I passed a church sign this week that reads: “Being good isn’t good enough.”

I don’t know what the pastor plans to talk about, but based on the sign, it doesn’t sound good. If good isn’t good enough, what is? Do we always have to exceed expectations? Strive for excellence in every thing that we do? Is accepting a good outcome not sufficient?

Why is being good not good enough?

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses speaks to God panim el panim, “face to face.” Yet just a few verses later, Moses asks to behold God’s Presence. It seems that face to face wasn’t good enough. Moses wanted more, wanted to know God more deeply.

It makes sense. We always seem to want more, especially of the good things. Why not go ahead and ask for more? You just might get it. Moses did indeed get more – he received from God what we Jews call the 13 Attributes of God, in which God delineates a list of essential attributes of God’sSelf, among them compassion, mercy, being slow to anger, and abounding in kindness and faithfulness (see Exodus 34:5-7).

These are all attributes worthy of being emulated, and I certainly try. I don’t always succeed, but an essential element of the human condition is our imperfection. My goal in life is to set reasonable goals for myself and try to achieve them, with the hope of reaching higher and higher.

Sometimes I fail miserably, and those days I apologize to anyone I may have hurt, to God, and to myself for letting myself down. I want to be excellent. I just don’t achieve it as often as I’d like.

I’m not sure I could get up in the morning if every day was another stab at excellence. If I’m being honest, I don’t want to try for excellence every day. It’s too taxing. I want to be a good and decent human being and do my part to make the world a better place.

Some days I don’t even manage that. Just this week, I hurt a woman I don’t even know by doing something thoughtless. I apologized, but I think she wanted an explanation. I couldn’t do that; I simply had had a stupid, thoughtless moment. A human moment. I would like to think that I’m better than that, but here I am, regretting what can’t be undone.

Today is a new day and I’m doing my best to simply be good. I’m going out of my way to be kind and thoughtful, to help others, to be a wise teacher and rabbi. It’s almost evening and I haven’t come close to achieving excellence yet. But I’ve managed good. And that is good enough.