Making Sense of the Sedra: Noach

This week’s portion, Noach, begins with praising Noah as “a righteous man, perfect in his generation”. Reading this text in the Torah, we might think very highly of Noah. However, our rabbis tell us that the words ‘in his generation’ are an indication that he was only righteous compared to the misguided generation of his time. The rabbis go further and say that had he been in Abraham’s generation, he wouldn’t have been considered righteous at all.

Why do the rabbis single out Abraham of all the great Jewish leaders to compare with Noah, and if he was only a tzaddik, a righteous man, compared to a very misguided generation who were ultimately destroyed because of their waywardness, why call him tzaddik at all?

Let’s look at the events in this week’s portion. God commands Noah to build an ark. The Talmud says that Noah spent 120 years building it. The reason Noah took so long was that God hoped that people would question what Noah was doing, creating an opportunity for Noah to share with them that God wanted to destroy the world because of the pain and suffering people are causing one another. God hoped that Noah’s message would cause the people to repent. However, after 120 years of building this giant ark, how many people does Noah manage to influence? Not one!

In contrast to Noah, Abraham saw truth and then devoted his life to sharing it with others. He saw for himself a better way to live; he saw that life has meaning and he was driven to share this with others. Noah, on the other hand, was doing the right thing, but he only saw in himself the ability to do the right thing. He clearly did not see this potential in others; if he had, he would have been driven to share it, just like Abraham. Through this contrast the rabbis teach us that when being righteous is limited to you alone, righteousness is not a compliment.

When I was 21, I came across a simple spiritual understanding that changed my life for the better. In short, I saw that the emotional suffering that I experienced was not directly caused by my circumstances but rather was a result of the thinking I had around the issue. In seeing this, I saw that I didn’t have to take on board thinking that came my way that made me miserable. I was so lost before I had this knowledge that I know clearly if I can change, anyone else can change, too. This spiritual knowledge has a powerful effect on clients and on people who join my Fundamentals for Relationships groups. We are all spiritual beings and therefore we all have the potential to live meaningful lives. The most lost human being on earth has the potential to change and the more we see how we humans are all the same in a spiritual sense, the easier it is to wake people up to their full potential.