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This series of short teachings about Jewish ethics is mostly about the “what”, the principles of action. But that can’t be disentangled from moral psychology, which is the inner experience of trying to do the right thing. Torah discusses moral psychology as well as moral principles. As the year goes on we’ll see a lot how they are intertwined in specific situations where what Torah thinks is right depends on what Torah thinks is possible for a human to do.
The story of Noach is one of the places where the Talmudic rabbis talk about broad themes of moral psychology. The first verse of Parashat Noach, Genesis 6:9, says Noach ish tzaddik tamim haya b’dorotav, which could be translated: Noach was a human, a righteous man, he was pure in his generations. In the Babylonian Talmud Rabbi Yochanan and his protege Resh Lakish pick up on that last phrase, pure in his generations. Rabbi Yochanan says: Sure, pure in his generations, but not so much if he was in any other generation. Resh Lakish says: If this is how he was in his own generations, how much the more so would he have been righteous in any other generation.
Each of them has something valuable to say here. According to Rabbi Yochanan there is a lot to be said for being the best against a pretty bad backdrop. We shouldn’t get carried away and say that Noach was the greatest tzaddik ever, but without him there would have been no one to save any aspect of the world.
Resh Lakish teaches that it takes a lot more just to be Noach than you think in a time when the climate is violent and corrupt. Sure, Noach didn’t turn people around in the end, but just holding his own and rescuing the ones he did in the ark took incredible moral courage.
Resh Lakish would know: He was a bandit when Rabbi Yochanan saw something in him, recruited him to leave his gang and become one of the Sages. There is a whole set of stories in the Talmud about how Resh Lakish struggled to overcome his past moral failures and worked to prove himself as someone with a moral and intellectual center, someone more than his charisma in his own eyes and in the eyes even of his teacher Rabbi Yochanan. (Some more about this relationship here and here.)
For us right now, there are two sets of things to think about. One is about the standard we hold ourselves and other people too – when do we demand absolute moral excellence, and when is it sufficient to act good enough for the situation or time we’re in? And what do we need to understand better about our own moral psychology, so we can prod ourselves or anyone else to act righteously enough?