Parashat Noah, Genesis 6:9-11:32

The towers we construct in our society make it possible to be scattered in the midst of others.

On a recent drive, I got caught in an area without a strong radio signal. This is a relatively uncommon occurrence today with satellite radio. Scanning the airwaves for a recognizable sound, any sound, had a surprisingly nostalgic effect, a reminder of sitting by a radio on a clear night turning the dial to see how distant a signal you could get. Was it a baseball game from across the country? If you had shortwave, which nation came through loud and clear? The static and sputtering inevitably gave way to something weak but audible and provided a connection that stirred the imagination.

What could be more thrilling than the sound heard half a century ago, the faint blips from Sputnik, the first satellite launched into space? The recognizable sound pattern that made its way through the static on October 4, 1957 heralded the beginning of the space age. This Russian success followed on a number of American failures in rocketry. It gave new focus to the Cold War and spurred the race to the moon.

Looking upward, striving to reach new heights seems to be inbred within us. The quest to scale unimaginable heights is found in a small story in Parashat Noah, the well-known tale of migdal bavel, the Tower of Babel.

Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard." — Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. — And they said, "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world." (Genesis 11:1-4)

This story in Genesis has inspired much in the Western world. Countless works of art deal with the Tower of Babel. The word even makes its way into popular culture thank to Douglas Adam's creative use of the word "Babel" in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language."

While the end result in the Tower of Babel story is that God "confounded the speech of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:9), Douglas Adam's "Babel fish" picks up on what the inhabitants in the biblical tale were trying to do – unite humanity.

The Tower of Babel symbolizes independence, unity and strength. Let's even toss creativity into the mix. After all, it takes a certain degree of sophistication to build a city and a tower. We still do this. Consider how many major cities vie with each other to have boasting rights to the tallest structure in the world.

This story has inspired creativity in commentators who – pardon the pun – rise to the challenge of explaining the Tower's purpose. The most creative explanation comes from Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, who viewed the Tower as a type of launching pad for flying vehicles to the moon. It had to be far enough above the atmosphere so that these vehicles would not be subject to strong winds and other natural elements. (This from his commentary, Tiferet Yehonatan, which was written in the eighteenth century!) The Tower was a creative response to the dangers of the world which could be destroyed by a divinely ordained flood, such as the one that had occurred during Noah's time. Think of these flying vehicles as interstellar arks. It was a human attempt at self-preservation and could only be achieved through unity. As such, it was the mirror image of what occurred during the generation of the flood, when humanity was divided, and Noah needed to be instructed as to what to do. Tiferet Yehonatan implies that the builders of the Tower, using their own initiative, embarked on a mission of self-preservation.

An equally modern explanation with far different results was put forth by the nineteenth century commentator Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, (Netziv):

Since the views of human beings are not the same, they (the builders of the Tower) were concerned that others should not have a different perspective. Therefore, they would watch that no one would leave their city, and those who expressed an opposing view were sentenced to death by burning… It seems their shared words became an obstacle and they decided to kill anyone who did not think as they did. (Ha'emek Davar on Genesis 11)

In this explanation, what passed for unity was forced on the individual in a totalitarian manner. The Tower symbolizes a guard tower that one might find in a prison.

This explanation is more along the lines of the midrashic view that the quest to build this symbol of human strength resulted in a lack of concern for the individual. Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer recounts how if a person carrying the bricks up the Tower fell down and died, the work nevertheless continued, but if a brick fell down all the builders stopped and wept. The glory of the collective vision was constructed at the expense of the individual's life.

In its own way, the Tower of Babel was the biblical equivalent of the space race. While the quest to conquer space arose out of suspicion and distrust, it nevertheless showed the heights of human creativity and ingenuity. What began with some barely discernible sounds from a basketball size satellite, eventually led to a photograph taken by the Apollo 8 crew that put the universe and our place in it into perspective: Perhaps we need to be on a tall tower looking down to realize the vulnerability of humanity. Similarly, the desire to build "a tower with its top in the sky" could fulfill different needs. It could be used to "make a name for ourselves" with all the positive and negative implications of this desire. Equally, it could be a symbol of the people's unity and caring, a solution for the inevitable – being "scattered all over the world."

The former concern is doomed to fail because of selfishness, the latter because of unintended consequences. Think of modern cities, full of people living in towers. According to a number of urbanists, such as Jane Jacobs, we plan cities, but we don't allow communities to develop. While our population density increases and we are surrounded by others, we create buildings that leave us increasingly isolated. More becomes less. The towers we construct in our society make it possible to be scattered in the midst of others.

The Tower of Babel, the space race, and our urban centers share the flawed magnificence of human undertakings. Each, in its own way, is dazzlingly chutzpadik, while at the same time being imperfect. Each is an attempt to move forward, to turn the small step into a giant leap, which is the essence of humanity.

The story of the Tower takes place after the flood, symbolized by the rainbow in the sky. According to Genesis Rabbah, the generation of the flood totally disregarded God and sought to displace the Almighty, while the generation of the Tower attempted to share power with God. What better way to try this then by reaching into God's realm, ascending the heights where the rainbow exists? The consequence for the tower builders was not as severe as for their predecessors, because they wanted to be with and not replace the Divine.

Is it truly possible to share in God's role? It is one thing to place ourselves at the summit of all creation and quite another to be the bridge between heaven and earth. Perhaps we should think of the Tower of Babel as a transmission tower. The builders wanted it to carry a message from earth to the heavens whereas they, and we, should be more concerned with listening to the message coming from heaven to earth.

Shabbat shalom,
MS