Why did God stop the Tower of Babel? At first glance it looks like a perfectly reasonable project: a frightened generation, a few chapters after the flood, banding together to build something that will keep them safe. So what went wrong?This week on Naaseh, Ari Levisohn and Lazar Berman read the story of Migdal Bavel closely, and it leads somewhere unexpected: the age of AI.

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Rabbi Natan of Breslov writes that the main work of a person's whole life is to repair the damage of the Tree of Knowledge. But what was the damage? Isn't knowing the difference between good and evil the whole point of religion?

In our first episode, we read closely through the story of the Garden. Why would God plant a tree in the middle of the garden and then forbid anyone to eat from it? What did the snake actually offer? And what if the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge have more to do with each other than we think?

Then we follow humanity out of Eden, to Cain and Hevel, the farmer and the shepherd, and to a striking detail: the first murderer in the Torah also built the first city. Finally, we ask what all of this means for how we read the Torah, how we build our society, and how we can reclaim our attention.

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