Paris on Fire, America on Edge and the Generation of the Flood

This past Shabbat, I caught a moment away from the excitement and clamor of having my son, his wife and their two sons stay with us—a toddler and an infant. I sat quietly and read some of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s commentary on Noah, the second portion of the Torah. It’s a story we’ve heard a thousand times, at least on the surface. Steinsaltz, like anyone whose work is to probe the Torah, goes deeper, and that’s where my interest lies.

The Torah says the earth was “filled with chamas,” which the rabbis understood as robbery. Of all that generation’s sins, it was robbery that sealed its fate. People who were stronger, who had banded together in large numbers, simply took whatever they felt was theirs, with no regard for property rights. There was no protection for the weak or the disenfranchised. The midrash, a body of rabbinic commentary on the Torah, adds another important detail: the people stole in amounts too small for any court to prosecute. Their robbery was, in its way, legal. But mercy and justice, so fundamental to a healthy society, was so thoroughly eroded that the world had to be destroyed and started anew.

Recently a friend of mine, who owns a small building with three rental units, was visited by a mayoral candidate who wanted to impress upon him the need for stricter rent control in our city. I wasn’t at the meeting, but if I had been, I would have asked the candidate a few questions.

There’s a housing shortage here. Understandable, since it’s a desirable place to live and prices keep rising. I also understand that housing is assumed by many to be a right. Everyone needs a place to live. But why is the government imposing restrictions on my friend, who is barely making ends meet as it is? What right does it have to single out this particular person and restrict his ability to set his own prices? And why stop at housing? Isn’t adequate sustenance also a right? Why not cap what grocers can charge, or doctors, insurance agents, gas station owners, gardeners, lawyers, airlines or clothing manufacturers? If housing is indeed a right, why isn’t the government providing it to anyone who wants it? Why must my friend, who’s by no means a mogul, bear the brunt of the government’s failure? And why has it become so common to look upon anyone in real estate as uniquely corrupt?

These were much the same questions my friend asked. The candidate’s answer, he told me, was a terse, “You’re entitled to your opinion.” Of course my friend is entitled to his opinion. That’s self-evident, and under the circumstances, rude. It wasn’t a huge moment. But this kind of thinking, this disdain for people who, for example, own, maintain and rent property so others have a place to live, can metastasize into unbridled and unwarranted hatred.

True, no one is burning down my city, overturning cars or smashing retail stores. But I can never forget that they were doing exactly that in 2020. My worry over a recurrence is hardly unfounded. I remember reading posts on Twitter at the time: Head down to [such and such street, near where we live]. No police there. Let’s fuck it up. What struck me then, and strikes me now, is how quickly a protest over a genuine grievance can be taken over by people for whom the grievance is only a pretext.

Which brings me to Paris.

The French protests, or riots, depending on how you see them, center on a list of stated demands: deteriorating schools, teacher shortages, inadequate educational resources, rising living costs, stagnant wages, pensions, government austerity and distrust of political leadership. Many of these are legitimate. Yet judging by the scope of the violence, some participants seem to want not reform but abolition: not only of property ownership, a basic right of every civilized society, but of institutions of every sort, from government and the military to academia and finance.

My concern is whether this could explode again here. We have politicians in America pushing a similar ideology, a kind of no-holds-barred neo-Communism: a yen to tear down institutions while cultivating widespread mistrust, not only of certain elected officials but of the foundational values of Western liberalism. As we’ve seen, this kind of tearing down is not always guided by a pragmatic plan for positive change. In the most charitable light I can muster, I’d call it aspirational experimentation.

What is especially troubling to me is that at many of these protests in France you will find signs reading “Intifada Revolution” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Arab,” along with ubiquitous Palestinian flags and Hamas flags, too. One might ask what any of this has to do with affordable housing and better schools. You might ask the same of supporters of certain DSA candidates in America, for whom demonizing the Jewish state serves as a kind of litmus test for entry. I’ve been repeatedly confronted with the question of why the prospect of their election frightens so many Jews, and why Jews I know personally, who have voted for no one but Democrats their entire lives, now feel politically and ideologically homeless.

Throughout history, Jews have worked to promote, and wherever possible flourished within, a cohesive social order. One where rich and poor are judged on the same scale of merit, where the ownership of property is protected by law, and where safety nets provide food and shelter for those in dire need. These things must not depend on one group of society being unfairly leaned upon, or threatened with violence.

The same Torah portion offers an interesting contrast. The builders of the Tower of Babel rebelled against God Himself, yet they were only scattered, not destroyed. The renowned biblical commentator Rashi explains why: they lived in harmony with one another. The generation of the Flood, who robbed one another, was wiped away. God, it seems, is more patient with a society’s defiance of Him than with its betrayal of its own members.

In the time of the Flood, the strong preyed on the weak, and there was no one to stop them. It got so bad that the world had to be destroyed. We, too, see the weak being preyed upon. It arouses compassion and anger, sensitivity and violence, intellect and unchecked emotion. Courage and cowardice.

These things have always been and always will be in tension. The question remains whether we will be able to keep them in balance.

Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author. This piece was published in his Substack.