פָּרָשַׁת נֹחַ

Parshat Noach tells us how Hashem destroyed a corrupt world with a flood, saved Noach and his family, and began the world again. Noach is a righteous man in a generation full of robbery and corruption. Hashem tells him to build a teivah (an ark) and to bring into it his wife, his three sons and their wives, and pairs of every living creature. The rain falls for forty days and the water covers the earth for 150 days; everything outside the ark dies. When the water recedes, the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat, Noach sends out the raven and the dove, and at last leaves the ark and offers korbanot to Hashem.

Hashem blesses Noach and his sons, permits them to eat meat but not blood, forbids murder because man is made in the image of Hashem, and makes a covenant never again to destroy the world by flood, with the rainbow as its sign. Noach plants a vineyard and becomes drunk; Cham shames his father, while Shem and Yefet cover him, and Noach curses Cham's son Kenaan and blesses Shem and Yefet. The Torah lists the seventy nations that descend from Noach's sons and spread over the earth. Then all mankind, still speaking one language, builds the Tower of Bavel to make a name for themselves; Hashem confuses their language and scatters them. The parsha ends with the ten generations from Shem to Avram, and with Terach taking Avram, Sarai and Lot from Ur Kasdim toward the land of Kenaan, settling in Charan on the way. The story of the nations gives way to the story of one family.