While the story of Noah and
the ark is often told as a charming children’s story, it is, of course, nothing
of the sort. The idea that all life on our planet would be wiped out is quite
horrifying. And, while Noah has our gratitude for ensuring the survival of the
species and enabling life to begin again, later generations of commentators on
our biblical story point out his flaws. He might have been ‘righteous in his
generation’ but, they tell us, he would not have been considered so in future
generations. Why not? Because, unlike Abraham, who argued with God for the
survival of the evil cities of Sodom and Gemorrah if only 10 righteous people
could be found living there, Noah dutifully saved his family and the animals he
was instructed to collect, but did nothing to try and save the rest of
humanity.
We know definitively that the
story of Noah that we find in the Torah is a
flood story but is not the flood
story. It shares many similarities with other ancient myths about floods,
including ones that predate the likely approximate timeframe of ours. So we’re
not reading history here. Yet what our version introduces that is a variant on
an older telling is a moral element.
The biblical telling emphasizes the destructive consequences of human
immoral behavior. The rabbinic commentaries emphasize the morally deficient
position of Noah who raises the drawbridge on the ark and closes his eyes to
the rest of the world.
This past week I haven’t been
able to stomach listening to US news channels for more than about 2 minutes at
a time. Based on the wall-to-wall coverage, it would appear that the rest of
the world has entirely disappeared. It might as well be underwater right now.
We appear not to be able to see it at all. Instead, with highly charged, urgent
voices, news commentators seem to
leading a nationwide panic attack that obsessively reviews every remote
possibility that someone with the Ebola virus has appeared in our ark.
Politicians are arguing that the drawbridge should be fully up, all entrance-ways
sealed, so that we keep this pernicious disease out.
Where is the compassion for
the awful suffering in parts of Africa? Where is the nationwide call for $10
per text, and all the other ways that international health organizations
usually mobilize us to raise millions quickly so that we can provide equipment,
expertise, and ensure that vaccinations work and are quickly produced to be
made available abroad?
And, while the scale is
serious and action does need to be taken in African countries that are most
severely affected, when it comes to the US, where is our sense of
proportion? John Stewart got it
right with his coverage earlier this month:
After a series of clips of
politicians and commentators announcing that we should do ‘whatever it takes’
to seal up our borders and keep Ebola out, Stewart remarks: ‘Wow, what a
difference in Africa-US travel policy 150 years makes!’ He then goes on to make
the more serious point, through another series of clips that Heart Disease is
the leading cause of death among Americans, killing 600,000 a year. And yet,
when the government comes out with proposals to bring healthier eating to
American citizens, control what is served to children in schools, and other
forms of preventative care, many of the same voices tell us that the government
shouldn’t be telling us what to eat or what we can do. He points out that estimates are that
between 7,000 and 17,000 lives a year could be saved if we expanded Medicaid so
that more people had access to healthcare in our States. And 88 people die from
gun violence every day. So clearly ‘the government should do whatever it takes
to save American lives’, Stewart points out, seems to have more to do with
things that might enter our country from other places, and we seem to be somewhat
more laissez-faire when it comes to the large number of things that we could be
doing each and every day to save American lives from causes that affect an
exponentially larger number of citizens.
What can you or I do to make
a difference? If we have the means, perhaps a donation to Medicin sans
frontiers, who are putting medics into Ebola-affected communities in Africa to
try and stem the spread of the disease and tend to the sick. Or via American
Jewish World Service, who are directing funds to their partner organizations in
Liberia who are trying to better educate people about how to limit the spread
of the disease.
The Story of Noah is several
thousand years old. 2000 years ago our early rabbis were pointing out that Noah
could have done more to try and save others rather than only saving himself.
Now it is 2014. Jewish tradition put morality at the heart of the Flood myth.
There are many ways we can apply those moral values to life-threatening
situations in today’s world. Creating panic over the airwaves is not one of
them. So tune out the TV pundits and the politicians, and tune into some of the
ways we can turn outward and give a helping hand to another human being who is
drowning and need of our support.
