O pinion
Noah’s Ark Is One Weird Bedtime Story
BY ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
OUR OLDEST SON is named
Noah and, as a result, we
collected a lot of children’s
books based on the Bible story.

On its face, the story of Noah
and the flood, with its parade
of animals, is just right for
kids. In truth, it’s a weird and
woolly story that gets weirder
and woolier the more you think
about it. If bedtime reading
was supposed to be relaxing,
we picked the wrong story.

Every kids’ version of a Bible
story is a “midrash,” which is a
Jewish method for explaining
and expanding on the Hebrew
canon. The closest English
word is “homily,” but midrash
is really literary analysis,
except written in the form of
parables, legal arguments and
fan fiction. A midrash can fill
in the gaps of the typically terse
Torah. The famous bit about
Abraham smashing his father’s
idols? That’s a midrash, made
up by the rabbis to explain
how the future patriarch of the
Jewish people came to reject
his father’s bad example.

There is a formal literature
of midrash, but the spirit of the
enterprise lives on whenever
people use the Bible as inspi-
ration for novels, films, comic
books — and children’s books.

Midrash is also what you
leave out of a story. When it
comes to Noah, there’s an awful
lot an author or parent might
prefer to leave out. First of
all, it presupposes an exasper-
ated God who, terrifyingly,
decides to wipe out nearly all of
humanity because of the sinful
ways of the people He created.

A kid just might ask exactly
what all those sinners did to
deserve annihilation.

And while Noah, his family
and the animals survive their
40-day ordeal, and God makes
a rainbow as a sign that he’ll
never do it again, you can’t help
but think about the 41st day. In
his new book, “The JPS Jewish
Heritage Torah Commentary,”
Rabbi Eli L. Garfinkel notes that
when the Noah story is told to
children, the tale is given “an
age-appropriate cheery patina,
depicting the ark and the animals
with bright, primary colors. The
actual biblical text, however, is
anything but colorful and happy.

It is a dark, dismal story, a tale of
people who are left to mourn a
lost and destroyed world.”
Sweet dreams, kids.

Kids’ books about Noah
tend to glide past the sticky
theology, but some deal with
it. “Two by Two” by Barbara
Reid, with amazing illustrations
fashioned out of modeling clay,
is a whimsical, pun-filled poem
(“Space within was so restricted/
Even the boas felt constricted”).

But it opens by acknowledging
that people “turned to evil ways”
and with God declaring “Let
them drown!”
Bright children might also
wonder — just as the classic
midrash does — why Noah
doesn’t do more to save people
outside of his immediate
family. The rabbis solve this by
suggesting that he took so long
to build the ark — perhaps 52 or
70 years — because he wanted
to give his fellow humans time
to see what he was up to and
repent. But there’s also Bart
Simpson’s midrash, which
comes to the opposite conclu-
sion: Acting out the story, Bart
has the people cry out, “Noah,
Noah, save us!” To which Bart,
as Noah, replies tersely, “No.”
The Little Golden Books
“Noah’s Ark” deals at some
length (for a kid’s book) with
Noah’s unease and his neigh-
bors’ contempt. After God tells
Noah he is going to “Wash away
the evil in the world,” Noah is
next seen telling his wife and
kids, “We must obey God!”
You are left to imagine, as any
good midrash writer would,
the heated family discussion
that came before this declara-
tion. Any parent who tells his
kid “We must obey God!” has
probably lost the argument.

For those who don’t want
story time to become a seminar
on theodicy, there are books,
like “On Noah’s Ark” by Jan
Brett, that leave God out of the
story entirely. Instead, Brett’s
version begins with, “Grandpa
Noah says that the rains are
coming.” No God, no bad guys.

Of course, this only ends up
shifting the conversation from
“Must we obey God?” to “Must
we obey Grandpa?”
A lot of the children’s books
instead treat Noah as an ecolog-
ical cautionary tale. That’s a
Jewish tradition too, based in
part on the verses: “The earth
became corrupt before God.”
(Genesis 6:11) A literal reading
suggests that humankind’s evil
had infected the earth itself — a
potent metaphor and prophecy
for environmentalists. And
Noah, as the savior of all life
on earth, can be portrayed
as the very first eco-war-
rior. In a science book for
kids, “Planet Ark: Preserving
Earth’s Biodiversity,” author
Adrienne Mason takes the ark
as a metaphor for the earth
itself: “In many ways, our
beautiful blue home — planet
Earth — is like an ark sailing
through the universe,” she
writes. “Thankfully, there are
many modern-day Noahs —
groups and individuals — who
are working hard to preserve
Earth’s biodiversity.”
One of our favorite versions
of the Noah story, “Aardvarks,
Disembark!” by Ann Jonas, is
essentially a roll call of the
animal pairs as they leave the
ark. The kids loved hearing
us recite the odd names —
aurochs, gerenuks, lechwes,
peludos, urumutums — and
we adults understood that a lot
of these animals were extinct
or endangered.

Parents know their kids
best, and it’s up to them to
decide what sort of lessons
they’d like to impart and what
books best help them do that.

Is Noah about the wages of sin?
The possibility for forgiveness
and a fresh start? The need to
protect a fragile planet? If your
kid doesn’t ask you what they
did with all the poop on the
ark, you’re missing out on a
peak parenting moment.

My Noah is all grown up,
and the children’s books have
been set aside in the hope that
we’ll one day read them to
grandkids. Given the headlines,
I suspect that the Noah story
and its themes — a reckless
populace, a degraded environ-
ment, a retributive flood (or
fire, or pandemic) — are only
going to become more relevant.

Bedtime with grandpa is going
to be a bummer. l
Andrew Silow-Carroll is the editor-
in-chief of The New York Jewish
Week and senior editor of the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Judaism Often Thrives on New Technologies. That Doesn’t
Mean Impossible Pork Should Be Kosher
BY DAVID ZVI KALMAN
THE ORTHODOX UNION
won’t certify Impossible Pork
as kosher, representing a break
from the way that decisions
about certifying kosher
food are normally made.

But as someone who studies
Judaism’s long relationship
18 OCTOBER 14, 2021
with technology, I would argue
that it is undoubtedly the
right move.

Since the OU first started
certifying products
a century ago, kosher super-
vision has always remained
doggedly focused on objec-
tive fact-finding: Food is
kosher because of what’s in
JEWISH EXPONENT
it and how it’s made (and,
occasionally, who makes it)
and that’s basically it. To get
this information, modern
kosher supervision agencies
have built out fantastically
complex global operations
that keep track of complicated
and constantly shifting supply
chains. These systems are
often incurious about almost
everything not directly related
to the food processing itself,
including whether factory
working conditions are accept-
able, whether the ingredients
are sustainably sourced, or
whether the certified product
will kill you (though politics
sometimes leaks in anyway).

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM