by Sasha Flor Herscovici Bogursky, delivered at Minyan M'at & Ansche Chesed

“These are the offspring of Noach, Noach was a righteous man, perfect in his generation.”

As I read this pasuk a couple of times, a question came to me. Was Noach really a righteous man? Or was he just better than everyone else in his generation? There is a machloket, a disagreement, between Rabbi Nechemia and Rabbi Yehuda about Noach’s righteousness. Rabbi Yehuda says that Noach was only righteous compared to his evil generation and Rabbi Nechemia says that Noach would be considered righteous in any generation.

Rabbi Yehuda compares Noach to a bottle of wine. Imagine a rich man in his wine cellar opens bottle after bottle of wine only to found out that each one has turned as sour as vinegar. When he finally finds one that’s only half sour, he takes it to drink because that’s the best one he can found. That’s what Rabbi Yehuda thinks of Noach. The best that one can find in a bad situation. Rabbi Nechemia disagrees with Rabbi Yehuda and compares Noach to a bottle of perfume sitting in a garbage dump. How much more beautiful it would smell if it have been in a palace.

This pasuk also says “Noach walked with God." Rashi points out that when the Torah was speaking about Avraham, it says "...walk before me." This shows that Noach needed support and had to walk with God, but Avraham was so righteous he walked before God.

What does it mean to walk before god? Nechama Liebowitz points out that Avraham fought with God when God was going to destroy S'dom. What does Noach do when God tells him he’s going to destroy the whole world? He builds a boat.

Nechama Liebowitz makes another interesting point. She says that Noach possessed the will to take himself from all the evil in his world. God saw this and offered him a helping hand. That’s what it means that Noach walked with God.

This reminded me of the legend of the Lamed Vavniks. The Lamed Vavniks are 36 people in the world in every generation who possess the will to become the moshiach at any time. Lamed Vav means 36. The name Noach appears 36 times in this parasha. I think that we need to be like God with Noach and find ways to offer our help to make the world a better place.

HaShem needed to work with Noach to bring out his potential righteousness. How? He gave Noach a job. Build an ark. When Noach was building the ark (and the Rabbis say it took 120 years) he had a lot of time to think about why he was building it. Probably, he eventually realized that HaShem had chosen him over all the other people in the world to be his messenger. Obviously, he must have had some good qualities.

Could this be like we learned in science class, how viruses inject their DNA into other cells, and make them do what the viruses need to reproduce. Eventually, the cells burst open and send hundreds of new viruses into the body. This could be how God treated Noach, a place to inject his DNA and let it burst open and fill the new world with righteousness.

So: was Noach only righteous in his generation, or in any generation? At this point, I don’t really think it matters. There are occasionally some people like Avraham who can walk before God. If we are lucky, we can be like Noach. We need to walk with God to bring out our hidden righteousness.

Maybe if we all work hard enough, we too, like a virus, can burst out and infect the whole world.

Shabbat Shalom.

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