Rabbi Z Aviner
Topics in Genesis-3/
Temple Vsit and Noahide Praye
Today we will concentrate on Noah’s prayer after the flood and on prayer in general
It is necessary to distinguish between the personal prayer of any person that has no rules and can be said anywhere,
And between prayers to the children of Noah, which is recited as a SERVICE — similar to the sacrificial service in the Temple. Namely:
A prayer that expresses the posture of Bnei Noah as a community before God and in regards to Israel.
Such prayer should have several purposes:
- It must express the identity of the children of Noah, their hopes and goals,
- It should inspire the worshipper and bring him out of the apathy of daily life
- It should also fill the worshipper with self-esteem so that he could proudly teach his sons the idea of Bnei Noah
In our class today we’ll try to built such a morning prayer to Noahides, based on the morning prayer of Israel, which is based on the morning prayer offered in the Holy Tempe.
We will divide the prayer into several parts:
1 Introduction: Walking to the Temple
2 Psalm singing at the courtyard
3 Acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven
4 Prayer while the sacrifice is offered
5 Returning home
1 Introduction: Walking to the Temple
We remember Noah. Why? Because he was the first in the Torah to pray. After the flood he left Ararat and went to Mount Moriah on foot to pray for his sons – the Children of Noah – that the flood would not return.
It’s a source of inspiration
We, too, Israel, go in our prayers to Mount Moriah where the Temple stood. Hence the Children of Noah can be inspired to do the same – walking in their imagination from Ararat—or from wherever they are —to Moriah.
Where the Children of Noah are is not important. There is no need for a magnificent hall or cathedrals, and one may pray even at home or outdoors in the fields. What matters is the hall built in my imagination. And in my imagination I walk from wherever I am to the Temple Mount.
And I remind myself the words of King Solomon who said those words at the Temple dedication:
And Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord against the whole crowd of Israelites, and he spread out his hands in heaven and said:
The Lord the God of Israel There is no God like you in the heavens above and on the earth below
For if God dwells on earth, here is heaven and earth will not be dirty
Even this house that I built
And you turned to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, the Lord my God, to listen to Rina – singing – and to the prayer
Who your servant prays before you today to be your eyes open to this house night and day,
to the place which thou hast said shall be my name there to listen to the prayer which
May your servant pray to this place
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King Solomon mentions Rina – singing – first followed by a prayer. Indeed, this is how the service in the Temple was done
And you will listen to the place of your daughter, to heaven, and you have heard and forgiven
When the sky stops and there will be no meter, and pray to this place
And you will hear from heaven and give a meter to your earth
Famine that shall be in the earth, Thing that shall be that the spit of Yarkon shall save locusts every affliction and disease, every prayer, every supplication whatever all men may have, and stretch out his hands to this house, and you shall hear from heaven that your daughter and forgiveness you have done and given to the man in all his ways that you have known what is in his heart
And also to the foreigner who is not of your people Israel and comes from a distant land for your name
And come and pray to this house, and you will hear heaven institute your daughter and do as the foreigner calls you
Kings 1, 8׳ )
And I am also reminded of Isaiah’s words
And in the last days the mount of YHVH house would be at the top of the mountains, and it bore from the hills and all the nations flocked to it….
Isaiah foresees the nations, the Seventy Nations of Noah, flocking to Mt. Moriah. He also sees the end of wars, the melting oof swords into ploughs. This vision of the future has already happened, when Noah melted Tubal Cain’s weapons into metal ploughs. Yes, as a Noahide, you feel comfortable and welcomed into the Temple Mount.
Stage 2: Entering the Temple Mount
Now in your imagination you enter the Temple Mount. You wash your hands and take off your shoes.
It’s still dark, and the place is lit up by flares. You join the thousands of people who go in there to pray the morning prayer. Everyone enters through the same gate and goes to the temple courtyard.
But here they separate into three circles, defined by a rope or a sway. The distinction is according to the number of Commandments one is obligated. Whoever has more, may advance forwards to the Temple’s gate.
You as a Child of Noah stand by the outer rope, since you are obliged by seven Commandments. Israelites may move forwards because they have 613 commandments to observe.
In fact, Israel has ten commandments, three over seven of the children of Noah. The three are : Circumcision, the Sciatic nerve, , and the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments.
Israel too is limited by a rope that separates them from the Levites camp, because the Levites have more Commandments to observe. In the camp of the Levites, you see the Levite’s choir o stands at fifteen steps at the Temple’s entrance where the chant selected Psalms.
The Levites are also limited by a rope that separates them from the inner camp of the priests who have more Commandments than anyone else. .
You stand almost alone, and only a few Noahides s are with you. But the truth is that your camp is potentially the greatest because it encompasses all of humanity, all the seventy Noahide nations.
In fact, the camp of Israel was created to lead you, son of Noah, forward to Hashem. It is Israel who kept the Torah and they are the ones who teach it – not for themselves but for all of humanity. They sit forward because they are leading your camp of seventy nations
It follows that you, as the son of Noah, are the goal of the Temple
And as you walk towards the Court, you hear the song of the Levites. They sing the chapters of the Psalms that we repeat every morning before the prayer, as King Solomon said “to hear the chanting and the prayer. First Rina and then prayer.
You listen to these psalms and may repeat them from the prayer book of Israel.
The psalms were chosen because they tell the greatness of the Creator in the story of creation, and how He manages the world.
You can identify with these hymns. You also know how amazing and accurate the creation story is. How well it matches what we know from science. The story is a true miracle in our hands! Recalling it at this point strengthens our faith.
You think about the cosmos, the galaxies, the initial bang, the evolution that brought man to earth. And you think about the Divine presence – the Shechinah – that wishes to enter our heart and change it – from the heart of an evolved animal, to the heart of a Man created in the image of a God. All these thoughts while walking to your place bat the Temple’s courtyard.
Stage Three:
Accepting the Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven
As the choir of Levites sings, the sky in the east begins to light up. The hour has come to receive upon us the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.
A group of priests rushes to the East Gate and stands there with their backs to the sun and their faces towards the Temple in the west. They bow down to the hall and say the following text
God, our ancestors worshipped the sun and did not know you. We turn our backs to the sun and worship only you.
You can’t accept the yoke of the kingdom of heaven when you have even the shadow of idolatry in your heart. It is not enough to wash your hands at the entrance, but also the heart and mind.
And you, as a Child of Noah, remind yourself at this moment that you have abandoned all trace of idolatry and washed your hands and your heart and mind of every mistake
And now the moment comes and the whole audience recites the Shema. Everyone covers their eyes to concentrate and say –
Shema Yisrael, Hashem YHVH , our G-d, YHVH is One.
The meaning of the Shema according to Rashi is that today HaSheM is only the God of Israel, but in the future all peoples will recognize that HaSheM is one
In other words, Israel declares the purpose of our existence – to bring all peoples to faith in the Oneness of God. And you say to yourself, well, here I am. I believe in Oneness. If the goal of Israel expressed in the Shema is to bring me to Hashem, well, I am here and my camp, Jethro’s, will grow and become the largest
As Jeremiah says
To you, Gentiles will come from the whole earth and say,
But our ancestors inherited only false, vanity that is useless…
And the crowd says “blessed be the name of His Majesty forever and ever.”
stage Four: Prayer
Now the time arrived for the thing you’ve been waiting for – PRAYER. All the above are only an INTRODUCTION to prayer.
And the prayer of Israel in the Temple starts with the daily burnt offering. The gates of the Temple’s Hall open and the morning burnt offering is served. It reminds us – and G-d – the binding of Isaac.
But to you, as a Child of Noah, it reminds also the burnt – offering that Noah offered here on Mt. Moriah after the Flood.
What is special about burnt offering? Unlike sin offering, it is offered without a spoken word. The person who brings it “uploads” his thoughts and petitions to HaSheM “via the smoke Noah selected that kind of offering because he was not a person of wards. He wished that HaSheM would read his heart with no uttered words.
And when the burnt offering of Israel is done at the Temple’s altar, the crowd of Israel at the courtyard stands in SILENT prayer.
And you. too, as a Noahide man or a woman, stands now in silent prayer.
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What does Israel pray for?
After the Temple’s destruction by Rome, Israel has been praying – first of all – for redemption and the restoration of the glory of the past; that the Shechinah would return into a new, third Temple.
That prayer is offered in three stages-
- Repentance, Teshuvah
- Petition, prayer
- Sanctifying G-d’s name in public,
In a similar fashion,
What could the Children of Noah pray for?
- Repentance: Indeed, humanity has much to repent.
For example, about the way humanity has been treated Israel in history. . Humanity must confess and ask for forgiveness for the pogroms for the misunderstanding, for the false accusations of blood libels, for the for the Holocaust, for Hamas. Inquisition, Such a recognition purifies and upholds your posture
- Prayer: As a Child of Noah, one may pray for the redemption of Mankind from the primordial sin, for the restoration of Man’s purity to our status before the Sin, to the elevation of Mankind to be Very Good in ELKM’s eyes, to see the eradication of IDOLATRY and EVILNESS, to become eligible for entering the “Eternal Sabbath to Come.”
3 Sanctification: In Israel’s prayer, that part is the climax. The congregation stand and chant – like the Angelic Choir in Heavens –
“Holy, Holy, Holy, the World is full oof His Glory.”
This part is based on Isaiah 6.
Well, as a Child of Noah, you represent the Seventy Nations of Noah, whose Angles comprise the Heavenly Choir. Each Angle chants one “Holy,” and three successive Angles chant “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
Israel chants from Earth “three Holies,”
Each nation chant “one Holy.”
By Chanting 3 Holies, Israel sanctifies the Name of G-d in public. But chanting is not enough. Israel has sacrified our lives for the perpetuation of the Torah, for all Nations.
And Israel becomes Holy, by fulfilling HaShe”s Commandments, especially the positive ones.
Noahides can become “holy” by fulfilling one positive commandment – JUSTICE, Noah’s Fifth.
Hence by repenting in the name of humanity, as started above, Noahides perform JUSTICE, thereby becoming “Holy
Step Five: Returning Home
After the prayer you return from the temple to your home, just as Jethro returned to his family.
And he said to him, No, for I will go to my country and my homeland (Numbers 10:30)
Why did Yithro go home? – To influence his people, says Rashi.
And as you end your morning prayer, your trip to the Temple, you too become resolute to bring humanity to recognize YHVH and Her Oneness.
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