Parshas Noach - Spread the Word
"Noach was a righteous man", (6:9). Yet the Torah points out in various ways, that he was not as righteous as Avraham. In fact, according to one opinion in the Talmud, if he would have lived in the generation of Avraham, he would not have been considered a tzaddik. Furthermore, Rashi tells us that Noach needed “support to help” whereas Avraham did not. What differentiated Noach from Avraham? Mr. Michael Krengel, a loyal talmid of Rav Binyamin Kamenetzky zt”l and close friend and former board member of Yeshiva of South Shore, recently told me this story. “Back in the 1980s,” he told me, “A wealthy real estate owner has some properties in East New York which were underperforming. Looking to do a chessed, while writing of a loss for charity, he called Rav Binyamin and offered to donate the properties to the yeshiva. As Yeshiva of South Shore was a branch of the original Yeshiva Toras Chaim of East New York, where Rav Binyamin served as a rebbe and close disciple of its founder, Rav Yitzchok Schmidman, the magnate figured that Rav Binyamin would figure out a way to use these properties for the benefit of Yeshiva of South Shore. “Rav Binyamin called me and asked me to drive him to his old neighborhood to scout them out. Of course, I agreed and we drove out there. As we were driving through the now-distressed streets, with vagabonds and homeless roaming the streets, Rav Binyamin was looking out the window. Suddenly, he said to me, “Stop the car! Stop here!” He got out of the car and walked over to one of the homeless men on the sidewalk. I wasn’t sure what he was doing and why he stopped to talk to this man! “When he got back to the car, I couldn’t contain myself. ‘Who was that?’ I asked. “He is a Yid” Rav Binyamin answered. “Not only that, but he is a grandson of one of the great leaders of the Jews from Europe!” I took down his information, and I will try to help him out!” “But how did the Rosh Yeshiva know that he is Jewish? “Rav Binyamin looked at me, and with his trademark smile, he replied. ‘I could tell. I could just tell.’ ” The Rambam (The Laws of Talmud Torah 1:2) tells us, “Even as man is obliged to teach his son, so is he obliged to teach his son's son…. and, not alone to his son and his son's son, but each and every scholar in Israel is commanded to instruct all who desire to be his disciples, even though they be not his sons” One of the reasons why Noach was not on the same spiritual level as Avraham, explains the commentators, is that except for the 120 years when Noach built the Ark, he did not try to bring his fellow citizens of the world closer to Hashem. He trained his children to follow in his ways, however his influence did not spread further. Avraham Avinu, however, traveled with “The souls which he made ‘made’ in Charan’, -- the many thousand who he influenced to believe in Hashem. Noach’s followers were limited to his own three children, as the passuk tells us, “These are the generations of Noach… Noach had three sons: Shem, Cham, and Yafes.” One must be a student of Avraham, and spread his spiritual wealth to the masses, and through that, he will merit the blessings of Avraham.
Good Shabbos!
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