The story of Bavel is the second act in a four act drama that is unmistakably one of the connecting threads of Bereishit. It is a sustained criticism against the idea of a city and all that this encompassed in the ancient world. The message: the city is not where we find God.
The first act begins with Kayin and Hevel both bringing korbanot to God. God accepts Hevel’s, but not Kayin’s. Kayin, in anger, murders Hevel. Kayin’s punishment is that he will become a “restless wanderer on the earth.”
Kayin then “went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden... and he [Kayin] built a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Chanoch.” The first city was founded by the first murderer. The city was born in blood. The most important fact about the first city, according to the Bible, is that it was built in defiance of God’s will. Kayin was sentenced to a life of wandering, but instead he built a city.
The second act is the Tower of Bavel, where the people attempt to challenge God Himself, and the third act is Sodom, the most prominent of the cities in the Jordan valley. God announces His plan to destroy the city, and Avraham challenges Him. Perhaps there are fifty innocent people there, perhaps there are ten. How can God destroy the whole city? It turns out that there are no innocent people other than Lot and his family. What do we see in the city of Sodom? The people do not like strangers. They do not see them as protected by law – and they do not even treat them as guests.
There is also the idea of a crowd, a mob. People in a crowd can commit crimes they would not dream of doing on their own.
The Torah describes Noach as having been righteous "Be’dorotav" – "in his generation." Rashi cites two views in explaining this term. One opinion explains that Noah was righteous despite the fact that he lived among corrupt, sinful people, and if he had lived among righteous people, he would have achieved a far higher level of piety. Others, however, explained that to the contrary, Noah was righteous only in relation to the wicked people among whom he lived. If he had lived in the times of Abraham Avinu, he would not have been regarded as a righteous man.
What was Noah’s flaw? Why would he have not been considered righteous in Abraham’s time?
Several commentators explain that Noah’s failure lay in his inability to inspire his contemporaries to change. He spent 120 years constructing an ark, and yet, throughout that period, he did not convince even one person to repent; not a single person was moved to undergo Teshuva by the knowledge that G-d would be bringing a flood because of the people’s sins. This failure compromised Noah’s stature, such that in the generation of Abraham, he would not have stood out as a righteous figure.
Therefore, large cities are inherently a moral hazard. Crowds drag down more often than they lift up. Hence Avraham’s decision to live apart. He argues with Hashem on behalf of Sodom and prays for its inhabitants, but he will not live there. The patriarchs and matriarchs were shepherds and travelers who lived far from the cities. They moved from place to place. They spent much of their time in quiet spaces where they could be with God.
The fourth scene is Egypt, where Yosef is brought as a slave and serves in Potiphar’s house. There, Potiphar’s wife accuses him of a crime he did not commit, so he is sent to prison. The descriptions of Egypt in Bereishit, unlike those in Shemot, do not speak of violence but, as the Yosef story makes pointedly clear, there is immorality and injustice.
The book of Bereishit gives us the tale of four ancient cities: Chanoch, Bavel, Sodom, and the Egyptian cities. In each instance, the city is a dehumanizing environment and potentially a place where people forget God. What the Torah is telling us, implicitly, is how and why Abrahamic monotheism was born. The Torah teaches us how to sustain strong face-to-face communities, even within cities. For it is only when we relate to one another as persons, as individuals bound together in shared covenant, that we avoid the sins of the city. The Torah laws help us to live morally, with a focus on our relationships with others and with God, fair division of wealth and power, and respectful treatment of others. For all people are created in the image of God, and are therefore worthy of fair treatment. That is the antidote to Bavel, then and now, guiding us to the unity of all humanity.
