Noach and the Lechem Hapanim - Noach
“What possible connection could Noach have to the Lechem Hapanim in the Beit Hamikdash?” you may ask. “Saidel must really be clutching at straws, trying to find links to the Lechem Hapanim from almost every parsha, however esoteric and bizarre they may be!”
My many years of intensely researching the Lechem Hapanim have taught me a very valuable and profound lesson - the infinite interconnectivity between Torah concepts. Things that on the surface may appear to have little or no connection whatsoever, when you dig deeper you find a mind blowing, unexpected connection.
A pertinent example of this is when I uncovered the connection between Lechem Hapanim and the concept of “Ivdu et Hashem Besimcha”, which is not intuitively apparent unless you dig really deep. Another example is the link between the Ktoret and Yosef being sold into slavery. There are tons more. As you explore a topic in depth, you discover offshoots into other areas of the Torah that are profuse, complex and multidirectional.
This is the case with the Lechem Hapanim and Parshat Noach.
In a famous debate in Menachot (94b) about the shape of the Lechem Hapanim, between R. Hanina and R. Yohanan, they describe the shape of Lechem Hapanim in interesting ways. R. Hanina describes it as a Teiva Prutza (an open box) and R. Yohanan as a Sfina Rokedet (a dancing ship). While it may seem that there is no connection between a box and a ship, it turns out that the shapes of the Lechem Hapanim described by the barei plugta are actually referring to different types of sea going vessels.
When R. Hanina refers to “Teiva” Prutza, he is referring to a sea going vessel called a Teiva and in fact the specific vessel he is referring to is Teivat Noach – in this week’s Parsha!
It is for this reason that I have spent much time researching the geometrics and logistics of Teivat Noach trying to understand what R. Hanina’s proposed shape of the Lechem Hapanim actually looked like.
While the following discussion is slightly technical, I am hoping that it will help you to better visualize what Teivat Noach looked like and how everything fit into it, etc.
The dimensions of the Teiva are given in the Parsha (Breishit 6:14) – 300 amot long, 50 amot wide and 30 amot high. That, in modern terms, is approximately 172m X 29m X 17m (Chazon Ish), the length of about two football fields, the width of five giraffes standing on each other’s head and a height of a seven story apartment building.
This may not seem big when we compare it to the biggest ships today (Seawise Giant 457m X 69m X30m), but considering it predated and surpassed the Greek Syracusia (55m X 14m X 13m), the largest archeological known ship of antiquity, by 2100 years, it was colossal.
Many “bible researchers” consider the whole story of Noach and the Flood to be mythical, with no basis in fact. To disprove them and show you how grounded the Torah is in reality and not myth, the first thing that pops out is the ratio between the length:width:height (30:5:3), which is a ratio used even today for ship building and also mentioned in Breishit Rabba (31:10) in that context.
From the Torah description it appears that this vessel was rectangular in shape, with a flat bottom. Many maritime archeologists contest this, saying that in order to be seafaring the vessel had to have been narrowed fore and aft, with a tapering, not flat hull. Perhaps they are right, but the Teiva was not a seafaring vessel whose purpose was to sail a planned course from one point to another, but rather a “floating platform” enabling all of those aboard to simply survive the flood, letting the waters take it where they will.
The “gofer” wood it was made from is most probably Lebanon Cedar and the “kofer”, which it was sealed with, was probably bitumen.
A seven story structure with that length allows for a large number of compartments to house Noach, his family and all the animals. In fact the Midrash (Breishit Raba) conducts a lengthy debate as to exactly how many compartments there were. R. Yehuda says 330 and R. Nechemya says 900.
A similar discussion in the Midrash describes the allotment of space. There were three decks. According to one opinion the lowest level was for the disposal of waste material (with all those animals, there was a lot of waste material – ick!), the middle level for Noach and his family and the Tahor animals and the upper deck for the Tamei animals. Other opinions are variations of this. Another opinion says that each compartment had a trap-door which Noach could use to sweep the waste out directly into the sea.
Another central feature (that has direct bearing on the Lechem Hapanim) is that the Teiva had a roof (hence a Teiva Prutza is a Teiva with - no roof!)
Regarding portholes (windows) in the Teiva; there is a machloket exactly what the “Tzohar” mentioned in our Parsha was. Some say it was a window to let in light, some say that it was sails and the final opinion (the one I like best) was that it was pearl or some other kind of precious stone that radiated light. Since the world had been decimated by the flood, the whole natural order had been upset and it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night. By looking at the pearl, Noach knew when it was day (the pearl was dull) and when it was night (the pearl shone brightly).
It certainly must have been an interesting (if stomach churning) voyage. It must be a hard thing to manage a zoo. Imagine the largest zoo ever in existence - that is also pitching and rolling!
Interestingly enough, another use of the word Teiva is in relation to Teivat Moshe Rabeinu, a much smaller craft, but with similar characteristics.
Rashi (in Menachot) takes all the fun out of it and actually draws the shape of the Teiva Prutza |____| - yep a box with no cover. The purpose of the above exercise was to determine how Rashi arrived at that shape. He probably followed the same research pattern I did (or I followed the same pattern he did), analyzing the Teiva from Parshat Noach.
Shabbat Shalom
Eliezer Meir Saidel
Showbread Institute
www.showbreadinstitute.com
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