Fixing Today’s Tower of Babel

Friends, much to my embarrassment, I only noticed something for the first time this morning.

This week, we are studying the section of the Bible that includes the Flood and Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6:9-11:32) At the end of the section is the important story of the Tower of Babel in 9 short verses (Genesis 11:1-9).

I feel like all my life, I have focused on the Flood story and never did due diligence with this story and I was floored by a small nuance in the story.

We remember the basics, right?

The people had a common language, and came together to build a city and a tower. Gd says, hey-let’s go check out what’s going on down there. Gd sees the power and potential in their building project and decides to act.

This is where it gets interesting.

11:7 – “Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.”

Got it? So the response from Gd is to confuse their speech — to make it difficult to communicate.

And then the next verse, (11:8), “And Gd scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.”

OK. Now what happened, Gd disperses them, and they stop building the city.

A little strange, no?

Don’t we remember the story was that Gd confused their speech, they had a hard time communicating with each other and could not complete the building? Even the midrash tells us that due to not understanding one another, they even came to blows while they were trying to build.

But the order is different:

1) Confused speech

2) Dispersion

3) Stopping to build

Doesn’t make sense — if they’re dispersed, of course they’re not building! And was it a conscious decision to stop the building? How did they understand each other to reach such a decision?

So I had a thought, and then saw that a number of commentators had the same thought!

The Radak (13th c France) explains that G’d did not scatter the people by physically depositing them in different parts of the earth. By mixing up their languages, the people themselves started moving away from one another, in accordance with their ability to understand one another. Seeing that they were unable to communicate with one another coherently, their building project had to be aborted.

Rav Henkin, a modern thinker, explains that they dispersed slowly over time and when they saw people leaving, that was what caused them to cease building. And why did they disperse? Because of infighting and division.

So what we see here is that from a place of not speaking the same language, of not being able to communicate with each other — that is what causes people to separate from each other, and then their mutual project fails.

Friends, we are at an important inflection point in history.

The US is in the middle of what seems like the most important election of a lifetime. And many think that what is at stake is the future of the project.And it gives me the chills listening to how many people cannot speak the language of others.

Friends, over a year into the war here in Israel, we are also at a critical moment. The arguments over the hostages and the continuing fighting, along with the Hareidi draft bill, we are at each other’s throats instead of building together. The Knesset has returned to session, and the budget needs to be passed. This year *has* seen an incredibly inspiring amount of unity and common language, but it has also been full of good people wanting similar things, but they just don’t speak the same language. We all want the hostages home (and the soldiers!) and we all want peace, so why does the inability to discuss or argue the ways to accomplish those goals feel like we’re tearing ourselves apart?

We’re not speaking the same language!

And from that mutual misunderstanding of the other, we begin (Gd forbid) to feel disconnected.

We then double-down on the miscommunication and the words we say are understood by the “other” camp as dismissive at best and as invective or even incitement at worst.

Returning to our commentators, the most chilling are the words of the Netziv (19th c Berlin), who comments that they could not communicate clearly with each other and that they were disengaged from each other. They could have chosen nevertheless to dwell together, but since they did not, it was inevitable that they would be dispersed.

Friends, there is a great deal at stake for us here in Israel, for our friends in the United States, and for the entire world.

We don’t need to learn to speak all languages fluently — but can we please understand that we are speaking different languages?

Can we sit together and try to understand?

We saw thousands of years ago that from confusion, we may come to distance ourselves from each other, and the greatest building project for humanity may simply be abandoned since we can’t work together.

The Bible is giving us a harrowing warning both on the National level, and also on the Global. The “punishment” of dispersion and failure was brought upon the people from their inability to communicate — that is both to express and to listen. Gd gave us a huge challenge, but we brought the dispersion and the abandonment upon ourselves.

I’m sure you heard that the family of Rabbi Ari Golberg z”l requested that politicians only come to pay respects in pairs with one from the coalition and one from the opposition (https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-call-for-unity…/)

Perhaps this is the time for fixing.

These projects are too precious and too important.

Please Gd, I am begging for us to open our hearts and listen to each other. To share with respect and dignity. And to fight tenaciously to stay together, for it is in our hands and it is up to us.

Shabbat Shalom.