Drashot for Parashat Noah - Enjoy!

Take Responsibility and See a Better Day

Friday, 29 October 2012

There’s a delightful Midrash on the creation of man.  In it, the angels complain to G-d about what a mistake He made by creating man.  This, because of the mess the offspring of Adam and Eve have made of creation.  G-d tries to argue with the angels, sort of as a barrister for man’s defence.  He argues that man has many positive virtues.  But the angels have too many facts at their disposal.  They make a damning case against man, ripping apart G-d’s best efforts to mount an effective defence.  Finally, G-d throws up his arms in defeat and says:  Okay, so I screwed up when I creating them, but I did create them…so we’re stuck with them!

          In this Midrash, G-d is modelling a mindset that would do us well to adopt.  I don’t mean about man, but I mean about other things that we might create.  We can spend the rest of our lives rueing what we’ve wrought.  Alternatively, we can do what we can to set things as right as possible and then learn from the experience and move on.  The Torah’s account of the interactions between G-d and man – and later G-d and the People Israel – show a Sovereign who slips up from time to time but takes His lessons well.

           We all make mistakes.  I won’t say it is impossible to live without mistakes.  But I’ve never met someone who made none.  On Yom Kippur we talk a lot about our sins.  The Hebrew word for sin – chet – means, simply missing the mark.  Not quite aiming straight.  Messing up.  This definition is not endorsing sin.  Rather, it simply points out the existential reality that we’re all subject to it…all the time.  Even when our intentions are pure, we have a way of being distracted and not hitting the target squarely.  When our intentions are not pure, that’s a different story.  That’s transgression, avon or pesha.  That’s why we need Yom Kippur.  Not because we’re all wicked.  Rather, because we all…screw up.

          Some of us, when we miss the mark, tend to make up all kinds of excuses for our failure.  As I’ve pointed out before, there is regrettably an entire culture built around avoidance of blame.  Jews are certainly not exempt from this mindset.  It’s an unfortunate truth in America, and it is so here in Australia as well.  We make mistakes or don’t quite hit the mark, and we look for all kinds of ways to explain that it was beyond our control.

          How many times have we heard people explaining their own failures by reference to circumstances over which they assert that they had no control?  I spent two years as a prison chaplain in a US Government federal prison complex housing some of the world’s roughest and most notorious violent offenders.  And yet, the entire complex is full of innocent men!  At least, by their own accounts.  How many times I spent a day talking to inmates, and drove home thinking that I must be the only guilty man alive! 

          Sometimes we engage in this denial for ourselves, and sometimes others do it for us.  Think of how many times you have heard someone defending someone who had committed a particularly odious act, or who had simply screwed up.  Two weeks ago, supporters of President Obama refused to accept that Their Guy hadn’t prepared well for his first debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.  Journalists who are in his pocket claimed it was the elevation in Denver, the Mile High City, where the debate took place.  Vice President Biden had a different take:  Romney lied.  But the President, to his credit, admitted:  I had a bad night.

          Think of how much better our lives would be if we could overcome this tendency to cast blame outside of ourselves, or the ones in whom we believe.  If we maintain that nothing is our fault, then we can and will internalise that mindset.  But the worst part of that is not that we’re never to blame and others are.  No, the worst part is that, if we’re convinced that we’re never to blame, then we deny ourselves the opportunity for examining the consequences of our actions.  For soul-searching, checking our motivations or our skillsets.  If we’re never to blame for our mistakes, we deny ourselves to opportunity to work past them and do better the next time.  We sentence ourselves to being caught in a rut, subject to the same mistakes, shortcomings and failures time and again.  That’s the tragedy of the blame-someone-else mindset.  We never have an opportunity to get it right.

          In this week’s Torah reading, the narrative models G-d as being nothing short of a self-help guru.  He admits that he got it wrong in creating man.  And He takes action to rectify his messing up.  For now, let’s not dwell on the enormity of the remedial action He takes.  On the death and destruction that must occur.  I’m not trying to whitewash that aspect.  I’m only trying to find the lesson in other aspects.  Our Midrash’s portrayal of G-d as man’s defender points to G-d’s regard for that which he has created.  Let’s assume that G-d was devastated by the enormity of what He felt he had to do – destroy the entire world with a flood – to right His mistake.

          He doesn’t destroy humanity altogether.  He preserves a remnant in the form of Noah and his family.  Noah, found to be the only righteous man on earth, is saved the fate of humanity.  And his merit applies to his three sons and their wives.  And then G-d realizes that his ‘remedial action’ is too harsh to ever happen again.  After all, what does G-d do immediately after the flood?  He places a rainbow, His sign of armistice with man, in the sky.  And he decrees that, every time it rains in the future, the rainbow will appear and remind man that the current downpour will not result in the destruction of the world.  The rainbow will serve as an eternal reminder of the power G-d has, and the restraint He practices.

          I know, I know!  The Flood Story and everything about it, is a fairy tale.  There’s a perfectly clear explanation in physics as to why the rainbow appears whenever it rains.  It has nothing to do with a supernatural ruler who offers it as an eternal sign of peace.

          To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I agree with this sentiment.  There are versions of the Flood Story in other peoples’ sacred literature.  I think it is perfectly reasonable that the world once experienced a deluge of epic proportions, and that our wickedness brought it on.  Yes, there’s a perfectly good explanation from science as to why the rainbow occurs.  I get it; the raindrops in the sky serve as natural prisms, dividing the sunlight into the different colours based on their respective wavelengths.  Really, I do get it.  But the does not negate the lesson of the rainbow.

          Light where all the colours are present and mixed together yields to the eye a kind of mottled brownish-purple.  It’s gloomy and, when we see it, it is easy to forget its completeness.  But when the colours are separated into the different bands, it reminds us of the completeness of the light.  It reminds us that, even though things may look gloomy at the moment, everything is present for beauty.  If we see a bright rainbow presiding over a mottled purple world, it counsels us to take heart.  The rain will end, and the sun will shine through again.  Our hearts will be warmed once again by the beauty of our surroundings.

          This, then is the lesson to take from the account of Noah and the flood.  First, our actions have consequences.  Second, we must admit our mistakes, be ready to change course and act differently in the future.  Our covering for ourselves and others, simply dooms us to the same mistakes over and over again.  Third and finally, when all appears to be lost, we should try to look at the entire picture and take hope.  A rainbow presides over every dark and gloomy scene, counselling patience and hope.  Even when it appears that our world is imploding around us, we should realise that redemption is possible.  We should clear our minds of the gloom and start planning and working towards the time that it shall have passed.

          Accept the consequences, be ready to change, and don’t lose hope.  If we can allow ourselves to internalise these important lessons from the Noah narrative found in this week’s Torah reading, then our time spent reading and contemplating it will have been well-spent.  Shabbat shalom.

In His Generation

Saturday, 20 October 2012

It is a truth that we judge people against those who surround them.  In a sense, Good and Evil are not absolute.  Each of us does not live in a vacuum, but among others who may make it easier or more difficult at any given moment to do the right thing.  No, you’re not hearing me contradict anything I’ve said in the past!  We still bear full responsibility for our actions and their consequences at each and every moment of our adult lives.  At any given moment, we’re doing either Right or Wrong.  We’re being either Good, Evil, or in some cases Neutral.  We can seldom claim ignorance over what is expected of us.  We have the Ten Commandments in our Torah.  But some would call these ten principles as tantamount to natural law.  This, because most of humanity accepts them in principle, even if they do not see the Torah as holy or authoritative.

Now accepting the Ten Commandments in principle and actually living according to them are two different things!  I would say that many ‘accept’ them on their surface but do not particularly try to understand their meaning and live by them.  But perhaps that is another drash, for another day.

This morning’s Torah reading gives us some insight to this truth.  In its beginning, Noah is described as follows:  No’ach ish tzeddik, tamim haya bedorotav.  Et Ha’elokim hithalech No’ach.  Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.  Noah walked with G-d.

Blameless in his generation.  This phrase offers two possible interpretations, each one of which has been considered by our Tradition.

Some would say it impugns Noah’s character.  He was righteous in his generation of lawlessness.  This implies that his merit was only because of the bad times in which he lived.  So why do some of the Sages think he would not have particularly stood out in better times?

For an answer, we can contrast Noah with Abraham.  Noah, when told the world will be destroyed, proceeds to follow G-d’s instructions.  He begins building the ark, knowing that by doing so he will save his own skin and those of his immediate family.  But he seems to be oblivious of the rest of humanity.  He argues neither with G-d to relent, nor for his neighbours to repent.

Against this, look at Abraham’s reaction when G-d said he would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.  G-d tells Abraham to save his nephew, Lot and his immediate family.  But Abraham bargains G-d into conceding that He won’t destroy the cities if only ten righteous men can be found among the lot.  Of course, in the end there were not ten.  But Abraham is still seen as meritorious for arguing the concession out of G-d.  Abraham clearly believed that at least ten existed, and that he had truly talked G-d into relenting in his intentions.

So these Sages believed that, had Noah lived during good times, he would not necessarily have stood out.  Rather, his exceptionality stems from his being compared to the lawlessness of his time.  He may have held himself aloof from the debauchery surrounding him, and that was in absolute terms a good thing.  But he apparently did nothing to influence people to be better.  Had he done the latter, perhaps he might have been instrumental in saving humanity from its fate.

Others, notably Rashi, argue the opposite.  Noah’s being blameless in his generation means that he was truly blameless since his generation was a lawless one.  Others, who have been ‘more righteous’ in the absolute sense but during easier times, deserve less merit.

There’s plenty to support Rashi’s view.  Is this not why we particularly celebrate the Righteous Gentiles who rescued Jews during the Shoah?  When your own life is forfeit for Doing the Right Thing, how much more righteous does that make it when you Do the Right Thing then?  When times are benign, there’s sometimes no particular risk in doing Good and Right.  That makes doing Good less heroic.  But when you’re liable for death for an act as simple as providing a parched soul with water, how much more notable is the act of providing water?  So in a sense Noah, by being a righteous man in a particularly dark and lawless time, stands out even more.

The truth is that, from my standpoint, the two views are not in conflict.  And the reason is that I don’t see the point of tallying up one man’s ‘righteousness points’ against another’s.  It’s as if we were in some sort of competition to out-righteous one another.  To what end?

Noah, during a difficult time, distanced himself from the hamas that surrounded him.  Hamas means absolute lawlessness.  It means anarchy.  It means a world where one has no sense of how to protect oneself and one’s family.  By all accounts, Syria today is in, or close to such a state.  Venezuela and Russia are probably not far behind.  Add to those any totalitarian society where the government responds to any perceived threat by making any imagined enemy disappear.  Add to those any lawlessness society where the police cannot keep citizens safe from criminals.

Noah did not take the initiative, as Abraham did, to argue against G-d’s intentions.  So that made him less chutzpahdik.  And perhaps Abraham, for his initiative earned a few extra ‘righteousness points.’  That’s why Abraham was chosen to be the principal in G-d’s covenant.  That’s why the three major monotheistic religions claim to be the heirs of Abraham’s legacy.  Of course, we all want to be associated with this man!

But we sometimes forget that Noah too, was a principal to a covenant with G-d.  We call it the Noahide Covenant.  Association with it – and therefore, righteousness in G-d’s sight – is available to all human beings, no matter what religion (or none) that they practice.

The Babylonian Talmud, in Tractate Sanhedrin, spells out the Noahide Covenant, which consists of Seven Laws.  Man must establish, and uphold, a system of just laws.  He must not murder, steal, commit adultery, worship idols, blaspheme G-d, or eat flesh cut from a living animal.  According to this teaching anybody living within these laws, regardless of his national heritage or membership in a particular religion, is considered just fine with G-d.  In that sense, it may be said that the Noahide covenant is broader than the Abrahamic one.  It is available to everybody.  That’s not too shabby!  I would say that having such a covenant named after one, imputes considerable righteousness.

So I say, let’s not worry about who was more righteous than whom.  There’s a lovely Midrash that illustrates this.  A certain Rabbi Zusya, approaching the end of his life, felt regretful over the smallness of his accomplishments.  Going to G-d in prayer, he apologised profusely.  I’m sorry I wasn’t a Moses, he said.  I’m sorry I wasn’t Abraham.  Then a heavenly voice came to him.  I’m not angry with you for not being Moses, G-d said.  I’m angry with you for not being Zusya.

G-d only expects each one of us to rise to the best self that is within us.  At the end of my life, I’ll have to account for not being the best Don Levy I could have been.  I need not fret over whether I would measure up to a Moses.  Or a Leo Baeck.  Or whatever.   Thank G-d, I’ll only have to answer to why I wasn’t the best Don Levy possible.  That is a big enough responsibility.  Anything more would be crushing.

Noah was a righteous man in his generation.  That’s the only generation that matters, because it’s the generation in which he lived.  Considering that, I think he gave a very good account of himself.  We can look to Noah and see him as a role model.  What tasks are given to us, if we are to be G-d’s partners in our generation?  Clearly not building an ark and gathering in pairs of animals.  But each one of us must search our souls and decide what it is that we are called to do.  Each one of us, thanks to our unique mix of talents and circumstances, has a unique contribution to make.  May each of us, when given clarity as to what that contribution is, act with the decisiveness of Noah.  Shabbat shalom.