Noah's Three Worlds

This Dvar Torah is taken from my father's writings.

These are the generations (toledot) of Noah. Noah, a righteous man, was perfect in his generations Noah walked with God.                           Genesis 6:9 Noah is mentioned three times in the verse, because he saw three worlds.      Ba’al haTurim, based upon Midrash Tanḥuma

The “three worlds” which Noah saw were three historic periods: the “old world”, in which he was born, which had to be destroyed because of its evil; the destruction of that world and the building of a new world.

Perhaps, on some level, Noah felt that it was appropriate that the old world be destroyed, and he thought he could build a better world, which would rectify all the evils of the old world. Yet, shortly after the flood ended and Noah left the ark, he planted a vineyard and got drunk. Noah realized that his new world was imperfect, and perhaps not much better than the world which had been destroyed, and he tried to assuage his frustration, disillusion and disappointment through drinking.

In this scenario, Noah failed to grasp the point that one cannot build through destruction alone. A new and better society cannot be established on the ruins of the old one. There were many things wrong with society, as is the case in our days, yet the solution must be constructive, we must try to improve our society, to teach Godliness, justice and better human relations, to give our society a moral push. The way to create a better society is not through escaping realities, but rather in facing problems and correcting the faults of society.

When God informed Noah of His impending destruction of the world, Noah accepted without argument on behalf of his fellow-men. Perhaps it is Noah’s failure to even try to improve his society which brought some of our Sages to understand that Noah was righteous only in a relative sense, and were he alive in the generation of Abraham, he would not have been considered righteous at all (see Rashi on our verse).