‘And God said to Noah, ‘Come into the teiva, you and all your household’” (Gen. 7:1).
The teiva – the ark – is one of the defining images of the parasha: a vessel of refuge carrying Noah, his family, and the living creatures through the waters of the Flood toward a renewed world.
Yet the Hebrew word “teiva” has another meaning. It can also mean “a word.” The Baal Shem Tov, the 18th-century founder of the Hassidic movement, takes “Bo el hateiva” (“Come into the ark”) as an instruction to enter the words of prayer.
Fittingly, this teaching opens “Amud Hatefila” – “The Pillar of Prayer” – an extensive compilation of his teachings on prayer found in Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah, parashat Noah.
Here the ark becomes the starting point for an entire approach to prayer – one of deep concentration, attachment to the sacred letters, and awareness of the Divine within them.
In prayer, he teaches, you should immerse yourself in each word “with your whole body and all your powers.” Rather than allowing the words simply to pass through our lips, we are invited to experience them fully.
'Worlds, souls, and Divinity'
The Baal Shem Tov takes the teaching further. Within every letter, he says, are “worlds, souls, and Divinity.” As letters join together to form words, prayer becomes more than a sequence of words to be recited. The teiva itself becomes a spiritual space that can hold and carry us.
Yoram Raanan’s painting gives striking visual expression to this understanding of “teiva.” He created the work spontaneously, allowing paint to drip and flow across the canvas. From this spontaneous process, a ship emerged. Its great curved form fills the lower half of the painting, while long vertical lines rise like masts above it.
Within the form of the ship, a stringed instrument, perhaps a lute, came into being. The curved hull becomes the body of the instrument, while the vertical lines perform both functions visually – at once masts and strings. Ship and instrument inhabit the same form – one carrying us across, the other giving voice to sound.
Above them, small forms move through the expansive blue-green field. Some appear as golden birds, others as drifting clouds, while still others remain more elusive. “They intermingle,” Raanan says, “like the words of prayer.”
The transformation seems particularly fitting for the Baal Shem Tov’s understanding of “teiva.” The ship carries us; the instrument gives voice to prayer. The word becomes both vessel and sound.
Throughout the painting, forms seem to shift and flow into one another. Water becomes sky. Ship becomes lute. Birds and other forms seem to pass between different realms.
The painting gives visual form to something difficult to describe: to enter the teiva is not merely to pronounce a word of prayer, but to enter its sound, its movement, and the world it contains. Just as the ark carries its passengers through the waters of the Flood, the words of prayer can become a vessel that carries us.
But the ark does more than carry. It is also a place of protection. When the world outside becomes stormy, the teiva offers refuge.
The Baal Shem Tov’s teaching gives this ancient image an inner dimension. In difficult or turbulent times, we, too, can find a protective space within sacred words and prayer.
And Raanan’s lute adds another possibility: music, too, can become a place of refuge. Sound moves through us and changes how we feel, carrying us when words alone are not enough.
This image has particular resonance just after the cycle of the Jewish holidays. We have emerged from weeks of prayer, reflection, celebration, and sacred time, and suddenly we are back in the ordinary rhythm of the year.
The Baal Shem Tov’s teaching offers us a way to take something of that experience with us: the words of prayer can carry and sustain us as we move into the year ahead.
Noah could not remain in the ark forever. Eventually, the waters receded, the door opened, and he stepped onto dry land to begin again. The ark had carried him through the Flood; now he had to build life anew.
Raanan’s teiva, at once ark and lute, seems to hold both possibilities. The ark offers refuge; the lute gives us a song for the journey. We enter the teiva, and it carries us into the year ahead.
The writer is the author of Art of Revelation: A Visual Encounter with the Jewish Bible, a commentary on the paintings of her husband, artist Yoram Raanan. She teaches Jewish meditation and is currently writing ‘Art of Transformation,’ a book exploring the relationship between art, Jewish spirituality, and inner transformation, from which this article is adapted.