Of the many profound lessons that Parashat Noah teaches us about relationships, I’d like to focus on the one we learn from the covenant, the berit, that God makes with Noah in the wake of the flood. A covenant is, fundamentally, a record of the terms of a relationship. Reading the terms of a covenant can teach us about the components and terms of that relationship. This is the first covenant that appears in Tanakh (Jewish Bible) and its function is self-restraint in the name of sustaining and preserving relationship.