Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Noah

One of the things that most inspires me about working at Schechter is the way in which a school is the paradigm of a community where communal and individual achievement are ultimately linked to one another.   While the goal of any school is to help each student maximize their individual potential so that they might become a successful contributor to society, ultimately that student most greatly benefits when they can learn in a supportive, energetic, and thoughtful community for every other student.   While the benefits of this kind of community seems obvious, when we examines the generations portrayed in Parshat Noah, we see the consequences of what it means to be in a community when the individual is lost in the crowd, and learn an important object lesson about what it means to care for one another.

The bookends of Parshat Noah reference two different generations, each of which who, in some way, were considered to be working against the will of God.  Famously, the tenth chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin records that the generations of the flood and the generation of the Tower of Babel are each denied a place in the World to Come, yet the question becomes how we can compare the sins of the generation of the flood and the generation of the Tower of Babel, since the latter’s sin seems to be far less severe than the former.    However, when Rashi comments upon this mishnah is his commentary on the Talmud, he actually argues that the sin of the Tower of Babel was worse than the flood.  He writes:

“Which is worse? [The sin] of the generation of the Flood or that of the generation of the dispersion? They [the generation of the Flood] did not reach out to attack the Essence [God], while they [the generation of the dispersion] reached out to attack the Essence, as it were, and to battle it.  They [the generation of the Flood] were washed away, while they [the generation of the dispersion] were destroyed.  However, the generation of the Flood were robbers and there was strife amongst them -- therefore they were destroyed -- while they [the generation of the dispersion] acted with love and friendship amongst themselves, as it says: “One language and unified things.”  From here you learn that strife is hated and peace is great”   (Rashi on Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1).

At first glance, it would appear that Rashi is actually making the argument that the generation of the flood performed a worse sin, since the generation of the Tower of Babel seemed to act in unison when attempting to build a tower to the sky.    However, when our rabbinic sources interpret the meaning of the building of that grand tower, ultimately our commentators recognize the dangers of acting uniformly when bulilding that tower.

Parshat Noah tells us that the people spoke the following prior to building the Tower of Babel: “Let us build a city and a tower, whose top reaches to heaven; And let us make a name for ourselves” (Bereishit 11:4).   When examining this verse, our early rabbinic sources recognize that the phrase “And let us make a name for ourselves” sowed the seeds of this generation’s destruction, for somehow their building of this tower was clouded by a destructive set of motivations, best demonstrated in the following midrash:

“The tower had seven steps from the east and seven from the west.   The bricks were hauled up from one side, the descent was on the other.  If a man fell down and died, no attention was paid to him, but if one brick fell down, they would sit and weep and say: Woe to us, when will another one be hauled up in its place?”  (Pirke Rabbi Eliezer 24).

In this midrash, we see that those who built the tower of babel sought to achieve the end of making a name for themselves by means of making a grand tower, while ignoring the dignity of the individual in the process.  One can only imagine the callous disregard for human dignity that would lead someone to worry more about a lost brick than a slain worker, yet the midrash from Pirke Rabbi Eliezer captures exactly why Rashi and others deem the sin of this generation to be so great, because building the Tower of Babel was an attempt at a communal unity that destroyed the desire to care for any individual.

In truth, this disregard for human dignity is not limited the biblical period, but rather can be found anytime a leader or a society tries to achieve a grand goal that tramples upon the needs of others.   Nehama Leibowitz writes the following regarding this kind of attitude:

“Gigantic buildings, pyramids, marble monuments, impressive squares have always served as the means by which a great dictator has wished to perpetuate and aggrandize his name, likening himself to a god, overcoming through them his feelings of inferiority and through them trying to transcend the inescapable fate of his mortality.”  (Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Bereshit, page 103)

We can think of far too many examples where an individual or an individual society desires to achieve greatness or supremacy to such a degree that they completely disregard upon whose needs they might trample in the wake of achieving that goal.    Instead, our Jewish tradition envisions that we build communities where we achieve great things through embracing the unique value of each individual, for recognizing each person’s uniqueness leads us to plant the seeds that lead to communal blossoms.   

In a school community, we are faced with a similar task to the generation of the Tower of Babel, the desire to help individual students maximize their unique potential, while also strengthening an institution that empowers those individuals to become who we know they can be.  Yet unlike the generation of the tower, we have the benefit of knowing that we can only achieve this goal through allowing the goal of the community and the goal of the individual to work in tandem, creating a partnership of success that leads to great learning, and great students.   May each of enjoy embracing this most wonderful challenge...

Shabbat Shalom!