Bereshit
Bara Elohim: Three Words, Many Meanings
Parshat Noach 5766
Parshat Noach 5766
This week America paid homage to an unassuming
African American woman who changed the course of history. Her name was
Rosa Parks. And she will be remembered as the woman who inspired the Civil
Rights Movement and changed American society forever.
Of course this is a gross simplification of her story. Rosa Parks was hardly a simple seamstress who just happened to sit down in the front of a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 because she was tired. A long time member of the NAACP, Ms Parks knew all about activism and she had fought for the right to vote. When she sat down in that seat on that fateful day in 1955, she understood full well what she was doing. In her 1994 memoirs, Quiet Strength, Ms Parks writes, “Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it. I kept thinking about my mother and my grand parents, and how strong they were. I knew there was a possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given to me to do what I had asked of others.”
Rosa Parks was never comfortable with all the attention she received for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She would be the first person to point out that it took hundreds, even thousands, of people to change the course of American society. And she would tell us that the job is not yet done. Rosa Parks chose to live out her life quietly working for the causes in which she believed and responding to letters and calls from people across the country. She never ran for public office and she chose to avoid the public limelight. When a hip hop band used her name in a song she sued them. None the less, she was truly an eesha tzaddeket, a righteous woman, whose example continues to inspire all of us.
Today’s Torah portion highlights the significance of righteousness. In fact, the word Tzaddik appears for the first time in the bible in this week’s parshah. It’s no accident that this word, in all its forms, appears over five hundred times in the Bible. Our sacred literature is obsessed with righteousness. But it is Noah who has the distinction of being the first person to be referred to as an eesh tzadik, a righteous man in all of Biblical literature. In fact he is one of the few people referred to by this term.
Having acknowledged his righteousness, the sages were circumspect in referring to Noah as a righteous man. Today’s Parshah opens, “Noah eesh tzadik tamim haya bidorotav et haelohim hithalekh noah.” “Noah was a righteous; he was blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” It doesn’t get much better than that.
Yet Rashi, quoting the Talmud, tells us that the sages differed with regard to the stature of Noah’s righteousness. According to some, Noah was only righteous “in his generation.” They tell us, had he lived in the time of Abraham he would have been mediocre at best. According to others, Noah was righteous in spite of his generation. He had the strength and determination to maintain his integrity despite the moral depravity of the people around him.
So was he or wasn’t he? Was Noah a righteous man or was he simply a person who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time? It seems to me that the answer to this question depends on how you define the word Tzaddik. Maimonides offers a definition of righteousness in the Mishnah Torah, his great code of Jewish law. He says that a righteous person is someone whose good deeds exceed his or her transgressions. That’s it. If we could put all our actions in a scale and measure them, if the good deeds tipped the scale we would be considered “righteous.” If, on the other hand, our transgressions tipped the scale we would be “wicked.”
In that sense, most of us could define ourselves as tzaddikim, as righteous people. But I suspect that when we use the word Tzaddik or Tzaddeket, we have much more in mind that simple a mathematical equation of good and evil. We are slow to call someone a Tzaddik, a righteous person, at a time when so many of our greatest heroes have turned out to be less than models of personal behavior. Then again, Noah and Abraham were hardly paragons of perfection. They had their faults which the Bible openly acknowledges.
We often forget that righteousness is not the same thing as saintliness. Judaism does not ask us to strive to be saints; it challenges us to live righteously. And righteousness, I would suggest, is defined by the needs and challenges of each generation. So when the Bible tells us that Noah was, “righteous in his time,” that makes perfect sense. Each of us needs to strive to overcome the evils and ills of the world in which we are living.
But is that all there is to righteousness? Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement offers another definition of righteousness. Commenting on the opening verse in Psalm 92, he suggests that there are two models of righteousness: the palm tree and the cedar.
Psalm 92 begins: Tzaddik katamar yifrach k’erez balevanon yisgeh. “The righteous person flourishes like the palm tree; he grows like the cedar of Lebanon.” The psalmist offers us two images for the righteous person, the palm and the cedar. How are they different from one another?
The palm tree, the Baal Shem Tov teaches, is like a truly righteous person. It not only sheds its fruit but spreads its shade at a great distance from where it stands. It is like the righteous person who shares what he has with others and understands that his example can influence the people even far away from him. The cedar on the other hand, is tall and stately but remains unto itself. It shares nothing with the world around it. It simply grows, it does not flourish. The word for “grow” yisgeh, can also be read Yishgeh: it errs. Despite its basic goodness it errs in not spreading its good with others.
Similarly, Noah, despite his righteousness never bothered to try and change the world in which he lived. The Torah tells us that it took him one hundred and twenty years to build the ark. In all that time he could have spoken to the people around him and tried to get them to repent. Yet he dutifully did what God commanded him to do and never tried to change his world. He was a cedar. Abraham, on the other hand, fought against evil and tried to get God not to destroy the innocent with the wicked. He understood that Righteousness that was self contained is lost and empty. Righteousness must be shared.
John Holt, an educator and mitzvah hero, puts it like this: “Charismatic leaders make us think, ‘Oh, if only I could do that, be like that.’ True leaders make us think, ‘If they can do that, then...I can too.’” That is the difference between the palm tree and the cedar. One maintains himself and is not influenced by the wickedness of the world while the other reaches out and uses its goodness to try and make a difference. The Tamar, the Palm tree uses its righteousness in all together ordinary ways….like taking a seat on a bus and challenging the mores of society, or maybe giving one up to some one who needs it.
Rosa Park was a palm tree. She influenced and inspired others. She didn’t simply stay out of trouble and try to do the right thing. She set an example for the people of our nation. And she did so in such a simple way that others would say, “If she could do it, so can I!”
It’s no accident that the real inspiration in Rosa Parks’ life came from her parents and grandparents. Sitting on that bus, she gained her strength by thinking about the values and ideals they taught her as well as the ordeals they faced in their own lives. She was not alone on that day. And she did not sit alone as she took a courageous stand. It was so simple and yet so profound.
Maybe we’e a little uncomfortable with this idea but Judaism teaches us that each of us has the potential to be a Tzaddik, to be a righteous person. No one has a right to say, “I’m just an ordinary person trying to make a living.” Each moment has the potential for greatness. We must look for those special moments. Judaism challenges us to strive for righteousness in our lives, not by doing great things, but by doing ordinary things, by living an ordinary life that makes a difference. Winston Churchill once said: “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
As we remember Rosa Parks, we can learn an important lesson. There is no one alive who does not have a precious gift to give to others.
Shabbat Shalom
Of course this is a gross simplification of her story. Rosa Parks was hardly a simple seamstress who just happened to sit down in the front of a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 because she was tired. A long time member of the NAACP, Ms Parks knew all about activism and she had fought for the right to vote. When she sat down in that seat on that fateful day in 1955, she understood full well what she was doing. In her 1994 memoirs, Quiet Strength, Ms Parks writes, “Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it. I kept thinking about my mother and my grand parents, and how strong they were. I knew there was a possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given to me to do what I had asked of others.”
Rosa Parks was never comfortable with all the attention she received for her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She would be the first person to point out that it took hundreds, even thousands, of people to change the course of American society. And she would tell us that the job is not yet done. Rosa Parks chose to live out her life quietly working for the causes in which she believed and responding to letters and calls from people across the country. She never ran for public office and she chose to avoid the public limelight. When a hip hop band used her name in a song she sued them. None the less, she was truly an eesha tzaddeket, a righteous woman, whose example continues to inspire all of us.
Today’s Torah portion highlights the significance of righteousness. In fact, the word Tzaddik appears for the first time in the bible in this week’s parshah. It’s no accident that this word, in all its forms, appears over five hundred times in the Bible. Our sacred literature is obsessed with righteousness. But it is Noah who has the distinction of being the first person to be referred to as an eesh tzadik, a righteous man in all of Biblical literature. In fact he is one of the few people referred to by this term.
Having acknowledged his righteousness, the sages were circumspect in referring to Noah as a righteous man. Today’s Parshah opens, “Noah eesh tzadik tamim haya bidorotav et haelohim hithalekh noah.” “Noah was a righteous; he was blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” It doesn’t get much better than that.
Yet Rashi, quoting the Talmud, tells us that the sages differed with regard to the stature of Noah’s righteousness. According to some, Noah was only righteous “in his generation.” They tell us, had he lived in the time of Abraham he would have been mediocre at best. According to others, Noah was righteous in spite of his generation. He had the strength and determination to maintain his integrity despite the moral depravity of the people around him.
So was he or wasn’t he? Was Noah a righteous man or was he simply a person who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time? It seems to me that the answer to this question depends on how you define the word Tzaddik. Maimonides offers a definition of righteousness in the Mishnah Torah, his great code of Jewish law. He says that a righteous person is someone whose good deeds exceed his or her transgressions. That’s it. If we could put all our actions in a scale and measure them, if the good deeds tipped the scale we would be considered “righteous.” If, on the other hand, our transgressions tipped the scale we would be “wicked.”
In that sense, most of us could define ourselves as tzaddikim, as righteous people. But I suspect that when we use the word Tzaddik or Tzaddeket, we have much more in mind that simple a mathematical equation of good and evil. We are slow to call someone a Tzaddik, a righteous person, at a time when so many of our greatest heroes have turned out to be less than models of personal behavior. Then again, Noah and Abraham were hardly paragons of perfection. They had their faults which the Bible openly acknowledges.
We often forget that righteousness is not the same thing as saintliness. Judaism does not ask us to strive to be saints; it challenges us to live righteously. And righteousness, I would suggest, is defined by the needs and challenges of each generation. So when the Bible tells us that Noah was, “righteous in his time,” that makes perfect sense. Each of us needs to strive to overcome the evils and ills of the world in which we are living.
But is that all there is to righteousness? Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement offers another definition of righteousness. Commenting on the opening verse in Psalm 92, he suggests that there are two models of righteousness: the palm tree and the cedar.
Psalm 92 begins: Tzaddik katamar yifrach k’erez balevanon yisgeh. “The righteous person flourishes like the palm tree; he grows like the cedar of Lebanon.” The psalmist offers us two images for the righteous person, the palm and the cedar. How are they different from one another?
The palm tree, the Baal Shem Tov teaches, is like a truly righteous person. It not only sheds its fruit but spreads its shade at a great distance from where it stands. It is like the righteous person who shares what he has with others and understands that his example can influence the people even far away from him. The cedar on the other hand, is tall and stately but remains unto itself. It shares nothing with the world around it. It simply grows, it does not flourish. The word for “grow” yisgeh, can also be read Yishgeh: it errs. Despite its basic goodness it errs in not spreading its good with others.
Similarly, Noah, despite his righteousness never bothered to try and change the world in which he lived. The Torah tells us that it took him one hundred and twenty years to build the ark. In all that time he could have spoken to the people around him and tried to get them to repent. Yet he dutifully did what God commanded him to do and never tried to change his world. He was a cedar. Abraham, on the other hand, fought against evil and tried to get God not to destroy the innocent with the wicked. He understood that Righteousness that was self contained is lost and empty. Righteousness must be shared.
John Holt, an educator and mitzvah hero, puts it like this: “Charismatic leaders make us think, ‘Oh, if only I could do that, be like that.’ True leaders make us think, ‘If they can do that, then...I can too.’” That is the difference between the palm tree and the cedar. One maintains himself and is not influenced by the wickedness of the world while the other reaches out and uses its goodness to try and make a difference. The Tamar, the Palm tree uses its righteousness in all together ordinary ways….like taking a seat on a bus and challenging the mores of society, or maybe giving one up to some one who needs it.
Rosa Park was a palm tree. She influenced and inspired others. She didn’t simply stay out of trouble and try to do the right thing. She set an example for the people of our nation. And she did so in such a simple way that others would say, “If she could do it, so can I!”
It’s no accident that the real inspiration in Rosa Parks’ life came from her parents and grandparents. Sitting on that bus, she gained her strength by thinking about the values and ideals they taught her as well as the ordeals they faced in their own lives. She was not alone on that day. And she did not sit alone as she took a courageous stand. It was so simple and yet so profound.
Maybe we’e a little uncomfortable with this idea but Judaism teaches us that each of us has the potential to be a Tzaddik, to be a righteous person. No one has a right to say, “I’m just an ordinary person trying to make a living.” Each moment has the potential for greatness. We must look for those special moments. Judaism challenges us to strive for righteousness in our lives, not by doing great things, but by doing ordinary things, by living an ordinary life that makes a difference. Winston Churchill once said: “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
As we remember Rosa Parks, we can learn an important lesson. There is no one alive who does not have a precious gift to give to others.
Shabbat Shalom
