We are all, I would comfortably say, familiar with the stories of the greatness of Avraham Avinu. We know that in a culture of avodah zara, Avraham recognized that there could only be one Creator, one singular greater power who needed no intermediaries. When no one seemed to understand, he sought (and succeeded) in building a relationship with Hashem. We know that Avraham destroyed the idols in his father’s idol shop. We know that he didn’t hesitate to take his wife and leave his homeland. We know he arrived in his Promised Land only to find it wracked by famine. And those were just his early years.
Rarely do we focus on the fact that Avraham’s early years begin in Parshas Noah and that where his genealogy is listed – right after the narrative of the Tower of Babel – is also surprisingly significant. Thinking about genealogy – or, more precisely, the overlapping of the biblical generations – it seems rather perplexing how it could be that while Noah and his sons still lived people could “lose sight,” so to speak, of the Oneness of Hashem. They were still aware of Hashem, but they didn’t understand how to connect with Him. This led to both the avodah zara by which Terach made his money (one might even hypothesize that people over-complicated just talking to Hashem and thus created the distance) and the desire of Nimrod to lead the people to build the tower.
Migdal Bavel is an interesting narrative in that it is a collective story. No one person is given focus, and the actions are detailed in a plural format. Indeed, some commentaries say that the people joined into the project of building the tower because it was promoted as a project of unity.
These events happened in the lifetime of Avraham, when he was in his 40s according to Midrashic calculation, although we would only know this from careful study of the genealogy that follows. The question naturally seems to follow: How did Avraham react to this call for all people to come together and build a great city and incredible tower?
According to the Pirkei D’Midrash Eliezer, “Avram, son of Terah, passed by, and saw them building the city and the tower, and he cursed them in the name of his God, as it is said, ‘Swallow up, O Lord, divide their language’ (Ps. 55:10). But they rejected his words, like a stone cast upon the ground…” (24:7).
Obviously, this curse reflects the storyline of the consequence laid down by Hashem, but the Midrash also highlights the fact that Avraham was already a person of enough consequence to feel it worthwhile to speak up. (It should be noted that other Midrashim/commentaries say he condemned their actions only later, when he heard of it. The Ibn Ezra actually comments that he was part of the building at the beginning.)
Obviously, it is not surprising to us that Avraham stood apart and condemned this act once he realized the true purpose of the building project. What is fascinating, however, is how we can relate to what Avraham experienced even today.
The building of Migdal Bavel seemed to be a project of unity: “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” (Bereishis 11:4). However, an idea such as was proposed is not often spontaneously generated by a group. It comes from a source who shares that idea with many. In this case, the generator of the idea was Nimrod, whose very name stems from marad, rebellion, and who is described as charismatic but vastly power-hungry leader.
But, one could say, what could be negative about building and protecting oneself? In this one pasuk, we can see the beautiful arc of rhetoric that would eventually come to be known as propaganda. Firstly, there is the “Bandwagon,” the method of making people feel that they need to get on board with everyone else. Then there is “Camaraderie,” making people feel as part of the whole. Then we see the beautiful subversion of the underlying problem (in this case “making a name for ourselves – which belies a concept of unity) by the rhetorical trick of “fear” – lest we be scattered.
Avraham saw through the words and stood outside of the rest of the people.
In the last few years, since the evolution of social media, our world has been swept up in a constant torrent of propaganda. This, as we know, has been particularly potent among the young people. The most powerful of these, as we have seen, has been the anti-Israel movement and the propagation of the Israel as oppressor narrative by university educators. They have taken words and pieces of history and twisted them at the behest of forces that they do not understand. We have seen, over the last two years, the people protesting for Gaza and Hamas who wouldn’t survive a week living in Gaza because their core values are so antithetical to Hamas. We have seen how easily young people have taken up chants and slogans that they barely even understand. And once they have accepted that Israel is bad, they have spread that sentiment to classic anti-Semitism…
It has become obvious that so much of what has gone on in the west is because people are desperate to join in a movement that makes them feel like they are doing something good, but they are missing the underlying goal, which is far more than the destruction of Israel.
Like our forefather, we stand on the side and watch as language that seems to be the same language we are speaking is taken and twisted. We watch as the media, with a few deliberate modifiers, shifts the narrative. Language has once again become a tool for evil, and we are standing on the side wondering how they can twist language in such a harmful way.
There is no great take away, nothing we can learn as to how to change the world we are in right now other than to remain steadfast in the path set by our forefather. Like Avraham, we must look past what “everybody” does, and we must constantly work on building our relationship with Hashem.
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