As Jewish leaders are increasingly sounding alarms about the possibility of a Mamdani mayoralty, it is noteworthy that this Shabbat we will be reading the story of the Tower of Babel, which various commentaries have seen as containing relevant cautionary messages.
Most relevant is that the project is understood to be a communist effort. Everyone would be equal, all joined together in the endeavor.
Prominent among the proponents of this theory is R. Moshe Avigdor Amiel in his Drashot El Ami. It must be emphasized that no economic system is a perfect fit for the Torah's vision, and we are warned in these sections of the Torah against the extremes of capitalism as well. In fact, depictions of the extremes of that system surround this story, with the episodes of the flood and of Sodom coming before and after. Nonetheless, the communist vision poses a particular threat, and the Torah narrative is read to serve as a cautionary tale in this regard.
One significant element of this message is contained in a description in the Pirkei D’ R. Eliezer (ch. 24). The verses go out of the way to stress that the people had developed a methodology of producing bricks. Apparently, these bricks were so precious to them that if one fell and shattered, they would cry. However, if a person fell from the tower to his death, no one cared. The devaluing of the individual in favor of the broader communal entity is one of the inherent risks of the defining philosophy. As Rav Soloveitchik expounded, this mentality both negated the compassion one person felt for the other and nullified the spiritual potential of the individual (Beit Yosef Shaul, p. 95).
While the notion of a community that takes care of all its members initially sounds appealing to a religious sensitivity, it is actually the preservation of Chesed that drove some of the opposition in rabbinic circles to communism. R. Shalom Mordechai Schwadron, for example, argued that when there is no private property, the role of the individual in fulfilling the Abrahamic mandate of personal kindness is eliminated, and with it, one of the central features of the religious personality. (For an extensive survey of rabbinic opposition to communism and its rationales, see Rabbi Yitzchak Blau's article in Tradition. Winter 2007 Issue 40/4.)
Writing earlier, the Netziv of Volozhin saw the tower as an expression of totalitarianism, echoing themes found in the Seforno, who wrote before him. The superficial unity associated with the builders of the tower is misleading; it is, in fact, only uniformity, not allowing for any divergence of thought. “ ‘Lest we be scattered over all the face of the earth’ … we must understand why they feared that someone might leave to another land…it is understood that this was related to the uniformity that was among them… since the opinions of people are not identical, they feared that people might abandon this philosophy and adopt another. Therefore they sought to ensure that no one would leave their society…. And the "same words" can also be seen as the fact that they would kill whoever did not think like them. (He’amek Davar)”
This was directly counter to the Divine plan, and thus God chose to scatter them and to thwart their intentions. As R. Shlomo Dichovsky expands (Lev Shomea L’Shlomo, pp. 40-41), a monoculture is poisonous to human development and essentially becomes idolatrous.
In this context, the Kli Yakar cites the rabbinic dictum “The assembly of the wicked is bad for them and bad for the world”. This theme is also of particular moment. While democracy is cherished and dependent upon a framework of voting, it is also the case that voting is notoriously inefficient at extracting a genuine picture of the true will of the people, a problem tackled most famously by the Marquis de Cordecet. The current situation sees New York City facing the possibility of an election result complicated by the presence of three candidates, resulting in a splitting of the vote that may be resolutely opposed to the winner. Notably, some commentaries saw the story of the Tower of Babel as a lesson in what is accomplished both for good and for ill when people set aside differences and join together for a common cause. Sometimes the message is that that must happen at the expense of all other concerns; sometimes the message is the opposite (see Imrei Baruch).
Finally, for good measure, it must be noted that R. Avigdor Neventzal saw in the story of the tower a Zionist message. Even at that point in history, there was an awareness of the holiness of the Land of Israel. In the aftermath of the flood, pursuing the rebuilding of society, humanity was meant to travel in that direction and pursue that holiness. Instead, they became distracted from their mission and stopped and took on this project that contradicted that goal.
Rabbis are notorious for seeing everything through the lens of the weekly parashah. Nonetheless, at this point in history, if we are confronted with a story which has been interpreted as a cautionary tale against communism, anti-Zionism, and allowing majorities to bring about a calamitous result, maybe indeed there is something in the reading we are supposed to be picking up, and hearing clearly.
R' Daniel Feldman
