ESSAY: Tending to Your Light Through The Storm (Parashat Noah)

Tzohar as Light

I want to look at one word in the parsha this week, the word tzohar.  As part of the ark construction details, God instructs Noah: tzohar ta’aseh latevah.  “Make a tzohar for the ark” (Genesis 6:16).  Now the word tzohar does not appear anywhere else in the Torah.  Commentaries think it has to do with light, linking it to the word tzoharayim, the noon day sun, and also to the very similar sounding word zohar, meaning shining, brightness, or radiance (Sanhedrin 108b, Bartenura on Genesis 6:16).  Targum Onkelos translates it simply as nehor, light.   And Rashi says it means either a halon, a window, bringing in the light of the outdoors, or even tovah ume’irah, a precious stone whose evanescence shines and offers light.  Either way, tzohar has something to do with light.  God was instructing Noah to make sure there was light in the ark. 

Tzohar, because it is such an unusual word, stands out in the Torah like such a precious stone in the dark ark amidst the storm.  The words throughout this story all around tzohar are repetitive, words about ark construction and animals and water – lots of water – and destruction. It is as if the word tzohar is such a glowing jewel amidst a steady rain of ordinary repeated words, a glimmer of light standing out in the darkness, like a golden tree in the fall or a flash of lightning in a storm, a sudden inkling of radiance.  When you picture that in your mind, what does it awaken in you, the flash of brightness, the glimmer, the light?  Perhaps a remembrance of mystery, of hope, of the beyond, of your own soul and life force.  Tzohar enters our consciousness like a flash of clarity about what really matters, what is worth preserving, what makes life worth living.  

The Light Matters, Too

Because the thing is that we get so lost in the pressures of survival, even more so in a situation like the flood, where all of life was being obliterated.  Noah was engaged in the essential task of preserving all the physical life forms on this earth, every single creature.   But for what purpose?  Just to keep producing and reproducing, just for the sake of mere survival, of existence?   No, there is more to it.   God said to Noah – you need to preserve the light, too, the divine light that was the very first thing to be created and lives inside each of us, the or haganuz, the hidden mystical light that sustains not only our physical existence, but also our spirit, our soul, our inner fire.   It isn’t just the animals and the animal side of us that need preserving, God was saying.  It is also this light, this tzohar, the soul of it all.   

The flood was a return to a pre-creation state, to the chaos of tohu vavohu, to a world of only deep waters and darkness.   Noah’s ark was meant to preserve from this destruction, from this return to chaos, all of creation, and creation includes not just the creatures but also their animating spirit –  that first creation of divine light.  The light, too, needed preserving.  

The Light of Baby Moshe

As the light always needs preserving, in good times and especially in bad, when it is so in danger of being lost and snuffed out.  I think of the enslavement in Egypt, the terrible degradation and despair that surely had engulfed the people in that situation, no hope for the future, no will to live, the light of agency and passion inside those slaves barely alive.  And what happens in the midst of that time in Egypt?   A baby is born, Moshe, who, tradition tells us, had a light shining forth from him (Rashi on Exodus 2:3).  This is what his mother saw and knew was good – the or, the light, that filled their house with his birth.  And this light-filled baby, how was he preserved amidst that storm of enslavement and persecution?  Through a tevah, an ark, that same word, used only in these two places in the Torah, as if to link these two preservations of light and life.  It was through a tevah, that little tiny ark basket placed in the Nile river, that baby Moshe, with all his light, was also saved.   

Our Own Endangered Light

We are often in a similar emotional danger, a flood of despair threatening to engulf us and to extinguish our light, the light of our hope and faith and power, so easily endangered inside us.   And we, too, are called to preserve that light of ours by offering it a protected space, a tevah, to ride out the storm, like baby Moshe on the Nile, like the tzohar in Noah’s ark, sheltered from the winds and rains of persecution and judgment and danger, held gently and tenderly, cupped between our hands so the flame won’t go out as we walk through the dark windy night.   

Most of the time, I don’t think we even realize that we have this inner light, this even tovah ume’irah, this precious glowing jewel inside us.  It’s not just baby Moshe that had it.  We all do.  We are so busy, like Noah, keeping all the animal parts of us alive, feeding them and tending to them, so preoccupied with survival in our overbusy lives sometimes, that we forget to tend to that divine light, to that tzohar, in our own tevah, in this body of ours.

I invite you to turn inward, deep into your center, to your belly, maybe to what’s known as the solar plexus, the area beneath your rib cage, in the pit of your stomach, feeling for that center place where your inner light dwells.  The name solar plexus implies this connection to sun and to light. This is your place of tzohar, of light, of power and agency and passion and will and joy, the ability to care about something and make it happen in the world, to burn passionately for something.  Maybe you can check in to the state of that sacred fire that is yours alone.  How bright is it burning right now?  If it is a bit dimmed, noticing without judgment what that feels like and at the same time, sensing its enormous potential for brightness and radiance.  

What Dims My Light?

And maybe asking yourself – what are the forces that have been threatening this light of mine, both currently and in the past?  What are the storms and the winds, as well as the structures of enslavement and disempowerment – both internal and external –  that continually work to dim and extinguish that light, that make me lose my will, my agency, my power, that shut me down, make me smaller, make me shine less brightly than I am meant to?   More than worrying about exactly how it happened, maybe just noticing that it does happen, coming into awareness that your light has been dimmed, your spirit not allowed to fully shine.  

Setting An Intention to Tend To It

Noticing that it does happen and maybe also setting an intention to tend to that sacred fire in your belly, maybe hearing the divine command to Noah to make a tzohar, a light in the ark, as an invitation by God to you to tend to that light in your own ark, to make it burn more brightly.  Yehi or, God said to the universe on the first day of creation, “let there be light”  That original divine light was planted inside you and wants to manifest through you in a very particular way.  If God said – let there be light, how can you let anyone else come along and dim it?   If God said – preserve that light in the face of all the great storms and persecutions of this world, how can you succumb to pressure and let yourself be disempowered and your light snuffed out?   Who are we to let that light die out inside us? This is no ordinary light.  This is the divine light of creativity, of salvation, of hope, of possibility, of love, of agency, of life force and power.   Our job is to tend to it, to let it burn brightly inside us, to protect it from those who would put it out.  This is our sacred task.  Whatever else God wants from us, surely God wants that light in us to burn brightly.  

Maybe turning again towards that inner light and giving it some protected space within, like an ark, to shine.  If it is like a fire, letting it glow.  If it is like a precious gem, holding it fast, never dropping it as you walk through the dark night.  

A Window: Sharing the Light

Two important things happen at the end of the flood in relation to this light.   Remember how Rashi said that one of the two meanings of tzohar is halon, window?  Well, at the end of the story, theTorah tells us explicitly that Noah opens a halon, a window in the ark and sends out birds, first a raven and then a dove (Genesis 8:6).  So maybe tzohar means both light and window, and over time, as the storm inside subsides and we begin to heal, we can open the window of our soul and send some of that tzohar, that light out, birds of hope and energy and peace, rays of warmth and love and power, feeling the overflow inside us and sending it out into a universe much in need of it.

A Rainbow: Full Spectrum Manifesting

The second thing that happens at the end of the flood is that a rainbow appears (Genesis 9:12).   Now a rainbow is nothing other than ordinary light refracted through water to show its many magnificent colors.  A rainbow is light manifesting its full brilliance, a brilliance which is normally hidden and not seen.  Maybe that’s what happens to our light, too, when our light meets the challenge of a great storm and we tend to it through the distress.  When our light emerges afresh after that challenge, it manifests magnificently as a full spectrum rainbow, showing its true beauty like a peacock spreading its wings.   Can you feel that potential in you, the latent rainbow in your own inner light?   Maybe just for this moment, experimenting with letting it shine out, letting it manifest in all its magnificence and glory and multi-faceted color.  Here you are. Even just getting a taste of that possibility, of the full brilliance of your own light.  

Returning Home

In closing, I invite you to let the light come back to rest inside you, at home, deep in your center, in your solar plexus.  Let it rest there as it is right now, perhaps excited or a little tired from the rainbow experiment, perhaps wishing it could shine more fully but feeling a little dimmed at the moment.  Becoming aware of any continued winds that blow around you and try to diminish your light, your power, your passion, and setting an intention again to continue to tend to your sacred fire, that unique light that God put inside you, letting it rest secure and protected now in the ark that you are.

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