Ethics. Morals. Right. Wrong. A swirl of concepts all revolving around how we ought to behave, what we ought to believe and how we ought to show up in the world. My orbit has been full of these messages in recent weeks. For one, I’ve finally capitulated and practically inhaled the television series, “The Good Place,” which is all about what happens to us after we die based on how we behaved while alive. On top of that cultural content, I was invited to guest-teach a class at a local independent school about the role of storytelling in morality and social justice. We looked at a text from the beginning of Exodus (not this week’s parsha… bear with me) about the midwives lying to Pharaoah in order to save the Hebrew infants, and about Moses murdering the Egyptian task master in order to relieve a slave who was being beaten. These middle and high schoolers wrestled with the idea of wrongs making a right, the relativity of each action versus the greater injustice being perpetrated. We concluded that there are many shades of grey between absolute right and absolute wrong.
Which brings me to this week’s parsha. Noach, begins with the words “Noach was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age…” (Genesis 6:9). Rather famously, Noach’s generation was despicable, and quite literally beyond saving. Does this mean that Noach was the best of the worst? Is it a backhanded compliment? The verse continues that Noach “walked with God,” but that just further begs the question, was God “walking with,” Noach simply because he was the best human option? God didn’t need to be walking alongside anyone, though, so perhaps this is a signal to us that Noach was indeed beyond the average level of righteousness and blamelessness.
This year, I find myself resonating with the idea that this qualifier means that Noach was just ok… he had his limitations and moral misses, but he was the best of what humanity had to offer, at a moment when humanity was at its lowest. It gives me hope as an “average bear,” to see one who is just ok among the really not-great being able to rise to the challenge of the moment and complete an incredibly difficult task in order to save the world. We’ll wrestle with this idea a bit more in Torah study this week, I’d love to see you there.