Bereishit 11: 1-9

Jack and Celia had wanted to renovate their house on Magnolia Lane for years, but they kept putting it off. First they had to pay off their student loans. Then yeshiva tuition and summer camp for the kids put a dent in their savings. Then college came along. But now the kids were out of the house, and Jack had made a killing selling his business (Hackensack Jack, the Meadowlands Monster of Mitsubishis). Finally the time had come to fix up the family home, and Jack planned to do it in style.

The new refrigerator? A Subzero (with a freezer that had enough space to seat six).

The range? A Viking.

Jacuzzis? Yes, with lots of bubbles.

Flat screen TVs? It was only a question of how many.

Radiant heat under the vast porcelain tile kitchen floor.

A billiard room (he would have to learn to play billiards, of course).

A heated three-car garage (not all his cars were Mitsubishis, you know. You always need somewhere to stow the Escalade).

Six bedrooms. Sure, the kids had recently moved out, but there would be grandkids someday. One had to plan ahead.

The back of the house was going to have a beauty of a wrap-around porch. And although it wouldn’t arrive until the construction was complete, Jack had ordered an outdoor grille that was large enough and powerful enough to cook up burgers and steaks for a small army battalion.

But what most interested Jack in the final reckoning was the facade of the house. At first he hadn’t cared about it at all and had planned to let Celia choose some tasteful cultured stone exterior. (“Jack, I can’t decide between the Chardonay Fieldstone and the Caramel Country Ledgestone.” “Whatever makes you happy, Honey. Go crazy.”) He just wanted it to look respectable. The salesman from Shinar Construction and Masonry had brought all kinds of brochures and samples over to the house for them to peruse.

As Jack looked through the glossy brochures, one picture caught his eye. It was an old battleship of a house that was completely covered in solid brick. Suddenly, Jack had a flashback to his childhood. Although he grew up in a small house in Clifton, he remembered the old mansions he used to see behind the broad sweeping lawns of the neighboring town of Montclair. They were big. They were beautiful. They were covered in solid, red brick, and they reeked of old money. Suddenly Jack had an epiphany. Yes, of course, his house on Magnolia Lane needed brick, lots and lots of brick.

The salesman noted Jack’s fascination with the brochure for the Levanim Brick Company, and he smelled a sale.

“You know, nothing can match the classic beauty and elegance of a brick home. It’s virtually maintenance free, and it can increase your resale value by as much as ten percent.”

“Uh huh,” Jack said, flipping through the brochure and gazing at more and more brick covered masterpieces.

“It’s also energy efficient and highly durable. Except for a few subtle refinements, the process of brick making hasn’t changed since the first fired bricks were produced thousands of years ago. Many ancient buildings that were built with brick are still standing. In fact, it’s the first building material mentioned in the Bible.”

“Where’s that?” Jack asked.

“It’s in the story of the Tower of Babel,” the salesman said. “When they wanted to build a structure that would reach the heavens, they went with brick. It certainly is a strong building material.”

“That’s fascinating,” Jack said halfheartedly, still staring at a suburban colossus in a light tan variety of the kiln-fired clay.

The salesman realized he still hadn’t closed the deal. He needed the right pitch to reach this guy.

“And nothing says ‘you have arrived’ quite like brick.”

That did it. That’s what Jack really wanted, to arrive. ”I’m sold,” Jack said. “Brick it is.”

Suddenly, all Jack could think about was brick. Celia suggested they save money by covering only the front of the house with brick and using a tasteful vinyl siding on the rest, but Jack would hear nothing of it. He chose a colonial style of handmade brick, in oxford red. He opted for elliptical arches around the windows and surrounding the front door. It was going to be spectacular.

It took a few months for the construction to start, but once it got under way, Jack was there every day, dispensing advice and annoying his contractor. The construction crew tore off the old green shingles of the house in August, during the first weeks of the job, and although the palettes of brick arrived in September, it took a while before they got to work on the house’s new facade. By the time the masons started laying the brick, it was already late October, the week of parshat Noach.

Seven men arrived from Shinar Construction and Masonry to lay Jack and Celia’s brick. They poured foundation and set to work piling layer upon layer of brick, until it began to rise high on the walls of the house. Jack tried to dispense advice to the crew, but none of them seemed to speak English. Two were Croatian, one was Bolivian, two were Brazilian, one was Filipino, and, the foreman was Israeli.

“Wow, it’s like the Tower of Babel here,” Jack muttered under his breath.

“Actually, I would say it’s more like the United Nations,” Moti, the Israeli foreman suggested. “We’re all working together for one purpose, to give you a beautiful house.”

“The workers at the Tower of Babel also were working for one purpose,” Jack said. “It just wasn’t a good one.”

“Oh, and what purpose was that?” Moti asked.

“They were trying to build a tower up to God, to overthrow His dominion over the heavens.”

Moti smiled. “It’s funny, but somehow everyone thinks that was what they were up to when they built migdal bavel, but it doesn’t really say that in the text.”

“What does it say?”

Moti quoted the posuk by heart. “Vayomru, hava nivneh lanu ir umigdal, verosho bashamayim, vena’aseh lanu shem, pen nafuts al p’nei kol ha’aretz. And they said “Come, let us build a city and a tower with its tops in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed across the whole earth.”

“So wasn’t their sin that they tried to reach the heavens?”

“No, I would say that their sin was that they had all these resources at their disposal, and instead of building shelter for all of mankind or trying to protect their children from the elements, they built a tower to ‘make a name’ for themselves. They were too interested in their immortality and greatness to understand how to appropriately use what they had on hand.”*

“Interesting,” Jack said.

Moti patted Jack on the back and turned back toward his crew. “You’re going to have a beautiful brick house, sir. Shinar Construction guarantees its work. Don’t worry about a thing.” Moti walked toward the front door to supervise the completion of one of the brick arches.

Jack stared up at his house and started to wonder if maybe he had overdone it just a bit. Maybe his wealth could have gone to better use, perhaps in a more philanthropic direction. Was there more to life than a really good jacuzzi?

Jack looked out over the construction sight and sighed. Still, it was hard to underestimate the pleasure of a good bubble bath.

*“Making Ourselves a Name,” New Studies in Bereishit, Nechama Leibowitz (NY: World Zionist Organization, 1981), pp. 100-108.

Larry Stiefel is a pediatrician at Tenafly Pediatrics. He is the author of the parsha story blog TheMaggidofBergenfield.com

By Larry Stiefel