Generations of Noah are now seen as belonging to several distinct families independent of the Afro-Asiatic group. Some now discarded Hamitic theories have become viewed as racist; in particular a theory proposed in the 19th century by Speke, that the Tutsi were supposedly of some Hamitic ancestry and thus "inherently superior". The 17th-century Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, thought that the Chinese had also descended from Ham, via Egyptians. There exist various traditions in post-biblical and talmudic sources claiming that Noah had children other than Shem, Ham, and Japheth who were born before the Deluge. According to the Quran ("Hud" 42–43), Noah had another unnamed
Yoel Baal Shem Yoel Baal Shem Yoel Baal Shem () was an Orthodox Jewish scholar of Halacha and Kabbalah who lived in Zamość (; Yiddish: Zamoshtsh) during the 17th century. He became renowned as a Baal Shem (lit; Master of [Divine] Names) for performing miracles, commanding demons and authoring Kabalistic amulets. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880–1950) writes in his memoirs Yoel married before the age of 20 and started learning Kabbalah. Upon a dream, Yisrael Yosef sent his son Yoel to Prague to learn kabbalah from Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem. Yoel became one of the closest students of Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem who