It Ain't My Fault- Parshat Noach

If something goes wrong, we want to understand why – mostly in order to learn from it and  prevent it from happening again. In government or business, committees are formed to investigate accidents or misdeeds. People who own up to their mistake are sometimes respected, and sometimes scoffed at. And sometimes it's just nice to know that 'at least it wasn’t my fault'. In fact, we can sometimes be very defensive about not being the one to blame. Noone wants to be blamed.

It is quite amazing, though, to see that the Torah gives us an all-encompassing out! In this week's parsha, Parshat Noach, after the flood, God seems to say – I can't really wipe out Humans again for they have a bad formation from their youth.1 We can always blame our formation. Even God seems to excuse us. The 19th century sage, Beit Yitzchak, expounds at length on this concept. Humans are in fact fallible and were made to be that way. He adds, however, that there is a way to fix things. We do not wish for the situation to remain. We want to do things right. We want to be responsible. We want to succeed.

Usually, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we will know we have erred. Likewise we will usually wish to correct the mistake if possible. We don’t want to be the kind of person who makes mistakes or even worse the kind who makes mistakes yet takes no responsibility for his actions. We like to do well and wish to succeed. So though we CAN blame our human makeup, we would rather learn how to take advantage of it and reach the level we are capable of reaching - being responsible to ourselves. Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning3 often wrote that being responsible actually is based on being response-able. The ability we have to respond demands of us to make the effort to do something responsibly and properly.

Ah, yes – but we are human. And it ain't my fault if I err. We ain't perfect. Yes, that’s true. And it is in the past.  But it is our responsibility to try to succeed the next time. Each time we do something, we have a choice. We can be people who always blame circumstances or others for mistakes or we can be people who take responsibility for our actions and try to live a meaningful life.

 Click here for another logoParsha article on Noach

Notes

  1. Bereishit 8:9 – I haven’t really found a good translation - this is my own translation based on different commentaries
  2. Tzelaot HaBayit, Rabbi Yitzchak Shmelkes, Yoreh Deah Appendix, Sermon 3
  3. Frankl, Viktor – also the founder of logotherapy

 

Have A Great Shabbat!laughing

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