Noah, we are told, was “a righteous man; in his generation
he was above reproach” (Genesis 6:9).
How are we to understand this – that Noah was absolutely good,
or only that he was relatively good?
Given what we know about the other people of his time, the distinction
is substantial. “In the land of the blind,” the Spanish saying
goes, “the one-eyed man is king.”
Noah existed within his time and place, but it seems that he
was not truly of it – that is, he lived according to different values than
those of his neighbors. In this way,
Noah reminds me of the Jewish experience in the diaspora. We take part in the national culture and obey
its laws, but at the same time we are slightly removed. We are forever translating from the generic
experience to our own.
I feel this dissonance most profoundly during the “winter
holidays,” when I’m constantly reminded that this isn’t my place. I sure felt it this summer, when the international
conversation turned against Israel, while I knew the Jewish state had the right
to defend itself and was doing so as morally as possible.
People deal with this cultural dissonance in different
ways. We may remove ourselves from mass
culture (as the ultra-Orthodox do), or we may assimilate into it completely. In between are a range of options, generally
referred to as “acculturation.”
What about you? What
balance do you strike between your civic identity and your Jewishness? Can you share an example of a time you made a
choice?
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