TBE Bar/Bat Mitzvah Commentary: Will Herckis on Noah

Shabbat Shalom!

This past summer I devoted countless hours to a single goal. No I’m not talking about preparing for my bar mitzvah, even though I did spend a lot of time studying. Right Mom and Dad?

But I also spent a lot of time watching the popular TV show  “Friends,” I watched dozens of episodes, until I realized that I should probably get back to my Bar Mitzvah studies.  What I love about Friends is that they are all so supportive of each other. It made me realize that the type of people you hang out with makes a big difference in the person you become.

 My torah portion of Noah teaches the same lesson. In the portion, Noah builds an ark to save his family and every animal from a flood. The Torah describes how Noah was an average person in evil times. But strangely he was called a righteous person. What does that mean? That means he was a very good person compared to the rest of his generation.

I’m lucky to live in a time where my friends and family are all good people, and no one is leading me in the wrong direction.

Is it better to be an average person where everyone else is evil or to be a great person where everyone else is average. This is like Noah vs. Abraham. Where Noah was average during evil times and Abraham was great during normal times. Personally, I would rather be an average person when everyone else is evil because by being an average person you would be able to stop evil people from doing evil things, and would be able to make them better people. If you are a great person where everyone else is average you can’t help them to do something better when they aren’t doing anything wrong.

This is also like my soccer team. Although we all go to different schools and come from different backgrounds, when we get on the field none of that matters. We all make each other better players and better people.

They are like my other siblings because we’ve all spent so many weekends in hotels together for tournaments, I’ve lost count

This also, reminds me of when Lebron James steps on the court with his team, and when his team starts playing he finds a way to make all of his teammates better than before.

What do you think it means to be a righteous person in this generation today. I think to be a righteous person in this generation you need to be nice to people offline as well as online.

That means on social media, you need to check what you post before you post it because we use social media so much in today’s society and sometimes it can get really out of hand with what you say and do on social media.

For my Mitzvah project I did a bunch of different bake sales for the charity St. Judes. St. Judes is a charity/children's hospital that researches cures for all different cancer types. This is meaningful to me because I’ve learned about St. Judes before and because cancer research can change/save peoples lives. In conclusion, I think that Noah was a more righteous because he lived harder times and it’s a lot harder to changes people’s minds when they’re already evil.