When preparing to teach the teachers of tomorrow at Sydney University about global citizenship, I reflected on the question of responsibility. Many people, including me, and even children, are burdened with feeling responsible for problems that we cannot fix. These feelings are emotionally draining and perhaps destructive because they distract us from doing what we can for people we love or live near us in our communities and suburbs. On the other hand, there are times when I or others fail to embrace our responsibilities as individuals, members of families, communities and humanity as a whole.
Margaret Meade famously said we should “… never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Good point.
I love the idea of changing the world. I have committed my life to it. Then I got tired, very tired.
On the one hand, I am deeply grateful to the small group of thoughtful committed people who work alongside me and guide me as I have tried to change the world and then to support children and teachers. Thank you to all of you in the Together for Humanity team, board members, the volunteers, the casual educators, the donors, Christians, Muslims, Jews and others. We did amazing things together and we will continue to do great things.
On the other hand, despite all the children and adults we educated to reject prejudice and hate and to find common ground, there were other committed, but less thoughtful people who contributed to injustice, hatred, generalisations, prejudice and dehumanisation.
I learned, slowly and over many years to feel a little less responsible. It is not my task to complete the work, but neither am I free to desist from it (1).
I think of change-work as being a crew member of a sailing ship. We are not the captains of the ship ̶ that is God (or whatever forces atheists see playing God – multinationals, or whoever). We are not responsible for the winds ̶ that again is God. Our task is to be part of the team that turns the sails to catch the winds already blowing. We do this with great humility – as small players in God’s vast world but paradoxically with a touch of magic as God’s partners in creation (2).
Reading the Torah with this mindset, I am challenged when I read the story of Noah, especially as interpreted by some Jewish scholars.
Noah was burdened by his parents’ expectations that he would change the world, comfort humanity and repair the earth that had been cursed (3). He was favoured by God and declared to be a saint (4).
The world had become evil and full of crime and cruelty. The powerful– the sons of the gods ̶ took any woman they wanted, regardless of her consent or marital status (5). They farmed animals and people to be sold as sex slaves, with ownership certificates (6).
When God told Noah, the golden boy, that the inhabitants of the earth would be wiped out in a flood, he said absolutely nothing, not one word of prayer to save his generation (7). Reactively, perhaps feebly, Noah talked to people who approached him while he was building his ark about the coming flood and suggested that they change their ways (8). However, he failed to change his society. Instead, the people ridiculed and cursed him (9). For this he is deemed to have failed to be collectively responsible for humanity (10).
Noah’s final humiliating episode had him rolling naked and drunk in front of his children, when he finally found his voice to respond to his humiliation with curses for his grandson (11).
Yet, the Torah is clear that Noah was a virtuous man who did what he could in a terribly difficult time (12). His very name, Noah, means respite. He was not an assertive man. Maybe his getting drunk was a response to his feeling of loneliness when everyone – outside his own family – was dead, and even when they were alive, he could not relate to them (13). Or it might have been a reaction to his own sense of failure to live up to his father’s dreams and his sense of responsibility for the catastrophe of humanity.
As I sit with the two ways of reading the story, I choose to embrace both. Perhaps what I can learn from Noah is not to go passive or silent, to continue to care deeply but to care enough. Not to the extent of delusional saviour complexes. Regardless of others’ estimations of our gifts, we can discern which challenges to take responsibility for and which to step back from. We are not responsible for other people’s choices, nor are we responsible for saving the world. Yet, we should care about all human suffering, everywhere, even as we recognise our limited ability to alleviate it. Then we should go about soberly doing our bit. This is what we should also tell our children.
Edited by Hazel Baker. Thank you!
1) Pirkey Avot 2:16
2) Talmud, Midrash Rabba
3) Genesis 5:29
4) Genesis 6:8, 6:9
5) Genesis 6:2
6) Midrash Rabba and Eshed Hanechalim commentary
7) Genesis 6:13- 7:5, Sacks, J. (2009), Covenant and Conversation, Genesis, p.45
8) Midrash Rabba
9) Midrash
10) Sacks, p. 63, others
11) Genesis 9:20-27
12) Genesis 7:1
13) Adin Steinsaltz, https://www.chabad.org/
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