a serious break

It has been a while since I interrupted my flow of stupidity with something striving to be considered seriously, especially from a religious perspective, but the muse descended and so I have to put this Torah thought down in words.

In parshat Noach, the text initially describes Noach as "ish tzaddik tamim haya b'dorotav et ha'elokim hithalech Noach." [no punctuation intentionally]

Rashi comments on the wording of "b'dorotav" in his generation and cites the famous discussion in masechet sanhedrin regarding Noach's righteousness -- was he a tzaddik EVEN in his own generation (and would be at least as great if not greater in a more righteous time) or ONLY in his own generation (were he alive in a more righteous time, he would be "nechshav klum" thought as nothing).

This presents a problem. How can anyone say that Noach would have been less than perfectly righteous in another generation because of the word "b'dorotav"? One cannot explicate that word while ignoring the remainder of the verse -- that he was "perfectly righteous" (tzaddik tamim)! And the verse concludes by saying that he "went with hashem." How is this not a good thing at any time?

First off, there is an argument in the 2 Aramaic versions of the text. The phrase "tzaddik tamim" is not clearly how the verse should be read. The trope seems to connect "ish" and "tzaddik" and then starts a mercha under "tamim" which ties it to "hayah" and not "tzaddik." This would account for the Yonatan Ben Uziel's translation as "gvar zakai, shlim b'ovadin tavin hava..." he was a worthy/righteous man, complete in his good acts in his generation." The Onkelos reads "gvar zakai shlim hava..." he was a completely worthy/rightous man in his generation. If the notion of tamim (perfect, unblemished, complete) modifies the nature of his righteousness (tzaddik tamim) then how could one question how he would be at any time? The trope seems to be creating this reading "a righteous man, in his generation he was complete/perfect" thus allowing the negative reading, in that his completeness was only based in the relative comparison to his generation.

The Siftei Chachamim discusses at length the entire question of how one could see anything negative here. He begins his answer by citing the next Rashi which seems to say that the notion of "et ha'elokim", going in hashem's path, is different from Avraham's blazing a trail inspired by some inherent righteousness, not relying on external inspiration.

I'm not convinced by this. It is apparent that different people derive their inspiration from different sources and we don't try to assess how "good" someone is by the source of their love for hashem. If No'ach had lived in Avraham's time, maybe he would have developed differently. Maybe his generation was on such a lower level that he needed this external push (in fact, the Siftei does conclude that the insult is on the generation and its deficiency, not on No'ach! Had Avraham lived THEN, who knows if his internal inspiration would have been enough?) Different people find their centers in different places, but the end result, righteousness and sincerity should not be second guessed.

I think the answer is that Rashi's point is subtler. In any generation other than the deficient one of No'ach, simply being righteous and following hashem's path shouldn't be enough to be considered remarkable. Yes, in any generation, Noa'ch would have been completely righteous and would have followed what hashem wants. But this isn't the standard he or we should be shooting for. We need to be an Avraham, blazing a trail somehow even higher. Only in a generation where people are all deficient does seeing someone doing mitzvot seem incredible. In any other time, mitzvot should and would seem common place, so seeing someone do what is expected wouldn't be note worthy.

Our goal in our generation isn't to tout the mitzvot we do and say "but our generation is so deficient that I have to be patted on the back for following in the path of Hashem." We have to see that we aren't lliving in No'ach's time, so simply trying to be righteous and do mitzvot simply isn't enough. We have to be on an even higher level, pushing forward and finding the fire within to go the next step and be an Avraham. No'ach was an ish tzaddik, and his righteousness would have risen in another generation, but in his generation all that was needed to be newsworthy was to be who on a particular level, one lower than Avraham.