parsha name

[cellio]

I noticed something in the torah reading Thursday morning that I found interesting. Each parsha is named by the first significant word (that isn't "and God said to Moses" :-) ), or at least that's how I was taught. The opening of this past week's parsha is "eileh toldot Noach" (these are the generations of Noach"), and the parsha is named Noach. "Eileh" is not a significant word; what about "toldot"? Well, there actually is a parsha named Toldot, so the word is good enough -- that one begins "v'eileh toldot Yitzchak".

Now we can't have two parshiyot with the same name. We see the occasional two-word name (like this week, "Lech L'cha"), so the rabbis could have chosen "Toldot Noach" and "Toldot Yitzchak", but they didn't. They could have also dropped "toldot", choosing "Noach" and "Yitzchak"; again, they didn't. One gets a parsha named after him, and the other doesn't.

Given that, it's kind of interesting that Noach -- who doesn't really impress the rabbis as a person of high character -- gets the distinction of having a parsha named after him, while Yitzchak, a patriarch, does not. I wonder how that decision was made (anyone know where that would be discussed?). I would have assumed that this would be an honor and a patriarch would rate.

One possibility (pointed out by the rabbi at the weekday minyan when I surprised him with this question) is that this parsha contains the entire story of Noach, while Yitzchak's story is spread out over multiple parshiyot. Another occurred to me when I catalogued parshiyot named after people. Moshe never gets a parsha, but he's also supposed to be the humblest man who ever lived, so he wouldn't necessarily. The other patriarchs never get parshiyot named after them. (And the rabbis controlled the division into parshiyot, so if they wanted that outcome they could have gotten it.)

The people who do have parshiyot named after them include Korach, who led a rebellion against Moshe, and Balak, a gentile king who sought to destroy Israel. Pinchas and Noach are not always seen in a good light (Pinchas is the zealot who took the law into his own hands; he was rewarded and the rabbis say never, ever do what he did). The only really positive people who get named parshiyot are Yitro, Moshe's father-in-law (who teaches Moshe how to lead), and arguably, Sarah (the parsha is Chayei Sarah). I don't know what it means, but I found it interesting. Maybe it's more important to remember some of the less-than-exemplary folks by name, so we are reminded of their mistakes and that we need to avoid them? Dunno.

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Something that occurs to me but is probably not accurate is this: Something called "Generations" would of course be the generations of Isaac, who else would it be? But wait, what, you mean the generations of Noah? Well, then you'd better call it "Noah".

Er, in other words, you can safely imply the more important one, but have to explicitly name the less.

[cellio]

Something called "Generations" would of course be the generations of Isaac, who else would it be?

Generations of Avraham? Yaakov? :-) But yeah, Noach is less obvious, so that would be an argument for the name.