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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



O pinion
So it was unusual when
the OU — the largest certi-
fier of kosher products in the
world — denied certification to
Impossible Pork, a next-gen meat
substitute, despite the fact that
every ingredient in the product
is kosher. The OU explained that
it could not certify a product
that described itself as pork.

Despite protestations to the
contrary from hungry Jews
and my own deep culinary
curiosity, I believe that the OU
made the right call. Though
it seems that the decision was
narrowly decided, the move
to withhold kosher certifica-
tion may, in fact, turn out to
be one of the most important
Jewish legal decisions of the
21st century. This may seem
like a hyperbolic way of talking
about soy protein slurry, but
I really think it isn’t. The
OU’s move is a first, tenta-
tive step towards a stance on
technological innovation that
desperately needs to become
more common.

To understand why, we
need to understand the effect
of new technologies on legal
regimes. Law needs to be
specific to be effective, and so
well-constructed law is often
carefully tailored to the nitty-
gritty details of specific objects,
systems and ways of behaving.

When a new technology comes
along and replaces the old —
even if the new tech does exactly
the same thing as the old — it
can make the old law irrelevant
unless lawmakers intervene
with an update. Interventions
are especially important when
the old technology has been
around for a long time and law
has grown intertwined with it.

Regulating cryptocurrency, for
example, is crucial precisely
because so many financial
regulations assume that trans-
actions take place exclusively
through state-issued currency
that is mostly stored in banks.

But if the job of lawmakers is
to create continuities between old
and new tech, many modern tech
firms, with their “move fast and
break things” culture, often seem
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM hellbent on tearing them apart.

The makers of new technology
like to call things “unprece-
dented” because it generates
hype, but disconnecting new
technologies from old ones is
also a good way of shielding
themselves from ethical and
legal responsibility for how those
technologies behave.

This new tech dynamic
plays out in Jewish law, too.

How should the rule forbid-
ding leather shoes on Yom
Kippur — because they were
considered an indulgence —
the argument carried because it
was understood by leadership
and laity alike that electricity
was coming to replace fire, to
do everything fire could do and
more. Today, the restrictions
on electricity are a cornerstone
of the Shabbat experience, so
fundamental that it is hard for
many observant Jews to imagine
Shabbat without it.

Is Impossible Pork the
21st-century version
of electricity? There’s a good case
to be made that it is. The rise
of plant-based meat substitutes
and veggie pork — but if the
distinction is there, the ban on
the pork must be, too.

The OU’s ruling does not yet
amount to a full-fledged policy
that all fake meat should be
treated like real meat; a kosher
restaurant can still serve plant-
based “cheeseburgers” without
fear that its license will be
revoked. But even if it was not
intended to be profound, the
OU’s decision is an example
of how all regulators, both
religious and governmental,
can fight back against the
cultural unmooring that
the present onslaught of new
technology continues to cause.

In this unprecedented age,
creating continuity between the
past and the present serves to
ground society in the wisdom
and norms of its own past. l
David Zvi Kalman is the scholar-
in-residence and director of new
media at the Shalom Hartman
Institute of North America and the
owner of Print-o-Craft Press. He
holds a Ph.D. from the University of
Pennsylvania. Despite protestations to the contrary from
KVETCH ’N’ KVELL
hungry Jews and my own deep culinary curiosity,
Tone of Article Suspect
I believe that the OU made the right call.

apply in an era of comfortable
synthetic shoes? Must one
wear tzitzit (ritual fringes) at
all when modern shirts don’t
have the four corners that
triggered the Biblical require-
ment of tzitzit? On a larger
scale, the Shabbat elevator,
the Kosher Lamp, as well as a
host of technologies developed
by Israel’s Tzomet Institute,
all employ new technologies
to circumvent existing rules
while keeping within the letter,
if not the spirit, of the law.

Sometimes Jews have
allowed these rules to be eroded
because the stakes didn’t feel
high enough, but when a new
technology threatens to under-
mine Jewish tradition, the
rabbis have tended to respond
appropriately. The best example of this is the
ban on turning electricity on or
off on Shabbat. For millennia,
the experience of Shabbat was
shaped by the Biblical prohibition
on lighting fires; with the advent
of electricity at the turn of the
last century, that ban threatened
to become irrelevant. Orthodox
rabbis responded by coalescing
around the argument that
electricity is fire, or was covered
by some other well-established
prohibition. That electricity is
not actually fire didn’t matter;
has been spurred by ethical
and environmental concerns
around meat production. Their
success depends on their being
so delicious that they escape from
the boutique realm of eco-con-
scious consumers and take on the
same cultural role as meat. That
Burger King offers an Impossible
Whopper signals that this is
already happening, as does the
fact that major meat producers
have invested heavily in the
growth of plant-based alterna-
tives to their own products.

These developments should
be celebrated — but rather
than diminishing meat’s
special cultural meaning, its
substitutes have only served to
burnish it.

Meat has a special signif-
icance in Judaism, too. God
is a big fan of animal sacri-
fices, and many holidays still
involve the ritual or cultural
use of meat — and inasmuch
as meat matters, it matters that
the meat isn’t pork. It’s irrele-
vant that the Ancient Israelite
origins of the ban are obscure;
it’s enough that modern obser-
vant Jews (and Muslims) still
treat the ban on pig products
as a cultural touchstone. We
should be glad that technology
has created a meaningful
difference between veggie beef
JEWISH EXPONENT
I WAS DISMAYED BY the tone of “Aish Chaim Handles Yom
Kippur Service Intruder” (Oct. 7). A woman with obvious mental
problems created a scene at the entrance to an outdoor service.

I expected the article to praise the security guard’s and police
officers’ professionalism in handling the incident without the
congregation even noticing, and the rabbi to show concern for
the woman’s condition. Instead, the article dwells on antisemitic
violence, terrorism and homicides in Philadelphia.

Just one year ago and four miles from Aish Chaim, a mentally
ill young man was shot dead by Philadelphia police. A mindset
that regards inner-city residents with suspicion and people with
mental issues as criminals is dangerous.

Jon Arnon | Merion Station
Antisemitism is the Same as Anti-semitism
Spell it antisemitism or anti-Semitism (“Why Should Jews Be
Concerned About Hyphens?”, Sept. 30), but either way it’s like
pornography. I know Jew hatred when I see it.

Paul L. Newman | Merion Station
Reorganization Plans Are Pleasing
I was pleased to read the comments made by Michael Balaban
about his plans for a reorganization of the Philadelphia Jewish
Federation (“Coming Home: An Interview With New Jewish
Federation President and CEO Michael Balaban,” Aug. 12).

It was not until I moved to Florida that I realized how
important and meaningful a well-run and well-organized Jewish
Federation can be to the Jewish community. l
Lois Robins Portnoff | Sarasota, Florida
STATEMENT FROM THE PUBLISHER
We are a diverse community. The views expressed in the signed opinion columns and let-
ters to the editor published in the Jewish Exponent are those of the authors. They do
not necessarily reflect the views of the officers and boards of the Jewish Publishing
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letters to letters@jewishexponent.com or fax to 215-569-3389. Letters should be a
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published. OCTOBER 14, 2021
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