by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

The Census Bureau has announced that the population of the United States has passed the 300 million mark. I suppose even if you’re not a demographer who gets paid to compile statistics like this, such information is inherently interesting. After all, such are the facts and figures that will go into the almanacs for next year’s bathroom reading, and that’s a boon for everyone, all 300 million of us.

But as a Talmudist, I’ve been trained to always look for what is called in Aramaic the nofka mina, the practical result of any idea or piece of information. So, I was impressed with MSNBC travel writer Rob Lovitt’s reaction to the news: “How do we get away from them all”? he asked. Lovitt goes on to suggest some lovely, (as yet) uncrowded places for those in search of elbow room.

This aversion to over concentrations of humanity, also known as cities, has an venerable tradition in America. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.” (Presumably, he was not referring to the slaves of his beloved South, some of which he owned himself.) Jefferson believed that the small landowner was the backbone of democracy, that cities were breeding grounds of evil. Jefferson to the contrary notwithstanding, the cities grew anyway.

What do the original Chosen People themselves have to say about it?

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch points out that the root of the Hebrew word for city ir, is related to irer, which means to arouse, waken, stimulate. And that, indeed, is the great recommendation for urban life—the constant intellectual and cultural stimulus generated by so many different people living in proximity to one another.

At the end of the First Temple era, the prophet Jeremiah lamented the ruined city of Jerusalem. Once home to a multitude of people, now depopulated, he compared Jerusalem to a widow, alone and desolate. He looked forward to the time when her children would return, when the city would be populous once more.

The Talmud says that anyone who has not seen the metropolis of ancient Alexandria has never seen the glory of Israel. There were so many people in the main synagogue that when the shaliach tsibur (prayer leader) would come to the end of a blessing, somebody had to signal to the crowd with flags that it was time to respond “Amen,” because many were too far away to hear him (Sukkah 51b).

So, clearly there is something positive to be said for population density. On the other hand, Moses was unable to communicate with God (to order the next plague) until he had left Phaoroh’s presence and was out of the city (Rashi to Exodus 9:29). Urbanization seems to have been an impediment to prophecy.

Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, explained that the Torah itself had to be given on a mountain in the wilderness so that it would be far from the cities. Jefferson would have approved.

But there’s no contradiction. In the Torah perspective, there is nothing inherently bad about cities or good about the countryside. On the country, in the multitude of people is the glory of the King. The more, the merrier. Only when they gather to serve idols, or ideologies, are their numbers undesirable; the more they are, the worse it is.

The reason that Moses had to leave the city and the Torah had to be given in a remote location (to this day, it’s not known exactly where Sinai was) was not due to any inherent evil of urbanization. Rather, it was because in that period of history, idolatry was everywhere. Wherever people gathered, there was a temple or altar to some god or other. To receive the word of the God of Moses, they had to escape the ubiquitous influence of polytheism. They had to get away from them all.

In a prophecy of the future, Isaiah calls upon Jerusalem to “Broaden the place of your tent and let the curtains of your dwellings stretch out, stint not; lengthen your cords and strengthen your pegs. For you will burst out to the right and to the left; your offspring will inherit nations, and they will settle desolate cities” (Isaiah 54:1-3).

Now that’s an urban renewal program to look forward to.

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4. The Half-Shekel & The One-Man Band
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