"Noah spoke: Canaan will be accursed. A servant of servants shall he be unto his bretheren. And again he spoke: God will be blessed, the God of Shem, may Canaan become his servant. God will open the mind of Japheth, but he will dwell in the tents of Shem. And may Canaan be a servant to them." (Genesis 25-27)
That which is said in these verses contains perhaps the deepest and farthest reaching prophesy which ever a human eye has been allowed to see of the future, and which God has allowed to be spoken by human lips. The whole history of mankind, the beginning, the end and the middle lies in these three verses.
We recognize in the names of the sons of Noah the essential nuances which characterize the nations which descend from them, according to whether spirit, sensuality or feelings predominate in their national character. Here they stand in their double significance, as individuals and as founders of the nations of the future.
When Noah woke up and got to know of Ham's behavior, his first thought was that the principle that showed itself here in Ham, can and will never be the ruling one. Raw sensuality, which has no control over itself, which has lost all reserve and all respect for anything spiritually high is unfit for ruling. For freedom, it in itself is unfruitful, is a curse without progress or blessing, it bears its ruin in itself.
That Canaan will have the fate of being a slave, there must undoubtedly be some connection between the Canaan-character and the slave fate. And, as a matter of fact, as the curse lies in Canaan, so that the future belongs only to the pure and ennobled, but not to the course, unrefined, so also in the social life, in the social and national life, in the relation of man to man and nation to nation, freedom is only achieved and retained by those who can master and control themselves. Sensuality, uncontrolled licentiousness, is the bait by which one is led by strings into slavery. He who at all times is master of himself, who can easily control giving satisfaction to the urges of his senses, he cannot be bribed or enticed, for him gold cannot become golden chains; he can die, but he cannot become enslaved. Thus for men, thus for nations.
In contrast to the curse of Canaan is the blessing of Shem, the recognition of the God whom Shem teaches will gain an ever greater circle, will spread, progress until finally it will become that principle to which all the world will subscribe. While Ham represents the most ignoble, unvarnished audacious sensuality, Shem teaches of a God who not only once served as the Original Force which called heaven and earth into being, but who still is mover of the heaven and earth, still rules everything, so that every fiber of our being and every impulse of our will belongs to Him; accordingly, the very opposite of Ham. Shem and correspondingly Canaan are not looked on personally as individuals, but as the future nations descended from them. Japheth designates feelings being open to all external impressions and influences. Hence naivety, one who is easily talked over and easily deceived. Japheth is responsive to feelings.
Thus we have placed before us the representatives of the three main tendencies which characterize people and nations. Spirit, sensuality and sentiment constitute the inner man, and these three powers predominate characteristically in nations. Not that there are completely one-sided nations who have either only mind, only sentiment, etc. But just as in individuals all three are present, but nevertheless everybody has one of them which marks his personality, so is it with nations. For us who do not stand, as Noah did, at the very beginning of history, but can look back on four thousand years of history, it is easy to see the working of these different forces in nations in the development of world history.
The greatest ado in the world has been made by Ham, that sensuality, worldliness, which harnesses all that belongs to spirit and mind to their chariots of fame, and only allows intellect to be used or valued as far as it serves as a means of furthering the material side of life, nations that conquer, plunder and enjoy. Nations pass across the stage who represent hardly anything but raw force, sensuality and bestiality.
But nations also appear which use their forces in the service of beauty who characterize themselves in nurturing art, aesthetic beauty. They are conscious of some higher ideal up to which mankind is to work itself out of crudeness. This tendency teaches people to cloak raw sensuality in the garb of respectability and graciousness. Through grace and beauty they foster a taste for more spiritual activities, music, poetry, art. All those nations who cherish that which appeals to feelings represent the Japheth character.
When we look to historical facts we can say: the stem of Japheth reached its fullest blossoming in the Greeks: that of Shem in the Hebrews, who bore the name of God as their God through the world of nations. Right to the present day it is only these two races, the descendants of Japheth and Shem, who have become the real educators and teachers of humanity. For all the spiritual treasures which the world has acquired these two have to be thanked, and everything, which, even today, works at the culture and education of mankind, connects up with that which Japheth and Shem brought to the world. The spiritual gifts of the Romans were only a gift of the Hellenes. Japheth has ennobled the world aesthetically. Shem has enlightened it spiritually and morally. Hellenism and Judaism have become the great active forces in the educational work on mankind, and the rest of the world has been merely passive material on which they worked. In this sense, Noah's enlightened eye sees three things:
He sees that coarseness and ruthless glowing sensuality does not bear the seed of the future blossoming of mankind within it; sees that nations who give themselves up to sensuality and in whose character, the lower nature of man remains the prevailing trait, instead of becoming free, independent and mighty, sink down to slaves. More, he sees centuries in which the conception of human beings having the right to freedom is quite lost. From Ham's descendants, tyrants, mighty despots and hunters of men went forth. Not freedom, slavery is begotten by passion. Freedom only lives in the law, only blossoms there, where untouchably above all, a law of moral rules. He remains free who learns to obey the law of morals. Sensuous nations are the breeding places of slavery, Ham begets slaves and where sensuality is at its height, as in Canaan, they sink to slaves of slaves.
This is an excerpt from Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch's Commentary on the Pentateuch, originally published in 1867. Rabbi Hirsch was an important Bible commentator and Jewish philosopher. In 1846, Rabbi Hirsch accepted the post of Chief Rabbi of Moravia. Shortly thereafter, he served as a member of the Austrian Parliament, where he was a leader in the fight for equal rights for the Jews of Austria and Hungary. In 1851, Rabbi Hirsch moved back to his native Frankfort, Germany to help revitalize the decimated religious Jewish community, which at the time had only 11 members. Rabbi Hirsh's purpose was to counter the movement away from religious principles sweeping through Europe's Jewish communities. His writings provided philosophic and historical justification for the principles of the Bible. 
MYR CONVENTION!