From the Rabbi’s Desk
Rabbi Manes Kogan
920 Franklin Rd. SW Roanoke, VA 24016
Phone: (540) 343-0289
Noach
Our Parasha, parashat Noah is very famous because the story is about Noah and the Ark. Even though the story about the ark and Noah is associated with animals, children and a colorful rainbow, it is still a story about destruction and punishment. God regretted creating humankind and decided to bring an end to it. Noah, his family, and the animals, are part of a microcosm who deserved to be saved.
However, I would like to turn your attention to the other story in our parasha. This other story is still very well known, but because it always comes together with the Noah story, people usually forget to talk about it. I am referring to the story of the Tower of Babel.
We read in the Torah:
"The whole earth was one language and of common purpose. And it came to pass when they migrated from the east they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them in fire." And the brick served them as stone, and the bitumen served them as mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed across the whole earth." Hashem descended to look at the city and tower which the sons of man built, and Hashem said, "Behold, they are one people with one language for all, and this they begin to do! And now, should it not be withheld from them all they proposed to do? Come, let us descend and there confuse their language, that they should not understand one another’s language." And Hashem dispersed them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city." (Genesis 11:1-8)
From the Torah words, it is hard to understand what bothered God.
HaKetav VeHaKabalah, a Comprehensive commentary on the Pentateuch by R’ Yaacob Tzvi Mecklenburg (1785-1865), supports the idea that "It may be the actual construction of the city and tower were not sins, but that they would have led to sins that the Torah does not spell out."
Anyway, the words used by the Torah to describe the episode, and the episode itself, are a little confusing.
The Midrash Hagadah, in this case, comes to our help and brings "a story about the story" that illuminates the text with a new light.
"Rabbi Pinchas Says: They didn’t have stones to build the city and the tower. What did they do? They burned the bricks in order to build the tower till it was seven miles high. And different stairs led to the tower: one on the west and one on the east. They carried the bricks from the east and then they went down from the west. If a person died (during the construction) they didn’t care, but if a stone fell down, they sat, cried and said: When will we receive another brick like this?" (Pirkei DeRabi Eliezer 24.)
The Midrash tells us what the sin of the people of this generation was: They didn’t care about the people but, about stones and bricks.
The author of Pirkei DeRabi Eliezer, who lived many hundred of years ago, understood that this was such a big sin that it deserved God’s direct intervention, as we read: "Come, let us descend and there confuse their languages." (Genesis 11:7)
The people in this generation -who received the name of Dor Haflaga, the Generation of the Dispersion- didn’t kill anybody. They didn’t even desire the death of anybody. May be the reason for such a tower was to feel closer to God, to achieve a more spiritual life. However, they confused the priorities. They thought it was possible to approach God forgetting the people.
Their sin was so important that we read in the Talmud:
"The people of the Generation of the Dispersion have no share in the World to come" (Sanhedrin 107b).The message is clear: You don’t need to be a murderer to be a bad person. Indifference and lack of responsibility can lead also to big disasters. As I read this past week in an article which Gary Fifer shared with me, the Holocaust happened not because there was one Hitler –Imach Shemo Vezijro- but because there were not more Oscar Shindlers.
To be a moral person means not only to avoid doing evil, but also to do what is right.
And may God bless us whit wisdom, with His good counsel and with strength of spirit.
Shabat Shalom!