(18) The sons of Noach who came out of the ark were Shem, Cham, and Yefet. Cham is the father of Canaan. (19) These three were the sons of Noach, and from these the whole world branched out. (20) Noach, the tiller of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. (21) He drank of the wine and became drunk, and he uncovered himself within his tent. (22) Cham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. (23) But Shem and Yefet took a cloth, placed it against both their backs and, walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness; their faces were turned the other way, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness. (24) When Noach woke up from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to him, (25) he said, “Cursed be Canaan; slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” (26) And he said, “Blessed be Hashem, The God of Shem; Canaan shall be in servitude to them. (27) May God enlarge Yefet, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be in servitude to them.”
Rather, say in explanation of the baraita: And our Rabbis permitted them to be written only in Greek. And it is taught in another baraita that Rabbi Yehuda said: Even when our Rabbis permitted Greek, they permitted it only in a Torah scroll, and not for other books of the Bible, which must be written only in Hebrew. The Gemara continues: And this was due to the incident of King Ptolemy, as it is taught in a baraita: There was an incident involving King Ptolemy of Egypt, who assembled seventy-two Elders from the Sages of Israel, and put them into seventy-two separate rooms, and did not reveal to them for what purpose he assembled them, so that they would not coordinate their responses. He entered and approached each and every one, and said to each of them: Write for me a translation of the Torah of Moses your teacher. The Holy One, Blessed be He, placed wisdom in the heart of each and every one, and they all agreed to one common understanding. Not only did they all translate the text correctly, they all introduced the same changes into the translated text.
(ד) רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן לָקִישׁ פָּתַר קְרָיָא בַּגָּלֻיּוֹת, וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ, זֶה גָּלוּת בָּבֶל, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (ירמיה ד, כט): רָאִיתִי אֶת הָאָרֶץ וְהִנֵּה תֹהוּ. וָבֹהוּ, זֶה גָּלוּת מָדַי (אסתר ו, יד): וַיַּבְהִלוּ לְהָבִיא אֶת הָמָן. וְחשֶׁךְ, זֶה גָּלוּת יָוָן, שֶׁהֶחֱשִׁיכָה עֵינֵיהֶם שֶׁל יִשְׂרָאֵל בִּגְזֵרוֹתֵיהֶן,
Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish explained the verse, “And the Earth was desolate and void and darkness was on the face of the deep” regarding the exiles. ...“And darkness” refers to the Greek Exile which darkened the eyes of the Jews through its decrees.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, Collected Writings Vol. 2 p. 200
In Bereishit (9:27), the Torah says, “The Lord has given Yefet beauty; let him reside in the Tents of Shem.” In Yefet, come together reason and the desire for the spiritual …Yefet reaches his peak in the culture of Yavan, Greece, and till today these two remain, Israel and Yavan, representing “Sinai” and humanism, respectively. Yefet beautified the world from an aesthetic point of view, while Shem enlightened the world from an ethical-moral perspective … Yefet prepares the ground for the mission of Shem. First, let a person be imbued with the ideas of the beautiful and the good in the spirit of the Greeks; afterwards, let him proceed to be imbued with that which is still more beautiful and elevated and harmonious – the Godly.
…There was a conflict between two perspectives of life, two cultures, which until today are struggling for dominance in the world … The Greek nation stood at the pinnacle of culture of all the descendants of Yefet; the Greeks taught to all the other nations the beautiful, and explained that that which is beautiful is also good. However, at the pinnacle of the culture of the Children of Shem stood Ever, whose descendants became the Hebrew Nation, which plants its tents according to the Will of Hashem, in order to sanctify His Name; they build the Temple of justice and love. The mission of both cultures is to cover the animalistic nakedness in Man; both were destined to raise Man to the level of the human and the Godly, and to subdue by proper education the influence of “Cham,” the hot-blooded roughneck who desires the animalistic nakedness … all of the history of the world till our day represents the constant struggle regarding the above prophecy (“The Lord has given beauty …”).
Until the appearance of the Greeks, the human spirit and human feelings developed only under the influence of necessity and the events of life. Man found no opportunity to develop self-respect; he recognized only fear as a motivation and a means to overcome his desires, but from his essential nature, Man remained mean-spirited, cruel, narrow-minded, and enslaved.
The culture of Greece aroused the desire for logic and enlightenment, a feeling of yearning for great ideas, and the opening of the spiritual life of a person through the contemplation of harmonious and beautiful essences of things, and by means of the control of his overwhelming desires, so did the culture of Greece develop the feeling of self-respect within Man. It could arouse trust in oneself, and give a person responsibility for the conduct of his life …in short, the spirit of Greece freed Man from the chains which bound him, enlightened him with culture, beautified his spirit and filled him with the joy of life.
The spirit of enlightenment which emanated from Greece, in its pure form, never constituted a danger to the holy ways of Israel, inasmuch as Israel sees it as a contributing cause to the realization of its own destiny; namely, the enlightenment of Man and his improvement; then it was always proper to bring into his tent the truth, and the pure humanity associated with that Spirit.