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The Torah, which tells us about the Flood, was given in the 2448th year after the world was first created—792 years after the Flood occurred.
So now, imagine in today’s day and age, we would be told about a great flood that presumably happened 800 years ago. That would be some noise! Denials would have poured in.
But the Torah’s content was not a secret to any nation in existence at the time of the giving of the Torah. None of them—not the Egyptians, nor the Assyrians, or the Babylonians, and none of the others—contested the veracity of that event.
“And he [Sancheirv] was prostrating himself in the temple of Nisroch his G-d, and Adra-melech and Sharezer, his sons, slew him by the sword, and they fled to the land of Ararat, and his son Esarhaddon reigned in his stead” (Yeshayahu 37:38).
What connection does that episode have to our theme here? According to the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin 96a) the notorious Assyrian King Sancheiriv worshipped a log that had been broken off from Noah’s ark. This idol was named “Nisroch”—which derives from the word neser, log.
But there are also other interesting facts connected with Noah’s Ark.
Berossus (b. 350-340? BCE), the ancient Babylonian astronomer and historian known for his accuracy, writes in Babyloniaca, his work on Babylonian history: “It is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets.”
At the foot of Mt. Ararat stands a small Armenian village. In that village, stories of people who saw the skeleton of the Ark are passed down from generation to generation.
In 1892, a Dr. Nuri reported that he personally saw the wreckage of the Ark. A Russian pilot named Rukovitsky also spoke of it in 1916—while flying over Mt. Ararat, he clearly saw the skeleton of a ship; obviously, it would become visible once every few years when enough snow would melt. However, photographs taken by that pilot disappeared during the time of the Russian Revolution. For more detailed information about these and similar occurrences, those interested can browse the book “The Bible as History” (1956) by German writer Werner Keller.
In 1969, French industrialist and explorer Fernand Navarra climbed Mt. Ararat to the altitude of 4200 meters and came across a 150-meter-long ship under the ice. (According to the Torah, the Ark was 300 cubits long, and a cubit is approximately a half-meter.)
In 1969, a 25-person crew of American scientists, among them International Arctic Research Center staff, scaled Mt. Ararat. The scientists came back from the expedition bringing wood samples of the logs they found on the mountain, which they analyzed to determine age. They also spoke with one of the local old-timers, Gevorg Gagofyan, who told them how in 1904, living at the foot of the mountain, he saw a ship protruding from the ice, and even tried to climb up to it.
Over the years 1972-1973, the location was also visited by American geologist John D. Morris, who later published several books on the Ark and Mt. Ararat.
All the above information comes from the book “Creation and the Flood” by Avraham Kurman.
It is interesting to note that the Flood plot is widespread in the world’s numerous cultures. Legends about the flood are present in all of them, including those of primitive tribes of America, Australia and Africa which had no connection with Asian and European civilizations. Clearly, they received the same story from generations long gone.
The late Dr. Aaron J. Smith of the University of Greensboro in North Carolina was a specialist in research about the Flood. He collected a complete history of the literature on Noah’s Ark. He found 80,000 works in 72 languages about the Flood—and about 70,000 of them mention the wreckage of the Ark.
Copyright© 2023 by The LaMaalot Foundation. Talks on the Torah, by Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber is catalogued at The Library of Congress. All rights reserved. Printed in China by Best Win Printing, Shenzhen, China.
Lech Lecha: Arabs Ands Jews In Harmony
The Zohar, the ancient founding book of Kabbalah, contains an absolutely accurate and now-fulfilled prediction for the future of the Land of Israel—long after the Jews were exiled from it.
About 1,800 years ago, the Zohar tells us, the Talmudic Sages Rabbi Yosei and Rabbi Chiya were walking down the road having a Torah discussion. But when the subject turned to the verse (Bereishit 11:30), “And Sarai was barren; she had no child,” Rabbi Chiya sighed and cried out: “Woe is the time and woe is the day when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael!”
“Why is that?” asked Rabbi Yosei. “After all, Sarah then gave birth to a son, and what a son he was!” which referred to the later birth of Yitzchok.
“True,” answered Rabbi Chiya, “But I am crying about the time Sarah was childless. For Sarah, seeing that she did not have children, offered her husband Avraham her maidservant Hagar as a concubine, and she bore him Ishmael.”
“Avraham then prayed to G-d about Ishmael,” continued Rabbi Chiya, “and G-d answered him”—and there, Rabbi Chiya quoted other verses from Bereishit (17:20-21): “And regarding Ishmael, I have heard you; behold I have blessed him, and I will make him fruitful, and I will multiply him exceedingly; he will beget twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with Yitzchok, whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year.”
And so, the Zohar’s anecdote tells us, Ishmael was indeed circumcised—and destined to achieve glory as a great nation in his own right. But, as the Talmud continues, “The guardian angel of Ishmael asked G-d: ‘Does one who is circumcised receive a reward from You?’ And G-d answered, ‘Yes.’ The guardian angel asked again, ‘Then why do You not reward Ishmael?’ And G-d answered, ‘Because they circumcise, but not suitably—the sons of Yitzchok are circumcised on the eighth day, but the sons of Ishmael are circumcised much later.’ But the guardian angel rejoined, ‘Still, they deserve some reward for fulfilling Your will!’”
“And so,” Rabbi Chiya concluded, “This is the reason for my tears! What did the Almighty do with the children of Ishmael? He distanced them from true holiness, but He gave them the holy places of Eretz Yisrael for when the Land will be empty. The Holy Land will belong to the children of Ishmael until G-d’s Mercy in the merit of their circumcision will run out. And then, they will try to prevent the Jews from returning to their land. The sons of Edom [which traditionally refers to the nations of Europe] will try multiple times to wrest it from the Yishmaelim but will fail. There will be bloody wars and the land will change hands, but the sons of Edom will not get her.” (This can arguably be referring to the Crusades.)
In other words, Rabbi Chiya cried for the evil that he saw being inflicted in the future by the Yishmaelim upon the sons of Israel. In his present day, he was mourning for the Jews who would die now at the hands of the sons of Ishmael.
It remains curious that many politicians, economists, and sociologists of the last century—among them leading German Jewish writer and public figure Max Nordau—believed it was of primary importance to secure a charter from Europe’s nations for the Jewish settlement of Palestine, and that doing so would generate no problems with the land’s Arab population. Nordau believed that with the Arabs being close to the Jews in religion and origin, his envisioned Jewish return would bring to them all the achievements of Western civilization and all the blessings of its flourishing economy—it was simply obvious to him that the Arabs and the Jews would have the best relationship.
However, those predictions did not come true. Events unfolded just as they were predicted and described many centuries ago in the Zohar.
In conclusion, a few more words about circumcision. In the Former Soviet Union, many Jews were afraid to circumcise their sons—yet we lived to see the hour when Jews arriving from the FSU underwent circumcision en masse. How can we not recall here that before departing Egypt, all of our male ancestors underwent circumcision, brought the Pesach sacrifice, and even ate the meat from an animal that was sacred to the Egyptians?
In the merit of the blood of circumcision and the blood of the Pesach sacrifice did our ancestors leave slavery behind. And keeping the mitzvah of circumcision will only strengthen us on our own Land today.
Copyright© 2023 by The LaMaalot Foundation. Talks on the Torah, by Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber is catalogued at The Library of Congress. All rights reserved. Printed in China by Best Win Printing, Shenzhen, China.
By Rav Yitzchok Zilber ztk"l
Founder, Toldot Yeshurun
Parshat Noach: The Log Of Noach’s Ark
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