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Noach – Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

23/10/2017 11:28:33 AM

Oct23

This week we read about the Tower of Babel. A generation that preceded any form of Judaism joined together to build a building. What was the sin of this building? Rav Hirsch explains that the intention of this generation was to start a united cause to create something larger than themselves, larger than life. By uniting all of mankind together for this cause they would create a new force. The individual as an individual is weak and eventually will die. By becoming part of a world community, they will have joined something immortal that will outlive us all. The people in this generation wanted to create out of individuals a force that was larger than life. The system would guide them and lead them. It would in fact discourage people to think and make decisions; the system itself became an “Idol Worship”.

 

The Talmud tells us people who were part of the system would be hammering away at their building and would sometimes fall off the building and die. No one paid any attention. They were so caught up with the fervor of building a great world system the individual didn’t make a difference, It was the cause that counted.

 

We have seen throughout history how people got swept away with the masses only to lose sight of their own standards of decency and their own moral ground. To the Egyptians building those pyramids was more important than the millions of people that suffered under its bricks and mortar.

 

The early Christians killed millions for the sake of a united brotherhood of love. The Nazis were able to create incomprehensible inertia that killed 11,000,000 people to better the world. Individuals didn’t matter. It happened with Communism. It can happen again. The Tower of Babel can happen all over again if we lose our ability to think!

 

G-d divided them into different languages and they couldn’t communicate so they separated. And the cause was no more.

I think there is a message here, a hole that we can all fall into. Even amongst our own there are systems that we surrender to that with all good intentions can actually become destructive. As long as we are all thinking and contemplating the ratzon Hashem,the “Will of G-D” we will build only good.

 

Wishing you all a good and restful Shabbos

Fri, 29 March 2024 19 Adar II 5784