Babel and Babble: The Vocabulary of Judaism

The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9) closes the biblical prehistoric narrative and lead us, through a genealogy of Noah’s son, Shem (Gen 11: 10-32), to Abraham, the ancestor of biblical Israel. In the Jewish tradition, the episode is referred to as Dor Hahaplagah, the “Generation of the Dispersal,” the event that resulted in the geographic and linguistic separation of humanity. The narrative assumes that up to that time all humanity lived in geographic proximity and spoke the same language.

The term Babel (Babylon) evokes Bab-il(u), the Gate to the God(s). But for the biblical author, “Babel/Babble” is onomatopoeia for linguistic chaos, the inability of people to listen, understand, and, according to rabbinic tradition, care for one another. The story and its commentaries castigate the hubris that motivated the construction of the Tower. At a folk morality level, the narrative is a Kipling-like “Just so Story” about how languages evolved and points to the intimate connection between language and culture. The Torah offers us in Genesis “chapter eleven” (not a fiscal strategy, but) a linguistic etiology. How does this story impact on us as American Jews today?

Language and culture are indissolubly bound. Language is the pre-eminent tool for expressing and transmitting identity and preserving culture. It is an invisible but audible bond that links the individual to the group and fosters feelings of solidarity, one of the essential ingredients of what Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan called “Peoplehood”. Kaplan observed: “If Hebrew is music to your ears, you are in love with the Jewish people.”  He said: “The difference between a Hebraic Judaism and a non-Hebraic Judaism is like the difference between traveling though interesting country and looking at a … travelogue….”

Languages develop vocabularies that reflect core cultural and identity values. As Jews, we have a distinctive vocabulary that points to our religious and civilizational priorities. Sometimes I wonder if today’s Jews speak the same language and understand one another’s vocabulary and grammar. Even when we use the same terms, we do not always agree on their definition. My wife (Rabbi) Sandy (Eisenberg Sasso) reminded me of a poem by Carl Sandburg:

How can we be pals
when you speak English
            and I speak English
            and you never understand me
            and I never understand you.

We all speak English, some of us speak Hebrew. We use the same words, but do we understand one another? I say “peoplehood” and mean community across time and space; some say “peoplehood” and mean tribal insularity. I say “Zion” and mean the centuries old homeland of the Jewish people reborn as a modern sovereign state. Some say Zion and mean a colonial entity over a contested piece of land. I say “religion” and mean God at work within and through us. Some say “religion” and mean a supernatural Being above and beyond, while yet others mean a feel-good spirituality of incantational and mantric nature, more tied to individual psychic transformation, than to a personal and collective quest for “salvation” (fulfillment, responsibility).

Do we understand one another? Do we speak the same language?

Allow me to elaborate on these core concepts that have distinguished Reconstructionist Judaism, but which are now often questioned or misunderstood.

PEOPLEHOOD AND ISRAEL
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, spoke of Judaism as the “evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people,” a phrase that has become part of the vocabulary of American Judaism over the past ninety years (Judaism as a Civilization was published in 1934). There is today a tendency among some progressives to dissolve Kaplan’s tension between the universal and the particular into a Judaism that aligns with a certain political agenda. But universalism does not mean the abdication of particularism. Evolution does not mean dilution. We speak of universal concerns in the grammar of the Jewish experience.

For more than a few, “peoplehood” has become a tribalistic, embarrassing idea. They speak of Zionism as “ethno-religious colonialism,” accepting the nationhood and political claims of others, but ignoring and denigrating the historic and geographic grounds of our own experience. They condone other people’s liberation but condemn similar Jewish aspirations. Eager to advocate for the rights of others, they are willing to compromise their own. But, in loving our neighbor without loving ourselves, we fail our neighbors and betray ourselves.

It is time to reclaim the vocabulary of peoplehood, of love of Zion, especially at this painful and challenging juncture for the State of Israel. Like Israelis themselves, we need not agree with every military, political, or diplomatic policy or approve of every political leader of Israel to affirm a bond of solidarity and mutual responsibility with the people of Israel in all their diversity. We can love critically, but love, nonetheless. Today, the Jewish population of the State of Israel, in addition to its diverse ethnic and religious community of Arab and other citizens, is larger than that of the United States and of any other country. We cannot aspire to build a vibrant diaspora Judaism and a dynamic American Jewish community disconnected from Zion. Torah should go, creatively and self-correctively, from Zion to us and from us to Zion, both directions with loving intention and intensity.

RELIGION
I worry that the distinctive and compelling theological ideas of religious naturalism taught by Mordecai Kaplan, Ira Eisenstein. and their disciples have given way among many to a privatized religiosity of soft spirituality. Certainly, Reconstructionism, like other denominations, should be un-orthodox and theologically diverse. We can be open to a theology of wonder about the world of nature, awed by the mysteries of human nature, and inspired by reverence for the sanctity of human relations. We can acknowledge and celebrate the non-rational without lapsing into the irrational or abandoning the unique perspectives that allow us to understand God, Torah, and Israel in non-supernaturalist terms. We need to cultivate a faith that is intellectually credible and spiritually uplifting, lest we lose thoughtful and sensitive Jews who do not want religion as a numbing analgesic or perilous anesthetic. Rabbi Kaplan warned that “an intelligent and instructed laity is as indispensable for the teaching of sound religion as for the practice of sound medicine.”

BOUNDARIES
On Rosh Hashanah we read Jeremiah’s message of hope to the captives of Zion in Babylonia, he said: Yesh Tikvah… v’shavu banin lig’vulam. “There is hope. Your children shall return to their borders” (Jeremiah 31: 17). This message is particularly poignant as we anguish over the fate of our hostages and long for their safe return.  There is an additional dimension to lig’vulam, “their boundaries.”  It is not just a territorial reference. It is a spiritual, psychological, sociological allusion. It is a call to return to the boundaries of who we are, to the soul of our peoplehood. It is a clarion call of solidarity, mutual responsibility and accountability. It is not possible simply to “be” Jews after October 7, 2023. Judaism has become a choice, an effort, a decision to affirm, to return to what we may have ignored, taken for granted, or, perchance, rejected.  To be a Jew requires a mature intention and commitment to embrace the particularity of who we are, that we may affirm the universal values of our common humanity. Yesh Tikvah! There is hope.

Simon Rawidowics wrote decades ago a critical landmark essay on how Jews in the diaspora had at different stages thought of themselves as the last generation, the “Ever-Dying People.” That is not a viable paradigm for us. Neither antisemitism nor anti-Zionism, neither prejudice nor hatred will define our condition and shape our agenda. We will respond from the health and strength of who we are: not the “ever-dying” people, but Am Olam, the “ever-living” people.

AHAVAH
I remember Rabbi Kaplan thundering in class: “Say what you mean and mean what you say,” even as Sandburg reminded us of the need to understand one another. Failure to speak with clarity and integrity leads to the language of Babel/Babble. The biblical prophets said what they meant and meant what they said. They spoke with integrity, yet never without love: Love of God, love of Torah, love of Israel, love of humanity. They never failed to criticize, to call out wrongs, but they always did so in the spirit of Ahavah. Centuries later, Hillel would encapsulate that in the dictum: Al tifrosh min hatzibur – “Do not separate yourself from your people.”

It is alarming that today increasing numbers of ordained rabbis and rabbinical students in liberal seminaries align themselves with and lead organizations that malign the State of Israel and call for its end. You can and should be critical of policies and leaders of Israel; you can provide an alternative voice. We can and must love Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews. We can and must feel compassion and pain for the loss of life on all sides.  We must love and pursue peace.  But opposing the existence of the State of Israel and compromising the wellbeing and security of its diverse people, is not Ahavah.

ETHICAL NATIONHOOD
A recent article in the JTA engaged academic and religious voices on the meaning of Zionism.  Allow me to offer my own definition: “Zionism is the affirmation that Israel’s right to exist does not depend on its being a ‘light onto the nations,’ but simply, a ‘state among the nations.’” The purpose of Zionism was to “normalize” the Jewish condition; to move from supernatural messianic redemption to national self-determination. That does not mean that the State of Israel should not strive to live to the best ideals of what Kaplan called “Ethical Nationhood.” But Israel’s legitimacy should not be conditioned on double or unattainable standards.

The story of the Tower of Babel challenges us to build upon and expand the glossary of “the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people.”  It invites us to enrich the vocabulary that will allow us better to understand one another and transcend the Babble that muddles the dictionary of Jewish life.

(Adapted from a talk by the author to the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, N. Y., November 2, 2024).