Good!

I have a friend who is an actuary for a large insurance company. She was working on a 63 page memo for work and needed information from another actuary. So she asked this other actuary how the company had done on a specific mortality assumption.

His answer was straightforward. "Good."

Now we might understand that word and need no further elaboration. But in a world of statistics, risk ratios and probabilities, "good" needs to be quantified. How much is good? 10% better than we expected, 25%; 50%, 75%? We don't know.

In life too, we often use the term good. And we think we know what it means. But if you say you are having a "good" day or someone has a "good" life, what does that really mean?

Take Abraham for example, who along with his wife Sarah dies this in this week's parasha. Did Abraham have a "good" life?

The Torah tells us that Abraham was old, advanced in years and God had blessed him with everything. And later on it tells us that Abraham lived to a "good" old age. But the point the Torah is trying to make is that unlike in the actuarial field, we don't really have to quantify what a good life is. We know it not by math, but by our actions and what we leave to others.

That is why the Torah tells us that Abraham lived a good life only after he made sure that his affairs were taken care of. It means that Abraham made sure that Isaac had found a wife, that he had given the children of his pilegeshes, his concubines, some gifts before sending them away, and that he had prepared a Will which left everything he had to Isaac, his long awaited and beloved son. Having done all that, Abraham can say "mission accomplished," and that indeed life had been "good."

That is certainly one way to define "good." It's not mathematically or statistically quantifiable. But it's something we know and feel, and something we may not even realize until we're gone.

That is why you should read the story entitled "Saga of a Muslim Soldier, which is quite interesting on so many levels and can be found here in the Fall edition of Reform Judaism magazine http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1508.

After reading Mr. Hill's story, tell me. Who has led a "good" life?

Can we say that the old rabbi led a "good" life? Can we say that Mr. Al Amin has led a "good" life? He certainly has led an interesting life.

But I can tell you this.

Abraham is said to have led a "good" life because of the influence he has had on others, because his son Isaac followed in his footsteps and kept up the family tradition.

So again I ask you, can we really quantify what we mean when we say "good."

Being "good," doing "good," having a "good life," and living to a "good" old age are not things that we can mathematically or statistically quantify or describe. But remember that "good" is something we know and feel and something we may not even realize until we're gone.

To paraphrase the words in The Prayer for Our Country, "may we all be an influence for good throughout the world."