Rabbi's Message

As we approach the election next week, I am drawn to the story of the Tower of Babel, which we will read this Shabbat.  It is a familiar story.  Working together and speaking the same language, all people on Earth are united in building a tower and a city.  God looks down on their progress and decides to end it by confounding the speech of the builders and scattering them across the earth.  This story takes only nine verses to tell, and it is worth reading in full here.  Commentaries across the centuries have tried to explain why God disrupted this universal human project.  What could be wrong with humanity speaking the same language and working together?  Isn’t this the dream to which we aspire?  

Professor Leon Kass, in his commentary on the book of Genesis, answers these questions by explaining that unity, while laudable, taken to the extreme, can quickly lead to uniformity.  Without difference, there is no one to challenge us with the possibility of a better way to do things.  There is no reason to look up to greater values that guide us or to look down at the people around us who might have different needs or experiences.  “The trouble with Babel,” Kass concludes, is the “trouble…with the complacency and pride it tends to produce.”  In other words, when everyone is doing and thinking the same thing, how do we know that it is right?  

This story seems to describe much of our political landscape today.  This week, I’ve been stopped by more than a few people to express their anxiety about the upcoming election.  The choice we have is not simply between two candidates, but between two very different visions for our country and our world.  It is going to be an intense week (and quite possibly longer) before the dust settles and the results are in.  But once it does (and it eventually will), we need to work to break down our Babels.  As Aaron Dorfman, the Founder and Executive Director of the non-partisan organization “A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy,” has said, we often think about the divide in our country as between the right and the left.  But the greatest divide is between the center and the extremes.  It is between those who want to build up our democratic system and those who want to tear it down.  As we discussed on Rosh Hashanah, we have enjoyed a Jewish Golden Age in America because of the liberal democracy envisioned by our Founders and nurtured from one generation to the next.  This form of government is only possible when we break down our barriers, when we listen to each other, debate each other respectfully, and ultimately get to sensible solutions to the many very real and serious challenges we face.  It starts with participating in our democratic process, and I hope that you will do the mitzvah of voting (if you haven’t already) on November 5.

Additionally, while our focus is often mostly on elections for national or state-wide offices, there are also local elections that, in some ways, are even more impactful for our community.  One of them is for our local School Boards, and the JCRC has compiled bios for those candidates on their Facebook page.  While the story of the Tower of Babel resonates at this moment, I think the story that immediately follows it provides us with direction as we move on from this moment.  Immediately after it ends, we have a genecology that takes us ten generations forward to the birth of Abraham.  And next week, our Torah reading will open with those famous words of Lekh Lekha, for Abraham to move forward, to found a great nation, to be a blessing.  Perhaps there is meaning in this juxtaposition as well.  Towers will rise and fall, and still we keep moving forward, doing our best to bring our values into the world.