shines). 
The Midrash offers two explanations 
for what this tzohar is. According to 
one explanation, it was a window, and 
according to the other, it was some sort 
of precious stone that emitted light.
These two explanations reflect 
this dual dynamic that we have been 
speaking about, the two dimensions 
to our lives. We have the inner light 
that is nurtured within the confines 
of our own personal space, cocooned 
off from the world — the replenishing, 
realigning, reflective light that shines 
from the inside out. And then there’s 
the light of the window, representing 
our engagement with the world “out 
there.”
Finding that balance — being attuned 
to our two modes of existence — is the 
key to living a meaningful life. 

Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, who has a Ph.D. in 

Human Rights Law, is the chief rabbi of South Africa. 

This article first appeared on aish.com.

