Pride And Arrogance: Noach 2016

Pride And Arrogance: A Lesson For Shabbat Noach

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Nov. 4, 2016

Noah must have led a very lonely life.  Of all his neighbors, in fact of all the men and women of his generation, he alone understood God’s ways.  He alone “walked with God,” he alone was deemed righteous, and he alone heard God’s voice.

When you are able to hear God’s voice, it isn’t likely that you hear much of anything else.  God’s voice is majestic, it’s overwhelming.  You might on occasion engage in some empty conversation with your neighbors, perhaps exchange meaningless pleasantries, but no more than that.  Your ear isn’t in sync with them; it’s always cocked to hear God’s voice, always eager for the next message, ever ready to do exactly what God tells you to.  It’s a lonely existence.

Then there’s pride to deal with.  It doesn’t take long to realize that you alone were found worthy, that you alone are God’s favorite.  Others may notice a distant rumble, but clear as daylight you know it to be God.  Others may see a cloud in the sky, but you know it is God’s anger about to burst out in a torrent, a flood.  The problem with pride, however, is that, even as you sit humbly at God’s feet it grows in small, incremental steps, stalking you, stealing on you. Your pride keeps you aloof, separate and distant from other people.  They don’t understand you; they don’t know you are in some deep conversation with the Almighty.  You are better than them, and you know it.

And when God tells you to build a huge ark and fill it with all different kinds of animals, you have little time or patience to listen to the problems of others.  It isn’t easy to find aardvarks in the Near East!

Pride is a common human trait, and up to a point it isn’t all that bad.  We are rightfully proud when we arrive at goals we had set for ourselves.  We are proud of our children and their achievements, when they reach milestones in their lives and, step by step, become independent. We are proud of our community, and we are proud of our nation when we all rise to uphold values we hold true and valuable to humanity.

But pride can also be a stumbling block, when it makes us, like Noah, blind to the suffering around us, unable to hear or respond to the voices that call out to us.

Our pride can affect our work, when it makes us unwilling to take criticism; when it convinces us that we alone know the right way to do things, that no one else can—or need to—help us do what we know best. Far from being team players, we go our own path, with little consideration for what others may think, believe or seek.

Pride influences the way we interact with others who may be less advantaged than us, when we can’t be bothered to help those who might need a hand.  We, after all, got to where we are by our own bootstraps, by our own hard work, by our diligence and natural talents.  Let them do the same now!

Pride affects how we relate to friends and even our family.  Knowing that you are always right means that the other person, by definition, is always wrong.  Your pride may lead you to keep pushing them, to keep scolding them, to treat even those who are closest to you with scorn and sarcasm.  Pride hinders you from accepting or seeing others as they truly are.  Instead, your ever-higher, always-unattainable expectations lead them to feel resentment, frustration, guilt and even self-hate.

There is no pleasing the proud and haughty, as often their glory is achieved at the price of humbling the other—be it child, spouse, sibling, or person of a different gender, nation, race or religion.

Pride is a slippery slope, but even Pride is as nothing before Arrogance. Pride, after all, may be justified:  You’ve done well; you’ve earned points, you’ve merited certain rights and privileges.  But whereas Pride can make you unreachable, Arrogance makes you untouchable.  You owe nothing to anyone or anything, no excuse or explanation, no apology or remorse, not even so much as a by-your-leave.  Laws, rules and regulations are not meant for you; they were created for simpletons, for the common masses, of which you are not.  When you are arrogant, you think you can get away with anything and everything.  You can say anything, do anything without fear of recrimination.  You are so certain of your superiority that sometimes you even manage to convince others of it.

This week’s Torah portion, Noach (Gen. 6:9—11:32), positions these two human traits, Pride and Arrogance, as bookends.  The portion starts with Noah, a person who, as the Torah tells us, “Was a righteous man, perfect in his generations.  Noah walked with God.”  He alone could hear God’s voice; he alone was privy to God’s intent to flood the earth, to destroy all living things, all that had “the merest breath of life in its nostrils.”  Noah alone heard God’s command to build an Ark to save himself.  Aloof and uncaring, Noah follows God’s directions to a T, to tragic results.    

But even an overly proud person may find redemption.  Deep inside the dark bowels of the ark he had built, overcome by guilt and remorse, Noah discovers pity and compassion.  Only then does God put an end to the misery.  The waters of the flood recede, and Noah’s descendants are given a second chance, an opportunity to rebuild what God had destroyed.

Not so, however, the Babylonians, generations later.  With their leader Nimrod, a mighty hero as ever existed, the Babylonians built a spectacular civilization, filled with splendor and beauty.  Their literature was famous throughout the land, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon became a world wonder.  But the Babylonians overreached.  In the story of the Tower of Babel, the Babylonians represent the epitome of dangerous arrogance and conceit.

For whereas Noah at least listened to God and did just as God told him, the Babylonians had no such intention.  Their belief in their own supremacy was so complete that they believed they could live above and beyond any rule, any law, human or divine. By building a tower so tall that its top would pierce the very heart of heaven, they planned to overtake God, to be even mightier than God.  The “name” they had wanted to create for themselves was intended to replace the Name of God.  God, of course, puts an end to this nonsense, dispersing the population and confusing their language so that no one could understand his fellow; and thus the empire fell.

The failure of Babylon was Arrogance.  It was arrogance that led not only to the collapse of their presumptuous tower, but in fact also to the downfall of their entire culture and civilization.  Their conceit, their single-minded intent was to be all-powerful and all mighty.  There could be no challenge or dissent from without or within. Anyone who dared to resist or who voiced opposition, was summarily silenced.

History has proven the Torah correct.  There is no redemption possible where arrogance exists.  

The collapse of the Babylonian Empire came as no surprise, but it also led to the possibility of new beginnings.  Out of the chaos, new creation: a new light emerges. Parashat Noach ends ten generations later with the birth of Abraham, a man who not only listened to God’s voice, but argued with it; a man who didn’t only walk with God, but also with all humanity at his side.  And the house he established some 3500 years ago, a house founded on the principles of goodness, justice and compassion, still stands to this very day.  

We are sitting in it now.

May we prove worthy dwellers of the tents of Abraham, blessed and privileged to follow in his footsteps, along God’s many pathways, but always in humility, gratitude and respect.

Ken y’hi ratzon.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman