נח

Noah was the only man to survive the end of the world. An entire generation had corrupted its way, 'and the earth was filled with violence' (Genesis 6:11), and God resolved to wipe it all away, and within that wrath one man was found: 'Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generations' (Genesis 6:9). On the back of one person the future of the human race rested.

The Sages debated him precisely out of respect: 'in his generations', some read it in praise, righteous even in a wicked age, and some in reproach, that had he lived in Abraham's generation he would not have counted for much (Rashi). That very debate is a lesson: the Torah measures a person both against the age he struggled within, and against what he might have been.

For a hundred and twenty years he built the ark, before a mocking generation, and by that very act he warned them. He saved all life, human, beast and bird, and after the flood received a covenant: the rainbow in the cloud, a sign the flood would never return, and seven commandments that are a basic morality for all humanity, not for Israel alone.

What do we learn from him? That a person can remain blameless even as everything around him rots, and that righteousness is measured not only by saving yourself but by saving a world. And, on the other hand, that there is a higher rung still: not merely to be spared from your generation, but to fight for it, as Abraham would after him.