Noach D'var Torah

Summary, by Ari Klawans:

Parshat Noach begins by telling us the Noah was, "blameless in his age," often interpreted as meeting that Noah was not actually blameless and perfect, but he appeared so in comparison to the other people around him, who were incredibly violent and horrible. Because all of humanity has fallen into chaos, God decides to start over. God tells Noah this and then tells Noah to build an ark that can hold himself, his family, and two (or more) of every type of animal. (There were seven of the kosher, or "clean," animals.) Noah does as God tells him to. God makes it rain for forty days and forty nights, covering everything. Eventually, the rain finally stops and the ark comes to rest on top of Mount Ararat. To make sure that it is safe to leave the ark, Noah sends out a Raven, who comes back without anything, not having found a single dry place where it could stand. Noah tries again with a dove, who returns with an olive branch. Noah releases a second dove, who does not return at all, signaling that it is now safe to leave the ark. God creates a rainbow in the sky. God tells Noah that it is a symbol of God keeping the promise that God will never destroy the world again. Because of this, there is a tradition that when one sees a rainbow, they say the blessing: Blessed are You, Lord our G‑d, King of the universe, who remembers the covenant, and is faithful to His covenant, and keeps His promise." At the beginning, the parsha has a gloomy, end-of-the-world connotation, but it can also be read as a message of hope for the future, that even though things are bad now, they don't always have to be. The rainbow represents that hope, however because God has promised not to destroy the world in such a fashion again, we can harness that hope and use it to help God repair the world through Tikun Olam.

Commentary by Matthew Koltenuk:

Believe it or not, this portion actually has a connection to the early origins of racism. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, one of the reasons many people believed in racism was known as the "Curse Theory." In this portion, after Noah's son Ham saw Noah when he was naked, Noah cursed Ham, saying, "Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers" (Genesis 9:25). Many people (of all religions) read this line and interpreted it to mean that people with darker skin were cursed and were descendants of Ham. This theory is obviously highly unlikely and just a thing that people said and believed in to justify their racist acts, and many people eventually came out against it, including Martin Luther King Jr, who said, "This is blasphemy. This is against everything that the Christian religion stands for" in a speech he gave in 1956. King'ss statement is true, and it's unfortunate that so many people misinterpreted the Torah/Bible and used it as (false) justification for why racism is acceptable.