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T_Jrii-versity's

arid Charitable

Est a te

Tax Plauriirkirig Serriiria_r

- CDN1-

7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, October 26, 1993

-AT THE HOME OF-

Bill and Audrey Farber

32640 Whatley - Franklin

-THE PROGRAM WILL BE PRESENTEE) BY-

Norman Altman, J.D., LL.M. Taxation

Ilene Nadel, CLU, ChFC

- C)F-

Creative Philanthropic Resources, Ltd.

New York

-THE SEMINAR WILL TAKE PLACE AT NO CHARGE-

RSVP by October 19th

423-4550

Howard Zoller

Planned Giving Chairman

THE DETRO

Pla_irmecl Giving Corrirrii-t-tee

Abraham Burnstein
Michael Eizelman
Norman Fill
Joel F. Garfield
Sandra Glazier
Bruce Goldman
Dean Gould
Lawrence S. Jackier
Robert Kleiman
Arthur Liss

Paul Zlotoff
President - Detroit Friends of Bar-Han University

Richard Loebl
Gerald Naftaly
Norman A. Pappas
Gary Ran
Sheldon Rosenberg
Albert Sasson
Eli Scherr
Richard Shapack
Neal Zalenko

Leslie M. Goldstein
Midwest Executive Director

The Story Of Noah
Awakens Our Hope

DR. RICHARD C. HERTZ SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

I

he tradition of a great
flood that engulfed
much of the then
known world was pre-
served in the memories of
many ancient peoples.
We know from archaeology
that sometime around 3800
BCE a great flood engulfed
the world. Other literatures,
like the Babylonians, record-
ed a flood story, but the
meaning of the flood story in
the Bible is not meant to doc-
ument any scientific phe-
nomena. Rather it was the
ethical and religious value of
a great deluge as a Divine
Judgment upon an age in
which right was right and hu-
man depravity degraded the
dignity of man.
The deification of power
and pleasure, the selfishness
that drove men on, were
marks of that age. Among
those men of violence, the
Bible says, one man alone
"walked with God."
Noah had tried to warn his
people that injustice could not
be tolerated. No one listened.
When the deluge came, the
Bible tells the story to stress
the eternal truth that the ba-
sis of human society must be
justice, that any society de-
void of justice deserves to per-
ish. And did perish.
Noah alone was saved be-
cause he was worthy of God's
approval. Noah saw an entire
generation of inequity swept
away. He lived to see the
rainbow of promise, the first
rainbow that was the begin-
ning of a new and better
world.
Noah and his family with
all the animals, two by two,
escaped the great flood be-
cause Noah was a righteous
man. He walked with God.
The Bible tells how he built
his ark, lived on it for 40 days
and 40 nights until the dove
brought back the olive branch
indicating that the waters
had receded and the flood
was over.
What does Jewish teaching
tell us about Noah? The an-
cient rabbis were not as much
concerned with the story of
the flood as they were with
the character of Noah. Some
of the rabbis questioned his
specifics, his morality and his
faith. The Bible says, "Noah
was a righteous man in his
generation." Yet in his gen-

Richard C. Hertz is rabbi emeritus
of Temple Beth El.

eration most men were
wicked. By comparison with
them Noah may have been
righteous but not by compar-
ison with actually decent
men.
In the statement, "Noah
walked with God," it seems to
be a compliment. But really
so? Righteous men walk with
their fellow men. Not just
with God. The man who
claims to walk with God may
be arrogant, self-righteous
and have a holier-than-thou

Shabbat Noah:
Genesis 6:9-11:32
Numbers 28:9-15
Isaiah 66:1-24.

attitude. Moreover, Noah
shows no feeling of sadness
or compassion that an entire
generation was to be lost and
the world destroyed. At no
time did he offer a word of
concern or solicitude. It was
as though he stood apart from
the rest of the world, with no
regrets that men, women and
children would be lost. We did
not even find him leaping for-
ward with a request to God to
spare the children.
The fact that Noah did not
question God's decree to de-
stroy virtually everyone and
everything with a flood is
quite in contrast with the sto-
ry of Abraham. When told
that Sodom and Gomorrah
would be destroyed, Abraham
pleaded for the cities to be
saved even for the sake of a
handful of good people who
might still be in those towns.
Maybe that was why Abra-
ham was counted as the fa-
ther of the Jewish people and
why Noah was not.
Still, something good did
come out of the Noah story
and that was the Noahide
Laws. Six such basic laws
were established. Man may
not worship idols. He may not
blaspheme God. He must es-
tablish courts of justice. He
may not kill. He may not
commit adultery. And he may
not rob. A seventh law that
mane may not eat flesh cut
from a living animal was lat-
er added after the flood. But
the basic concept remains the
same. Every person must ar-
rive at and must come to ob-
serve a minimum of religious
and legal precepts, namely

