[Avodah] s&amora

[Micha Berger]

Thanks to an email by RMPoppers, I found R' Lord Jonathan Sacks' takes
on the issue. From Covenant and Conversation, Noach 5768
<http://www.chiefrabbi.org/ReadArtical.aspx?id=1021>:

    ...
    The Netziv (R. Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, 1817-1893), writing in
    Czarist Russia and prophetically foreseeing the worst excesses
    of communism, sees Babel as the world's first totalitarianism,
    in which to preserve the masses as a single entity, all freedom
    of expression is suppressed (that, for him, is the meaning of "the
    whole world had one language and a unified speech"). Intoxicated by
    their technological prowess, the builders of Babel believe they had
    become like G-ds and could now construct their own cosmopolis, their
    man-made miniature universe. Not content with earth, they wanted to
    build an abode in heaven. It is a mistake many civilizations have
    made, and the result is catastrophe.

    In modern times, the re-enactment of Babel is most clearly associated with the name of Nietzsche (1844-1890). For the last ten years of his life, he was clinically insane, but shortly before his final breakdown he had a nightmare vision which has become justly famous:

    Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright
    morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly,
    "I seek G-d! I seek G-d!"... "Whither is G-d? he cried. "I shall
    tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers
    ... G-d is dead. G-d remains dead. And we have killed him. How
    shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What
    was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned
    has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off
    us? ... Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must
    we not ourselves become G-ds simply to seem worthy of it?"

    As George Steiner pointed out (in his In Bluebeard's Castle)
    there was less than three-quarters of a century between Nietzsche
    and the Holocaust, between his vision of the murder of G-d and
    the deliberate, systematic attempt to murder the "people of G-d"
    (Hitler called conscience "a Jewish invention").

    When human beings try to become more than human, they quickly
    become less than human. As Lord Acton pointed out, even the great
    city-state of Athens which produced Socrates, Plato and Aristotle,
    self-destructed when "the possession of unlimited power, which
    corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the
    understanding of monarchs, exercised its demoralising influence." What
    went wrong in Athens, he writes, was the belief that "there is no
    law superior to that of the State - the lawgiver is above the law."
    ...

In http://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/torah/babel%E2%80%99s-larger-theme/2011/10/26/0/
or http://bit.ly/yF49cx , the CR compares Kayin (whose children invent
cities and industry), Bavel (anothe rcity), Sodom and Mitzrayim as
a backdrop for Avraham and the birth of Yahadus. Also worth a look,
although less relevent to the aspect we're discussing.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             If you're going through hell
micha at aishdas.org        keep going.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - Winston Churchill
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