Window or Gemstone?

Noah's Ambiguous Opening

Make a Tzohar for the ark, and terminate it within a cubit of the top. Put the entrance to the ark in its side; make it with bottom, second, and third decks. (Genesis 6:16)

Some say this was a window; others say that it was a precious stone that gave light to them. (Rashi)

“Make a tzohar for the ark” - R' Aba bar Kahana said: [Tzohar] is a window. R' Levi said: An opalescent gem. R' Pinchas said in the name of R' Levi: The entire twelve months Noah was in the ark, he did not need the light of the sun in the day or the moon at night. Rather, he had the gem, and he relied on it. When it dimmed, he knew it was day, and when it brightened, he knew it was night. (Genesis Rabbah 31:11))

This is the meaning of: “Make a tzohar for the ark” (Bereshit 6). Rashi explains, “some say a window, and some say a gemstone.'“ This is the difference between a window and a [glowing] gemstone: the window has no light of its own, but through it light enters. When there is no light, it does not illuminate. But a glowing gemstone, even when there is no light outside, gives light of its own. So too, there are people whose speech is a window, and who have no ability to give light on their own. This is like “some say-” their saying is made into “a window”. “And some say” and their saying is like “a gemstone” which gives its own light. (Rebbe Nachman, Likkutei Moharan, 9:3)

God commands Noah to make a window in his ark. But the Midrashic tradition teaches that maybe it was a liquid digital window? I.e., it was not actually a window, but merely an apparition of an opening, a shining gemstone. The reason is sensible: after all, in a flood a window would risk water coming in and sinking the ark. Even were the ark to rest atop the waters, the torrent might destroy the ship by taking advantage, so to say, of its open, vulnerable spot.

If we think about it metaphorically, Noah’s window/gem offers us an opportunity to think about how we respond to evil and threat? Do we stay open to the light in spite of the flood? Or do we cultivate an internal light while shutting our door to, and protecting ourselves from the real danger? An ark with a window is one in which there is a ray of light coming in from the world. An ark with a gem is a concession that sometimes it is better to live in the cave (or the Matrix) and live on artifice than go out and see. The gemstone is a kind of derivative light. It may be diminished but its better than a real light which also endangers. Leonard Cohen says the crack is where the light gets in, but the gem allows a bypass. The light can come from within. In many ways, this is Noah’s stance—as contrasted with Abraham’s—Noah doesn’t seek to make the evil of the world disappear, but to protect himself from it and to distance himself from it. He can’t be a light unto his neighbors when they are threatening his life. But we can well imagine the drowning onlookers blaming Noah and his inhumane ark for their suffering rather than themselves. “Look, his window is closed. We are besieged. He hoards the gemstone for himself.”

The window needn’t be considered literally, though. We can also think of the window as a window into the World to Come. Does the person contending with evil, violence, cruelty, and apparent injustice, look to the long term future and/or the metaphysical world and find meaning in it. “This life is terrible, but don’t worry, heaven is just beyond us.” The Tzohar offers a kind of promise that this world will find redemption in some form. Or is the model the gemstone, whereby one focuses on one’s own inner resources for coping. The gemstone offers resilience— “We don’t know why there is evil, but look what we are doing to create light, anyways.” Where the window points to a God who is hidden beyond the world, the gem illuminates a God who is hidden in the world, in modest, human dimensions.

In Plato’s Ion, poets and rhapsodes are compared to stones, magnets of inspiration that are critically lacking in any actual knowledge or self-knowledge. Their light is derivative. The word for ark, teivah, also means word, and I can’t help but hear in the command to make a window/gem in the word a question for Plato: do the words of poets point to a reality beyond themselves or do they only point to themselves? Does poetry intimate metaphysics or is it a substitute for metaphysics in a world in which we can have no real knowledge of higher things? For Plato, the poem as gemstone is a a backhanded compliment. Philosophy is the window, opening us to real light. But in a theological context, poetry may console us more than philosophy precisely for the same reasons Plato admonished it: poetry doesn’t explain why there is evil, but allows us to find and create light in its midst.

In Rebbe Nachman’s interpretation, the gemstone is a higher form than the window because the gemstone’s light is self-standing, while the window’s light requires something else. Words that are gems need no references, no allusions, no erudition. Words that are windows are caught up in an endless semiotic chain. On an ark, in an emergency, what we need is not to long to jump ship, but to be present. The gem keeps us on the ark. The window makes us nostalgic to leave.

But leave we must. For the ark is not for all times and places, but only moments of crisis. And when we deplane, we will need to open up the window/gem. What will we see, then?

Our commentaries read the window as escape and the window as connection. They read it the gem as ersatz window and the gem as self-reliance. They read the ark as a word in need of an opening and in needing of a closing, in need of God and in need of humanity. The apparently linguistic debate about how to read this word contains within it great debates about theology, philosophy, psychology, and even geopolitics. But regardless of which reading we prefer, one thing is clear: the ark is not complete without light. Noah’s project cannot just be survival, but must also be a survival that keeps the light in tact. What is most onerous for Noah, we must imagine, is not the technical challenge of building an ark, but the spiritual challenge of maintaining a connection to light in a time of darkness.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh