Noach
Noah's Dove: What Did the Olive Leaf Really Prove?
A close read of Rashi on the dove returning with an olive leaf after the flood -- why Rashi avoids certain midrashic answers, and a chassidic take on the flood as a purifying mikvah.
Halikut Weekly Shiur: Noach
A shiur on Parshas Noach exploring Rabbi Yitzchak's view that Noach is faulted for not praying for his generation, Rashi's careful wording to avoid embarrassing him, and the broader obligation to pray for others even when it feels undeserved.
Rabbi Schapiro on the Parshah: Noach
Even once the land was fully dry, Noach waited for Hashem to explicitly tell him to leave the teivah. The animals' peaceful, transformed nature inside the ark mirrored the era of Mashiach, making departure a spiritual descent that only fulfilling Hashem's will could justify.
A Vort From the Rebbe: Noach
Unpacking Rashi's two opinions on the mysterious tzohar Noach was commanded to build — a window, or a glowing gem — the vort reads both as spiritual instructions: first, learning to see Godliness through the seeming concealment of teva, the way a businessman often notices hashgacha pratis more than someone who just learns all day. Then a higher level, where nature itself is recognized immediately as Hashem's doing without needing to look “through” anything at all, which is what protects a person from the flood of the world's confusion.
Parshas Noach
Rashi's two opinions on the tzohar, a window letting in outside light or a precious stone that shines on its own, are read as two levels of perceiving Hashem within a world where nature conceals Him. The lower level sees teva as teva and infers Hashem's hashgachah through it, like the businessman who recognizes hashgachah pratis in his dealings; the higher level, symbolized by the self-luminous jewel, perceives Elokus within nature so directly that the physical itself no longer registers as merely natural.
Parshas Noach
The Alter Rebbe's reading of the mabul in Toras Ohr turns the flood into a metaphor for two kinds of distraction: the hardships of parnasah and worldly life from below, and even overinvolvement in seemingly good pursuits like communal work from above. The protection in both cases is the same eitzah the Baal Shem Tov finds in bo el hateivah — going fully into the words of Torah and tefillah rather than treating them superficially, which cleanses a person the way the mabul's forty days cleansed the world.
Parshas Noach
If bo el hateivah means immersing fully in Torah and tefillah, tzei min hateivah seems to instruct the opposite — until the Rebbe explains that every Yid's ultimate mission is to carry that kedushah outward and elevate the physical world, echoing the Midrash's nisavah lihiyos lo dirah batachtonim. But that outward mission only works if it's preceded by real immersion, a sequence reflected in the yeshivah years of youth and in the order of every single day, beginning with tefillah and learning before turning to the world.
Parshas Noach
Explores Rashi's comment that since the Torah mentions Noach, it must praise him, and unpacks why: speech uncovers what lies hidden, whether for better or worse, turning a concealed flaw into an open one through lashon hara, or a concealed virtue into a real one through praise. Also addresses why the Torah withheld this praise in the previous parsha, tying the difference to the gap between finding chen and engaging in avodas Hashem.
Parshas Noach
Traces the Rebbe's reading of Rashi's two opinions on the teivah's tzohar, a window versus a light-giving gem, as two levels of recognizing Godliness concealed within teva. The lower level lets a person see hashgacha pratis through the natural order, as a businessman might; the higher level recognizes Hashem directly within nature itself, the way the stone shines from its own source rather than borrowed light.
Parshas Noach
Develops the Alter Rebbe's comparison of the Mabul to a mikveh, both measured by the same underlying concept as 40 se'ah, and pushes it further by drawing on the Kohen Gadol's five Yom Kippur immersions to show that going to the mikveh adds kedushah even without prior tumah. Applied to the Mabul, this reveals a second purpose beyond cleansing the world of corruption: elevating it toward the bittul that will be fully revealed with Moshiach.