Parashat Noah
SERMON Parashat Noah October 24, 2025
Ori Hauser Rainville Bar Mitzvah
Rabbi David Edleson Temple Sinai South Burlington, Vermont
RIGHTEOUS IN HIS GENERATION
Ori, your portion is a famous one, about Noah and the ark and the Tower of Babel. One thing we haven’t talked much about while we worked on your d’var was Noah himself. The Torah tells us that Noah was a good person, and was “tamim b’dorotav” which means “innocent in his generation,” or “righteous in his age.”
The odd phrase “righteous in his age” was like candy for the ancient rabbis. What do they mean, “in his age?” Would he not be righteous in a different age?
The Talmud tells us that some rabbis read it in his favor; that since he was righteous even in his awful generation, if he had lived in a better time, he would have been even more righteous.
Other rabbis read it the opposite way, that Noah was good for his time, but he would have never measured up had he lived in Abraham’s time. (Sanhedrin 108a).
I read it a little differently. I think the Torah is telling us that all we can be is good and blameless in the time we live in. We can’t compare ourselves to other generations because too many things are different. You’ll touch on that tomorrow.
We can’t even really compare our goodness to other people living when we do, because we all have such different personalities and backgrounds. I think one of the profound things that Judaism teaches us is to be the best version of ourself that we can be no matter when or where we live. Perfection is not the goal. In our tradition, nobody, absolutely nobody -including Noah- is near perfect. Moses is great but also messes up. Abraham does. King David does. To be human is to mess up and our duty is to do what we can to be our best.
Judaism as an ancient wisdom tradition has some very good guidance about things we can do to be our best selves, like remember to be grateful, to be grounded in reality, and to have faith and hope that things can be better, that we can be better even if it takes generations.
There is a great story of Rabbi Zusha of Hanipol, after whom the outstanding Hassidic Electronic Dance Music duo Zusha is named -I know you know them from riding in the car with your mother . When Rabbi Zusha was dying, and he was worried about how he would be judged. His students told him how righteous he was, so why should he of all people worry?
He said to them:
When I come to Heaven and they ask me "Why weren't you like Abraham our forefather?" I will answer: "because I wasn't Abraham." If they inquire: "Why didn't you match the greatness of Moses?" I can answer that I wasn't Moses. Even If they try to compare me to my brother Reb Elimelech, I can still say that I wasn't Elimelech. However, If they ask me why I wasn't the way Zusha needed to be... to that I have no answer.
Noah was the best Noah he could be, the text is telling us, and that is what we should all strive for.
But there is something else we know about Noah. Noah was weird. Noah was eccentric. He was not like all the other people around him. He did his own thing. Noah was comfortable being Noah.
His name, Noach, itself means ‘comfortable.” He was different enough that God singled him out to bring his family into the ark. He had to be weird in his generation to stand out like that.
Ori, I know Judaism can seem like this old, dowdy conformist tradition, but it is at its core, at its heart a radical counterculture tradition that embraces people who don’t mind being different.
Abraham left home and everything he knew to start something new. He was an outlier.
Moses was an Egyptian prince who couldn’t fit in with the Pharaoh’s court.
Judaism always pushes against the dominant culture, and that doesn’t make us popular sometimes, but I think you really exemplify being a good person who is also confident enough to be your own person in the world.
As Dara Horn said recently, “Not being the same as everyone around us is kind of our brand.”
One of the big ways that Judaism is countercultural is Shabbat. In a time when there were no guaranteed days off, and tyrants and wealthy people could enslave you to work all the time, Shabbat was a wild idea. Everybody gets a day off? Everybody has to take a day off?
Today, we live in a time where there is so much pressure to always be doing things, to be working, to be taking care of things. Trying to keep up all the time is exhausting.
Today, Shabbat is still a wild idea. For one day each week, just say no. Just stop and exhale and enjoy just being and resting. In our money-centered shopping-centered culture, where money is status, Shabbat teaches us that status isn’t everything, that money isn’t everything, and that the greatest gift we have is time to be with one another and enjoy being alive.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, a rabbi who like Noah was righteous in his time, having escaped the Nazis and once in the US, wrote some of the most important books on Jewish belief and spirituality. He also was a close friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. and marched with him in Selma.
One of my favorite books of his is called The Sabbath, and in it he writes about what a powerful idea Shabbat is, especially in our culture. He points out the Shabbat gives us back a little control of our time, and there is nothing more basic, more radical more powerful than that.
A thought has blown the marketplace away
There is a song in the wind, a joy in the trees
Shabbat arrives in the world
Scattering a song in the silence of the night
And eternity utters a day
Eternity utters a day
As you become bar mitzvah, I hope you are the best Ori you can be, and that you stay true to yourself even when it goes against the norm around you, and I hope that this tradition that is now yours teaches you how to be deeply engaged in the world while also having time that is yours, time to reconnect, and to be grateful for what you have.
Ken yih’yeh lanu. So may we.
Shabbat shalom.
