“Our age is bedevilled by a passionate need for all men to reach the top. This is mistaken ambition and self-destruction.”

What is a noble mediocrity?

Rabbi Olan argues that our dominant human characteristics of ambition and mediocrity are misplaced. As an antidote, he offers Noah – an average man except in the way that counts the most: he had moral character at a time when others did not.

He describes a Jewish tradition that “asserted that anyone who would live by the seven basic moral laws of Noah would be saved regardless of whether he was Christian or Jew, Moslem or Buddhist, a God believer, or an atheist. It is not necessary to be an Abraham or a David to live a noble, worthwhile life. The average man can achieve nobility.”

*Written by Joshua Hirsch.*