Shem שם בן נח
eldest son of Noach, ancestor of the Semitic peoples, head of the first study house
Shem was born in 1558, a hundred years before the Flood, and entered the ark with his father. Afterwards he and Yefet cover their drunken father, and Shem receives the blessing from which tradition derives his special role.
From Shem come Arpachshad, Shelach, Ever and Peleg, and so the direct line to Terach and Avraham — hence the word «Semitic». The sages identify Shem with Malki-Tzedek, «king of Shalem, priest of God Most High», who met Avraham with bread and wine after the war of the four kings; on that reading Avraham is blessed by his own distant grandfather.
Most of all, tradition remembers the study house of Shem and Ever, where knowledge of the one God was preserved in an age of idolatry. Rivka goes there to enquire; Yaakov studies there for fourteen years. Shem lived 600 years, dying in 2158 — long enough to know Avraham, Yitzchak and the young Yaakov.