By Avi Edelman
God was having a rough sort of day
For the people had all gone astray
"I'm the God," God thought
"I should smite their lot"
"Only that dude Noah should stay"
Noah, the multi-centenarian stud
Turned out to be a bit of a dud
He followed God's command
But didn't raise a hand
As the Earth was drowned in the flood
So on the Titanic he waited
Until the weeks of rain abated
With his sons and his boo
And half the Bronx Zoo
He chilled as God's anger was sated
With a dove and a rainbow parade
God called off the stormy charade
Noah settled his clan
But veered from God's plan
Got wasted, and with his son laid
Some time later an effort began
To build a skyscraper on the Babel sands
God got pissed again
And took linguistic revenge
Separating languages throughout the lands
The parsha makes Noah's faults very clear--his righteousness manifests in his following of God's orders, but doesn't include any effort to curb his society's corruption or to convince God to show mercy in the many years (commentary says more than 100) that it took to build the ark. The first act of genuine agency we see him take is planting a vineyard, getting drunk, and having his "nakedness uncovered" by his son (one of the Torah's euphemisms for things that are naughty naughty naughty).
But Noach can also be read as a portrait of God's failed leadership. In just our second parsha of the Torah, God has already soured on Hir creations and resigned to give up and start over. Rather than use Noah as a means for bottom-up change, God attempts to create a clean slate by abandoning and destroying the old one. Genocide gives way to re-
genesis (and God's promise never to do it again), but Noah's drunken incest shows God--and us--that wickedness (or perhaps, more accurately, the potential for weakness and occasional failure) cannot simply be blotted out each time it occurs. The "new Adam" proves to be just as vulnerable as the first one. It is no coincidence that the incident mirrors some of the very immoral acts referenced in commentary as characteristic of society's corruption before the flood, and that it occurs with one of Noah's sons serves as a warning to God that no generation is perfect and each harbors both positive and negative forces.
The story of Babel that follows again shows us a God overwhelmed by Hir subjects. The citizens of Babel work together to build a tower to conquer the sky. Their actions represent an arrogant challenge to God's authority, but also a logical consequence of God's actions--God flooded the earth, and now the descendants of the survivors attempt to build a structure tall enough to withstand a future calamity. Still only able to summon a top-down approach, God does not break his covenant, but does scatter the people and change their languages, creating human differences that continue to be a source of conflict to this day.
If central to our tradition is the ability to draw meaning from an imperfect God, the fledgling leader in Noach shows us the importance of dialogue-driven leadership, grassroots change, and a model of community growth that seeks to meet its members where they are rather than demand perfection. Without forcing too-specific a connection to any particular aspect of our youth movement, I think these are lessons (and struggles) central to the work that we do. We seek to meet the needs that our chanichim bring and empower them to inspire themselves and each