Noam Sienna, Oct 12, 2002
This morning’s Parashah is Noah, and contains the story of Babel, which begins after Noah’s ark. Noah’s family settles in the mountains around the landing spot of the ark. The descendants of Ham left the mountains and went down to the valley of Shinar. The story of the tower begins with a rather straightforward seeming pasuk: The whole world was one language and single deeds.” ‘Single’ is not a good translation, and we’ll discuss that later. The children of Ham went to Shinar and there they attempted to build a huge tower. The text tells us that they said “Come, let us build a city and a tower with its head in the sky, and we will make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the Earth.” Ironically, their determination to escape this fate of being scattered leads them to the very same fate of being scattered over the face of the Earth. This is the key pasuk of the whole story because this verse gives us an idea of what they are going to do and the “pshat”- that is, the basic, simple reason for the tower. God reacts to their tower by coming down and mixing up their languages. The people could not speak to each other, and the place was called Babel, because God babbled the the language of the Earth. But why? Is there something wrong with building a tower? Did God not like that they didn’t want to be scattered? Obviously there is something going on, other than what is mentioned in the text.
What’s so wrong with the tower? Some commentators say that the problem was the tower itself. The problem was that they built a tower. A midrash in Pirke deRebbe Eliezar suggests the idea that the tower was a place of idol worship, and that Abraham was thrown into a furnace for being in opposition to the idolatry taking place there.
Or perhaps the problem was why they built the tower, that is, the reason for the tower. Rashi gives us three possible things that the people of Babel were doing to provoke God.
The first explanation is, Rashi imagines that the people of Babel actually said, Let us ascend to the heavens and wage war against God. Not a smart idea!
The second option is they said, Every 1656 years the heavens shake, just like they did in the days of the flood. Come, and we will make support for the heavens. That seems like a perfectly good idea - going up to help God support the heavens!
But if you think about it, it actually reveals a lack of faith that God would be able to support the heavens and it really shows that they were trying to outsmart God. Its like they were saying “We’re too smart. We’ll go up and support the heavens so God can’t pull another flood on us.”
The third possibility, Rashi says, is devarim achadim doesn't mean words that are one but rather devarim of achadim meaning words of ones, that is, they were planning to build four towers: one in the east, one in the west, one in the north, and one in the south. The tower of Babel was the east one. That shows the people had rather big plans; they were too big for their britches.
Another possible problem was how they built it, the way the built it. Many commentators suggest ideas like: pregnant women wore aprons with big pouches so that when they went into labor, the baby would drop into the apron and their work wouldn’t have to be stopped, or that as the tower grew, it took a year for a brick to be carried from the bottom to the top. When a brick got to the top and was dropped, everyone would sit down and weep, crying “Oh how long it will take for another brick to be brought up to take it’s place!” but if a man was at the top and fell, no-one would even blink. The tower became more important that human life.
Have you ever seen Star Wars, “The Attack of the Clones”? Though this seems totally unrelated, it actually is. I was reminded of the scene where you see all the clones marching up the ramp, perfectly synchronized in every little detail, and I thought that is what building the tower must have looked like. An army of clones, marching down, picking up a brick, marching up, placing it down, and then marching down again, and on and on.
Sforno was an Italian commentator who lived at the same time as the Inquisition. He was certainly familiar with the state of his fellow Jews as they were put to death for having different opinions. To survive, they had to smile and nod to whatever the Spanish priests said. In contrast, the society that Sforno lived in was that of the Italian Renaissance. People were encouraged to take part in a flourishing community of artisans and scientists. It was a very comfortable lifestyle that had plenty of individuality. Probably because of this he strongly criticized the tower builders for forcing conformity. Sforno accuses them of trying to establish one religion, one point of view, one set of traditions, one culture, one way of doing things, etc. According to Sforno, differing beliefs, opinions and cultures were considered dangerous to civilized society by the tower builders. To me, this all sounds familiar: The tower builders considered different beliefs dangerous . I bet you could replace tower builders with conquistadors, the priests of the Inquisition, the Cossacks, the Nazis or Al Queda and still have a historically accurate sentence. “Those who do not learn history are bound to repeat it.” We must realize that our differences in culture, language, beliefs, ideas, and religion are blessings and strengths for a thriving and healthy community.
Like Sforno, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz (of blessed memory) also focuses on the theme of conformity. In his book of remarks on the weekly Parashah suggests that the mixing of languages that God gave them was actually a blessing, not a curse, because without this, we would still be marching down, picking up a brick, marching up, placing it down, and then marching down again. The tower of Babel was a symbol of community gone too far, forcing everyone to be alike. “Just be like everyone else” they urged, “just join us, build the tower.” This is an example of peer pressure at its worst.
In my opinion, perhaps God was looking down on them and wanted to help them by giving them individuality. Perhaps God saw that the people were focusing on nothing but the tower and by giving them diverse identities, helped them to be free and unique. The danger of the tower of Babel was it demolished individuality; everyone’s lives were centered around this tower and their mission of building it. But the paradox is that the “punishment” was the creation of a community of many different ethnic groups and languages, in other words, increased individuality.
The Nazis are the worst example of not tolerating diversity and individuality. In the camps, the Nazis tried to take away people’s individuality. By assigning them a number, they transformed them from people into statistics. In the Nazi’s eye’s, they were just numbers, which made them easier to deal with. It is harder to think of killing someone, than to simply erase a number. Today, after the Holocaust, we are learning to value our uniqueness and individual traits, therefore, I think this parashah’s lesson still applies to modern life.
But, you can’t have a society built on complete non-conformity. A culture with no conformity has no unifying force. It has no order, and therefore will not be able to function properly. The Dor Hamabul, the generation of the flood, was an example of individualism to the extreme- a society of violence because it was a community with absolutely no agreed upon standards. Everyone did as they pleased and they were punished by the flood. At the other extreme, the Dor Hahaflaga, the generation of the tower, had no expression of individuality. After both extremes which are both in my Parashah, Abraham is introduced and teaches us a proper lifestyle. As a Jew there is a certain amount of conformity absolutely necessary to feel like we are in a community. For example, though we all may celebrate Shabbat differently, we all agree that it will fall on Friday night to Saturday night. We all do the same thing differently. We have to maintain some sense of who we are as a people while valuing who we are as an individual. The Sage, Hillel, said “Im ein ani li, mi li?”, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”but he also said “Al tifrosh min hatzibur” “Do not separate yourself from the community” Conformity is not as dang