Kindness and Righteousness
Noah Drash by Stan Satz
We are told in Genesis that because Noah is a righteous man, he and his family will be spared the devastating flood that will wipe out everyone else, those depraved wretches for whom God has no mercy. But precisely what are Noah’s admirable qualities? How has he devoted himself to God? How has he related to his family and neighbors? We don’t know. He is given no personality before the Flood or right after it subsides. His only cited virtue is obedience to God: he does build the ark for him and his family, thus preserving the human race, in addition to housing the requisite animals to replenish the earth. But we are not told how he feels about his mission: Does he have any compassion for his fallen fellow man, or does he gloat over the fact that these debauched sinners will be destroyed? Does he plead with God to subdue His wrath? Or does he wholeheartedly subscribe to the imminent holocaust? Is he so dumbfounded by the enormity of God’s terrifying master plan that he cannot speak at all? We don’t know. During the flood, how does Noah get along with his family? We aren’t told. How does he respond to God’s promise never again to slaughter the human race? Genesis again is silent.
The only time we get a glimpse of Noah’s feelings, and they discredit him, occurs after he finds out that Ham, one of his sons, has seen him naked after Noah is asleep from overindulging in wine. He curses Ham for breaking the taboo against observing one’s father naked, and all of Ham’s descendants are to become servants, even though Ham is just an innocent bystander who didn’t have the presence of mind to cover up his father and say nothing to his brothers about the unfortunate spectacle that he had just witnessed. If Noah were such a good man, why didn’t he curse himself for becoming such a drunken obscenity? Does he have any self-awareness at all? All I see here is vindictiveness. But as the incident with Ham indicates to me, Noah is unsympathetically and even pathetically self-righteous. All in all, I’ll have to take Genesis at face value when it says that Noah, before the flood, was a righteous man.
As symbolized by the rainbow, God promises Noah that he will never again conjure up another apocalyptic flood. Accordingly, every living thing will have the opportunity to begin anew (“Be fruitful and multiply”), even though God’s human creations are inherently flawed: (“The devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth.)” God would also look favorably upon the multitude of daily acts of kindness we offer to one another, in spite of our basically self-serving nature. As Rabbi Rose, who officiated at my son’s Bar-Mitzvah once said, we should treasure the precious little moments of life—the big events will take care of themselves.
Not too long ago, my wife and I returned from Europe. While we were there, we repeatedly noticed how many people made a special effort to help us. In Salzburg, we had no internet in our apartment, but we found out that the Motel One next door had accessible Wi-Fi. We explained our situation to one of the employees at the front desk. He was dumfounded that our host had no internet connection. Right away, he offered to give us the motel’s password, and because it changed every day, he promised to see to it that we’d have the required password for as many days as we stayed in Salzburg. Not only that! We could spend as much computer time as we wanted. We were now able to get the latest updates on the war between Israel and Hamas; Marie could keep abreast of her business in Waikīkī; and we both could monitor the upcoming birth of our 10th grandchild: all because of the kindness of a man who, as a transplanted Middle Eastern Muslim, was just as much a stranger in a strange land as we were.
In Budapest, our last stop, I obtained tickets for many concerts at the Franz Liszt Academia of Music at Franz Liszt Square. I wanted to find the location in advance to make sure we wouldn’t have any trouble getting there. Following a map as best I could, I got lost. Four people took the time to give me directions. One store owner cut short a phone call, came out of his shop, and pleasantly told me to go right at the intersection that I had just passed by, and wished me well. It wasn’t his fault that I twice overran Franz Liszt Square after I tripped and tumbled over some trolley tracks. After regaining my balance, I approached a young lady walking her dog. She stopped her routine, explained with lots of gestures and details where she thought the Academy was located. I figured that now I at least would get close to my destination.
But I still needed more confirmation, so I attempted to get additional specific directions from a salesclerk who was sweeping the street. She wasn’t too sure where the long-sought after Academy was, but she enlisted herself in my cause. She stopped a few people walking by and asked them (in Hungarian) if they knew where the building was. What a sweet thing to do! Nobody responded until one man who spoke fluent English not only walked me to the appointed intersection but also gave me a detailed description of the Academia’s classical façade. Another extremely gracious stranger! I got squared away as I finally made it to the Promised Land of concerts along Franz Liszt Square. These and other auspicious encounters we had during our trip to Europe remind me of a quote from William Wordsworth’s 19th century poem Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey: the “best portion of a good man’s life” is “his little, nameless… acts of kindness.”
If God, deciding no longer to indulge and endure the human race, revokes his covenant and ushers in another cataclysm, I believe that one group chosen to stream into the Ark ought to be the people who—without any personal gain—have been kind to strangers and to one another. Carrying out any mitzvah, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, inscribes us in the Book of Life. I’d like to end my drash with a passage from Harold Kushner’s book To Life! “We come into the presence of God by translating our Jewish identity into action wherever we are by performing a mitzvah. We bring holiness into our lives not by entering a sanctuary, but by acting to sanctify the everyday, making the ordinary extraordinary.” Amen.
