Two of my favorite names, Noa and Noach, may appear similar but they are vastly different. Noa, a female's name, means "movement" and Noach, a male’s name, meaning "rest", ends in a syllable which rhymes with BACH.
Noach, well-known as the floating zookeeper, saved animals and his own family for the purpose of repopulating the planet. Noa appears in this week's Torah reading and changes history. She and her 4 sisters transform Judaism and establish a new path upon which women and men could walk together.
This week's Parsha details a census of the tribes for the purpose of allocating tracts of land upon their eventual entry into the Promised Land. A father of 5 daughters dies and his daughters, realizing that they will have no inheritance, come before Moses to air their grievance. Moses is bewildered and turns to God who announces that the women deserve equality in inheritance law. These 5 women (Machlah, Noa, Hogla, Milcah and Tirzah) stand up to God and Moses and revolutionize Jewish law, setting in motion a flexibility which undergirds Jewish Law even until today.
Noa needs to be remembered in her own right as a woman who moved ahead to initiate change. A woman of movement, she and her sisters stepped forward and improved her world. Noach, a man of rest, collected animals and then sat back and waited for the flood to end. Both are important and both contributed to our world but in vastly different ways. May we learn from our women as well as our men. May we never lose sight of our leaders and what they provide. May we remember their names for good.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Steve Silberman
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