Noah's ark is a weird bedtime story

• Author: ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL / JTA
• Published date: 09 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

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 inspiration for novels, films, comic books – and children's books.

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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 exasperated 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 to 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...