Shem, Cham and Yefes: Fear, Love and Beauty

12“Noach begot three sons: Shem …” It seems to me that the verse hints at the tzaddik's three levels. The tzaddik must perfect himself in three levels, going step by step from level to level. First he must serve Hashem, blessed be He, with fear: he must repair his deeds and the sins of his youth through teshuvah, teshuvah (תשובה) being tashuv hei (תשוב ה׳), “the hei returns,” for through his teshuvah he repairs the blemish he made in Hashem's great Name. “Noach begot” hints at the tzaddik, who is called Noach, as the Midrash says, “Noach: rest below and rest above,”¹ for he brings about flows of blessing below and above, in the worlds. He begets “three sons: Shem,” the Name: first, through his fear, he repairs the blemish he made in the holy Name. And this is the sign of a complete ba'al teshuvah: when the holy Name, the four-letter Name, stands before his eyes, it is a sign that through his fear he has repaired all his sins.

13“Cham”: afterward he must take hold of the level of love, which brings warmth to a person; so love is hinted at in the word cham, which speaks of chamimus, warmth. Yet this is not yet complete love. At first he had poor and low loves, such as the love of money, desire for women and other low loves, so when love for Hashem awakens in him, those first poor loves bring ulterior motives into it. That is why cham also hints at cheimah, anger: he must rouse the good inclination to anger against the yetzer hara,² to break the power of the ulterior motives, until he is privileged to make his love complete. Through this he also raises to holiness the outer loves he had at first, as Chazal say, “Deliberate sins become like merits.”³

14This is what we say in prayer: “Ahavas olam, eternal love, You have loved us.”⁴ Ahavas olam is also the love of this world, olam, that we had at first; “You have loved us” means that these loves too are beloved before You when we raise them to holiness. “Great and abundant compassion …”: this is a great and abundant compassion of the Omnipresent toward us.

15So too “And Cham [was] the father of Kenaan.”⁵ Kenaan hints at baseness: the prophet gives that name to the cheat, “Kenaan, in whose hand are scales of deceit.”⁶ The warmth through which he raises the first poor loves to holiness is called av, “father,” for it begets them and brings them to holiness.

16aWe may say that this is also the hint in Chazal's words “Yesh em lamikra,” “The reading has a mother,” “and the tradition, masores, has a mother.”⁷ Mikra, reading, speaks of keriah, calling out: there is one who stands at the level of em, “mother,” in his calling out to Hashem, blessed be He. And masores speaks of mesirah, handing over: in handing over his earlier baseness to holiness, there are also people at the level of em, mother, which hints at a level smaller than av, father, the warmth of “Cham, the father of Kenaan.” The verse “Arami oved avi,” “An Aramean sought to destroy my father,” hints at this.⁸ Arami, the Aramean, hints at the baseness and ulterior motives that come to a person within the love for Hashem awakened in him. Oved avi he reads as “loses my father”: he keeps losing these levels of av. That is why it says oved, “loses,” in the present tense. At first glance, should it not have said avad, “lost,” in the past? But the present tense hints at this too: he keeps losing them. A person must strengthen himself and prevail with great longing and great warmth to be at the level of av.

16bThen [“Cham …”] “and Yefes”: this hints that afterward the tzaddik comes to the level of splendor, for Yefes speaks of yofi, beauty, and tiferes, splendor. All his deeds are beautiful and accepted in the eyes of people and of all who see him. When he reaches these three levels, this tzaddik is called a saraf, a burning angel, for he is soref, burning with his love always, without pause and without any ulterior motive.

17The words “And the ofanim and the holy chayos rise up toward the serafim” hint at these levels as well.⁹ The ofanim, the wheel angels, hint at the first level, fear, from which a person sometimes falls completely: as a wheel rolls from top to bottom, so he sometimes rolls. “And the holy chayos,” the “living beings” among the angels, hints at someone who is somewhat at the level of love: he does not fall from his level completely, and even if he falls he is not cast down completely.¹⁰ This is what “And the chayos ran and returned” alludes to:¹¹ he returns at once to his level. In these two levels a person must rise so far that he comes “toward the serafim,” until he reaches the level of serafim, burning always with the love in his heart, without pause. May Hashem grant that we be privileged to cleave to His fear and His love with all our hearts, always. Amen.