Chapter 37: Righteous For One’s Generation?
On The Good Place, the group arrives at the Good Place and encounters Gwendolyn and the Good Place committee, and Tahani tries to help Janet and Jason deal with the revelation about their prior relationship. On the podcast, Leora Kling Perkins and Jon Spira-Savett explore, apply, and wonder about the Talmudic concept of “righteous in one’s generation”, which is initially suggested in a discussion judging Noah’s action in the terrible world that preceded the biblical Flood story. If standards really are relative to the times, is there a way to know how demanding they should be?
Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full contexts.)
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 108a
“These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a righteous man, and wholehearted in his generations” (Genesis 6:9), Rabbi Yochanan says: In his generations — but not in other generations. And Reish Lakish says: In his generations — so all the more so [would he have been] in other generations [i.e. when it would not have been such a challenge!].
Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 30b
[The brief section is exploring Exodus 18:20, in which Moshe’s father-in-law Yitro is advising him regarding the Israelites: “You shall make clear to them the laws and the teachings, and let them know the path which they should walk and the deeds they should do.”]
“That they should do” — beyond the letter of the law.
As Rabbi Yochanan said: Jerusalem was destroyed only because they adjudicated on the basis of Torah law.
Should they rather have adjudicated on the basis of arbitrary decisions?
Rather, say: That they established their rulings on the basis of Torah law and did not go beyond the letter of the law.
About Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish — Here are all kinds of primary Talmudic sources about the two Sages. Rabbi Yochanan was known among other things for his beauty. Reish Lakish was a criminal who reformed and became a Torah scholar. Their complicated and changing relationship, as well as their perceptions of themselves and each other, perhaps illuminate what is behind the first text above.
Psalms 139:5 is a verse that is hard to translate and is the subject of much word-play in the traditional commentaries. It could mean something like “Behind and ahead you have narrowed me”, but the word tzar=narrow sounds like the word yatzar=created. So for instance in Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 8:1 is the idea we quote that the first human was stretched out in all directions initially, which would be a metaphor for seeing all the earth at once. Some other takes on the multifaceted nature of the creation of the first human are in that source as well.
