Noah 1985

In the Torah portion Noah we learn about the sin of the generation which created the Tower of Babel.  It is difficult to understand what their sin was.  After all, all they did was build a tower.  What was the matter with that? We are supposed to conquer the earth.  We are supposed to make technological advances.  G-d gave us this mandate Himself in last week's Torah portion.  What did they do wrong?  The rabbis explain that their sin was that they could brook no differences.  They understood that the people at the time of Noah had sinned because they had stressed differences.  Some people were stronger than other, and those who were stronger could take anything they wanted.  They, therefore, determined that they would do away with all differences. That’s why their greatest fear was “Pin Nafutz Al Pinai Choi Horetz - lest we will be scattered on the face of all the land." There are two ways to look at human beings.  One is as individuals, as people who are completely unique.  We can also look at human beings as just a member of a species where really they are all alike.  The truth of the matter is that both these propositions are true.  One of the ways that Judaism differs from all the world is that we hardly ever say "either" or "or".  We say both.  We have to live with the contradictions of life and balance them.  All human beings are the same as every other human being, but every human being is also different.  How we balance these conflicting views is difficult, but this we must do if we are to have a sane and humane society. In Noah's time they stressed differences, that those who were strong take everything. This creates havoc.  This is what the Nazis stressed:  differences between peoples. Since they were the master race, superior to everyone else, they could do anything they wanted to anyone and they could eradicate us because in their view we were nothing more than vermin, diseases, viruses in the human family.  We can see then that stressing differences can lead to great horrors.  However, stressing just the commonality of mankind can also lead to great horrors.  That's what the leaders of the Tower of Babel did.  Since they said everyone was equal and the same, then everybody had to do the same things, and, what's more, people were expendable since if you lost a person there would be another person to take their place and since differences were not important, their contributions would be about the same.  That's why when a brick fell everyone mourned, but when a human being fell and died nobody mourned.  There was always another to take his place.  Universalism can lead to great horrors.  We know that under modern day Communism.  It leads to Gulag 17s.  It also does not allow for any freedom since differences are not allowable, and freedom means making allowances for differences. In today's modern world we seem to have a war on differences.  There are to be no differences between men and women, no differences between cultures, no differences between G-d and man.  We can make our own morality.  Nowadays they say there is no difference between man and animals.  This, of course, is absurd.  One of the major problems people have today is learning to cope with and life with differences.  It is true that stressing differences can lead to great horror, but it is also true that stressing the commonality of man can also lead to great horror.  It is interesting to note that the punishment for the sins of Noah’s time was destruction while the punishment for the sin of building the Tower was accentuating the differences to make people understand that differences are important.  Unless we recognize that everybody is an individual and every culture is unique, we are going to have great problems. I am reminded of the story they tell about the man who called up his home and talked to the maid.  He asked the maid to put his wife on the phone.  She said she couldn't because his wife was in the bedroom with another man.  He said, "All right, take a gun and shoot them." The maid then went and shot them and came back to the phone. The man then said, "Did you shoot them?" The maid said, "Yes." He asked, "Did you hide the gun?" The maid answered, "Yes." He asked, "Where did you hide it?"  She said, "In the pool." He asked, "In the pool?  Is this 792-8780?" We have to appreciate the differences and work with differences as well as our commonality.  We cannot just stress one and forget about the other.  In order for us to lead a life of harmony on this earth we have to take into account both man's commonality and his differences.