In the synagogue the Torah is read aloud in a fixed annual cycle of fifty-four weekly portions (parashiyot), one each Shabbat morning, with certain adjacent portions doubled in ordinary years so the sequence fits the calendar. Each portion is named for a distinctive word near its opening and is paired with a haftarah, a reading from the Prophets. The cycle closes and restarts on Simchat Torah. Noach ('Noah', Genesis 6:9-11:32) tells of the great flood, the ark that preserved life, and God's covenant sealed by the rainbow never again to destroy the earth by water. It closes with the tower of Babel and the scattering of tongues, and the line leading to Abram.
The flood narrative's two intertwined strands, one using the divine name Elohim and specifying seven pairs of clean animals against two of unclean (Genesis 7:2-3), the other using YHVH and speaking simply of pairs, is a classic text in source-critical scholarship's argument that Genesis weaves together originally separate accounts, a reading traditional commentary does not follow, preferring instead, as Rashi does, to resolve apparent tensions within a single unified narrative. Noach's covenant, sealed by the rainbow and made not with Israel alone but with 'every living creature of all flesh' (Genesis 9:15-17), grounds the rabbinic doctrine of the seven Noahide laws, prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, sexual immorality, eating flesh from a living animal, and the positive duty to establish courts of justice, understood in classical rabbinic sources as the minimal ethical code binding on all humanity rather than only on Israel.