“Now all the land was of one language
and one set-of-words.” (Gen 11:1)
וַיְהִי
כָל-הָאָרֶץ שָׂפָה אֶחָת וּדְבָרִים אֲחָדִים
Rarely
do current events illuminate a Biblical text as poignantly as the poker game currently
unfolding in our
nation’s capital does.
The story of the Tower of Babel, which we reread in this week’s Torah portion,
is receiving a contemporary reinterpretation on the National Mall. Yet in this post-modern
theatrical revival, there are not one, but two towers. On either side of
Washington, two severe ideological-political towers have risen, and each side has
locked itself in, speaking to itself in “one language and one set-of-words”. Each
side has its own blogs, newspapers, TV channels, court
jesters, and of course its own “set-of-words” to describe the unfolding
reality (the “Tea
Party Shutdown” vs. the “Slimdown”).
Hearing each side tell the story, one can barely correlate it to the tale being
told in the other language.
 |
| Fox News coverage |
Granted,
some might feel that only one side is stuck in an insular Tower of Babel. But
what the current shutdown illuminates so powerfully in our Biblical text is
that “the sin” at Babel was not the content of their actions or the values they
held. It wasn’t that the people at Babel were idolaters, or rebelling against
God, as many commentators hold. Rather, the problem was in their unity and uniformity.
Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Berlin, the Netziv, in his commentary on the Torah “HaAmek
Davar”, makes this point:
“Now all the land
was of one language and one set-of-words” – God did not rise against them
because of the content of their beliefs, but because they had only one
set-of-words – regardless of their content. For their “set-of-words” became an
obstacle to them, as they decided to terminate anyone who did not think like them.
(Netziv, Ha’amek Davar Genesis 11:1)
'ויהי
כל הארץ שפה אחת ודברים אחדים' – לא משום הדברים התעורר הקב"ה, כי אם בשביל
שהיו אחדים, יהיו מה שיהיו... היו 'דברים אחדים' שביניהם לרועץ, שהחליטו להרוג את
מי שלא יחשוב כדעתם.
Unity
and agreement – desirable in their own right - became insular. Their air-tight
logic turned into a suffocating collectivity. Within the confines of their own
language, the people of Babel could no longer understand any alternative but
their own. So taken by their “one set of words”, they could no longer tolerate
anything foreign to it.
Much
has been made recently of that fact that America has become a place where
people of similar opinions
_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg/1280px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg)
I
don’t have a solution to the intellectual and cultural divides in Washington. I
also happen to believe that one side here is deeply correct while the other has
made a grave error of judgment, one side is stuck in a tower in my opinion, the
other is perhaps inching towards it. But I believe one lesson worth learning
this week is that we need constant safeguards from becoming siloed in the “land
of one language and one set-of-words”, and we need to ensure that our opponents
don’t silo themselves off either.
The
Bible offers a very strange solution to the challenge of “one-speak”:
“Let us go down and there let us baffle their language,
So that no man will understand the language of his neighbor.”
So God scattered them from these over the face of all the earth,
And they had to stop building the city.
Therefore its name was called Babble.
It
is the tale of the invention of foreign languages, the creation of bafflement. Learning
to decipher a foreign language, exposing oneself to the incomprehensible, recognizing
that one person’s Babble is someone else’s common sense, are crucial safeguards
against the destructive insularity of Babel. I do not apologize for the fact
that I understand myself and the world through the boundaries of my own
language, but I know that there are others languages out there, and that makes
a world of difference. If we’re ever going to build some towers together, we’re
going to have to make room for a whole lot of affable bafflement, otherwise we’ll
never get very far.
Shabbat
Shalom,
Mishael
p.s.
Inspired by the Tower of Babble, and in the spirit of the ridiculousness of
some of our leaders, I have been playing Bob Dylan’s 1961 rendition of a “foreign song I learned in Utah”.
