Contrasts help us see differences. In this week’s Torah portion about Noah, the first verse reveals a contrast that identifies Noah as more than just the man who built an ark and saved living creatures. The Torah portion opens with these words, “Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age” (Genesis 6:1). In Hebrew, “righteous” is tzadik, and “blameless” is tamim, sometimes translated to mean innocent. But the Torah commentator, Rashi, of the 11th century, raised an important question.

Rashi contrasted his righteous and innocent qualities against the generation in which he lived and tested it further against any generation in which he might have lived. In Noah’s generation, “the earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness (hamas)” (Genesis 6:11). So, if Noah’s generation was filled with corruption and lawlessness (violence in some translations), then how difficult was it for Noah to be called “blameless” and “innocent”? To test the matter further, what if Noah lived in another generation that wasn’t as corrupt or lawless; would Noah have been just as blameless and innocent? Commentators held different points of view, but Rashi, above all, concluded that Noah would have been righteous and blameless in any age or generation in which he lived.

The test scrutinized not only Noah as a man of his generation, but also the moral lesson that Noah’s character taught in this Flood narrative. First, one of his highest moral achievements was to stand above the times he lived in, which were corrupt and lawless. The ark was a refuge from the flood, but it’s also a metaphor for ways to survive devastating circumstances. Gathering with like-minded people whose moral life is above reproach, or nearly so, can be life-affirming because it’s a life of mitzvah.

Second, Noah’s moral compass led him to listen to God’s way rather than the way of corrupt and lawless human beings. Though some contemporary fun has been poked at Noah’s initial reluctance to heed God’s commands to build an Ark, such humor projects our human indifference, too. But in the end, Noah’s faithfulness led to an outcome that saved the world. Following the Flood, God made a promise never to destroy the world by flood waters, again. God’s promise was a rainbow in the sky, in Hebrew, a Keshet, (Genesis 9:13).

The matter about Noah was settled. Noah was a righteous man who would have been righteous in any age or generation. He was a moral person whose obligations to God and humanity are without question. Each of us can see ourselves as Noah who’s tested, too, though admittedly in less severe ways. How would we pass the moral test? For what reasons would we ignore God and permit corruption and lawlessness to consume a world of God’s creation?

Modern commentators wisely note that the Noah narrative still lives with us. They observed that God promised not to destroy the world by flood waters, again, but there was no promise that human beings couldn’t destroy the world by our own means.

The conclusion is that we’re never free and clear of our moral obligation to preserve and honor what God has given us.

L’Shalom