What truly counts in Heaven!
The Parsha begins: “אלה תולדות נח נח איש צדיק” – “These are the offspring of Noach, Noach was a Tzaddik – a righteous man...” The next posuk then details the children of Noach. Now this seems difficult to understand, since we would expect the posuk to immediately state the names of Noach’s children rather than telling us that the offspring of Noach was the fact that he was a Tzaddik, so why didn’t the posuk do so? Rashi answers that its to teach us a powerful lesson - that the main offspring of the righteous are their good deeds and so Noach’s righteousness is mentioned first.
Reb Simcha Zissel Broide zt”l in (דרך שם ל״ג) points out how astonishing this is. After all, who had greater offspring than Noach? Surely, his descendants should have been mentioned first! Through Noach’s efforts, the world was established anew, with mankind in its entirety descending from him. Amongst them were the Ovos and Imahos HaKedoshim, Klal Yisroel, Moshe Rabeinu, Shaul HaMelech, Dovid HaMelech, Shlomo Hamelech and hundreds of thousands of Tzaddikim and Tzidkoniyos throughout the ages, all the way up to Melech HaMoshiach. But surprisingly, the Torah isn’t impressed with this, and rather than attributing Noach’s righteousness to his great descendants, his righteousness is attributed to his very own greatness! Why? Because the true righteousness of a person isn’t measured by how righteous his descendants are but in the efforts that the person has put into himself to become righteous! What an incredibly powerful statement from Chazal! And so, the posuk states: אלה תולדות נח - what is it that qualifies as the true offspring of Noach? נח איש צדיק - the fact that Noach worked on himself against all odds to become righteous and great in Ma’asim Tovim!
A classic example of a person who unfortunately made the mistake of thinking that as long as he had great descendants, whatever he did was correct was Korach. Chazal ask, what led Korach to take a stand against Moshe and argue against him? Since he saw with Ruach HaKodesh that he would merit to have descendants like Shmuel HaNovi – who was equal in greatness to Moshe and Aharon. This perspective unfortunately led him to argue against Moshe and despite having such great descendants, he was personally judged for creating the argument and ended up in Gehinnom!
Rebbetzen Esther Kaplan o”h, the mother of the legendary Tzaddik Reb Yisrael Mendel Kaplan zt”l was widely known in Baranovich, Poland for her immense righteousness and her commitment to helping the community, especially the poor. When she was once asked why she spent so much of her time involved in helping others, she famously remarked that she did not want to rely on the achievements of her great children to bring her to Olam HaBo but rather, she wanted to earn it herself. This is exactly what the Parsha is teaching us, that it’s our own Mitzvos and Ma’asim Tovim and the hard work that we put into them that count and which the Torah praises, rather than a reliance on the Mitzvos and Ma’asim Tovim of others!
