Noach #2

The Downfall of the Anonymous Name

Miriam-Simma Walfish, 5767

Many of the ideas in this dvar Torah are inspired by my teachers Dr. Hezi Cohen and Judy Klitsner.

Please read Bereishit 11. As you are reading, notice all the words and sounds that repeat. Why do you think God became angry at the people in this story?

After the flood in the story of Noah, comes a strange, almost comical episode, in which people try to build a tower, God becomes angry, and, instead of bringing a plague (as God does later in the Torah) God simply mixes up their languages. As a child, I understood the problem with the people's actions to be that they were building a tower "וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם" - whose top would reach into the heavens. The heavens are the dominion of God, and building a tower that would reach that high would be a direct challenge to God's authority.

As I grew older, however, I realized that there are a number of problems with this interpretation. I stopped believing that people could really build something that would be tall enough to reach God, and even if they did, God has enough power to wipe them out; why settle for confusing their languages? If we look at verse seven, we see that God's response is not as violent as it might be if God felt God's authority being challenged; rather, God merely decides to mix them up. "Come, let us go down and befuddle their language there so that no one will understand the next one's language" - "הָבָה נֵרְדָה וְנָבְלָה שָׁם שְׂפָתָם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשְׁמְעוּ אִישׁ שְׂפַת רֵעֵהוּ". Rashi there notices that the punishment that God gives the people is "מִדָּה כְנֶגֶד מִדָּה" - (measure for measure): "הם אמרו הבה נבנה, והוא כנגדם מדד ואמר הבה נרדה" - "They said, ‘let us build'; in parallel measure, God said, ‘Let us go down.'"

The Torah is a very sparse document, often giving us no indication of what characters are thinking and feeling. The fact that here it explicitly states the people's reasoning suggests that we can look to the motivations behind the people's actions in order to determine precisely what they did to merit their unique punishment. The people's goal statement had three components: "Come, let us build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens (1), so that we make us a name (2); lest we scatter over the whole face of the earth (3)." Unpacking this goal, we see that the tower was the means through which they would "make themselves a name," and specifically, a name that would prevent them from being scattered all over the land. The tower is only a means to this end; it seems that God is much more likely responding to their desire to make name a name for themselves and their wish not to be scattered. Nahum Sarna, in his JPS Commentary on Bereishit, suggests that by desiring to stay in one place and not be scattered, the people were violating God's post-diluvian blessing that they reproduce and fill the earth. However, how is that connected to making a name for themselves? What was it about making a name for themselves that angered God?

The concept of making a name for oneself is not always negative in Tanakh. In Isaiah 56:5, for example, God promises a reward for those who keep the Shabbat and God's covenant. God says, "וְנָתַתִּי לָהֶם בְּבֵיתִי וּבְחוֹמֹתַי יָד וָשֵׁם טוֹב מִבָּנִים וּמִבָּנוֹת שֵׁם עוֹלָם אֶתֶּן לוֹ אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִכָּרֵת" - "As for the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, who have chosen what I desire and hold fast to my covenant, I will give them in My House and within walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name which shall not perish."

What separates the name that God is to make for the eunuchs from the one that the people of Migdal Bavel are trying to make for themselves? On the surface it seems that they are similar. Both refer to a physical structure that will exist long after its builders have died. In fact, the verse in Isaiah may even shed some light onto the motivations of the builders. They wanted a monument that would last in perpetuity and that would perhaps lay claim on the place in which they were building it. However, what they did not realize is that they were going about the process of making a name all wrong.

In the first chapter of Shemot, we read the speech in which Pharaoh announces that the Israelites are going to be slaves. This chapter is marked by its anonymity. Nobody is named until the second chapter, a remarkable point for a book called "names." Pharaoh tries to paint the Israelites as an anonymous unit.

The builders of the tower are also focused on anonymity and homogeneity. The word אֶחָד/אֶחָת (one) is repeated throughout our passage. The Torah stresses that "וַיְהִי כָל הָאָרֶץ שָׂפָה אֶחָת וּדְבָרִים אֲחָדִים" - "the whole earth was the same language, the same words." These anonymous people speak always in the plural - they are looking for sameness and unity. They lose sight of the fact that this means that in actuality none of them has a name.

The real difference between the שֵׁם in Isaiah and the שֵׁם in Migdal Bavel is that when God gives people a name, God is giving it to them as individuals who have earned this name by fulfilling God's covenant. Here the builders are trying to build themselves a name as a community, losing sight of the individuals within it.

Chapter 24 of Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer picks up on the anonymity of the building process in the description of the tower being built:

The attitudes members of the society have in this description are reminiscent of attitudes slave owners have to their slaves-it is not their humanity that is important, but rather the product that they produce.

But the lack of care for human beings that came with Bavel's focus on the whole does not take the day. Our story is immediately followed by the verse "אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת שֵׁם" - "this is the line of Shem" (11:10), referring to Noah's son, whose line eventually produces Avraham. God has triumphed and Shem can exist again.

Shabbat Shalom.