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This week’s Torah portion, Noach, hides a powerful lesson in a few extra words: how we speak about, look at, and think about the people around us.

Why the Torah Says “Not Pure”

When the Torah tells Noach which animals to bring onto the ark, it speaks of “the animal that is not pure” rather than simply saying “impure.” The Sages teach that the Torah added extra letters just to avoid saying something unclean. Rashi explains that this teaches us to always speak nicely.

That is the lesson for our speech. But the same portion teaches us to be careful with our sight as well.

The Extra Words About Sight

When Noach’s sons Shem and Yefet covered their father, the verse says they walked backwards, with their faces turned away, “and their father’s nakedness they did not see.” They were blessed for it: “Blessed is God, the God of Shem.. and he will dwell in the tent of Shem” and Yefet is blessed too.

But if their faces were turned away, it is already obvious that they did not see. Why does the Torah add those words? There must be another virtue hidden in them, one that isn’t noticeable at first glance.

The Mirror of the Baal Shem Tov

To understand it, we first need a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov: when you see something bad in your friend, it is proof that the same bad is in you. Like a mirror, if your face is clean, you see a clean face. If you see dirt and stains, it is only because your own face is dirty.

Why must it be that way? Because the fact that you even noticed it is not a coincidence. Nothing in the world is created without purpose. We always judge ourselves favorably, and, like leprosy, a person cannot see his own. So we are shown it in someone else, and that moment is meant to make us think about ourselves and fix ourselves.

But there is a question: the Torah also commands us to rebuke and help our friends. A Jew’s purpose isn’t only to fix himself, but to care about every other Jew. So why can’t seeing the bad simply be a sign that your friend needs help? The answer is that it can be both. I’ll explain.

When Do We Say It Clean, and When Do We Say It Plain?

In Tractate Pesachim, the Talmud teaches that a person should never say something unclean from his mouth, and then asks about the Torah’s many uses of the word tamei (impure). The answer is that when the Torah teaches a law, it must be clear and exact, so it says “impure.” But when it is telling a story, it uses the cleaner, longer wording, such as “a person who is not pure.” That is why the Talmud’s question is about the few places in a story, not the hundreds of places in the laws.

Seeing works the same way. When you hear or see that a fellow Jew did something wrong, the only thing relevant to you is the law: what needs to be done, how to rebuke him and bring him back to good. That is the only reason to see it. If you are just observing the bad and stressing what a bad person he is, that is the proof that your own face is dirty.

Shem and Yefet vs. Cham

Now we can understand those extra words. Shem and Yefet did not only avoid seeing their father’s nakedness physically. They did not dwell on the bad at all. They saw it only in terms of what to do, to cover their father and fix the situation. Their minds went straight to fixing, never to pointing out the bad. Cham, on the other hand, saw it, stressed it, and even told it to his brothers. That means the bad was in himself. His name even comes from the word cham, meaning “heat,” and he was the father of Canaan who mentioned it to his father.

So the lesson for all of us: not only should we not go around spreading it, we shouldn’t even entertain it in our minds as bad. Instead, we should work with the person and see only how to fix it.

The Blessing

That way of looking at the world earns the great blessing in the verse: “Blessed is God, the God of Shem,” and God will dwell in the tents of Shem. It means having God in our midst. The vessel for Torah is peace, and this is the peaceful way of seeing and acting in the world. It brings godliness to dwell in the world, all the way until the ultimate dwelling, when Moshiach comes.