The Tower of Babel Turned Upside Down (Noach 5777)

"Tower of Babel" by Theodor 'Dr. Seuss' Geisel

This week Jewish Community High School of the Bay (JCHS)  honored Hispanic Heritage Month (deferred for us a few days because of the Jewish holidays). Our students were inspired to hear from classmates and educators about their Hispanic heritage made them feel special and what made them feel different. 

One feature discussed by the panel was the variety and number of languages embraced by the term Hispanic heritage." As I young person I knew only one language. Only later did I study Spanish and Hebrew. One helped me to feel part of one community and the other a different community. (More on diversity in language below.)  

I confess, however, that mostly in junior high school I feared standing out by seeming different. It is a common teen fear. I just wanted to fit in or, even better, disappear. I learned over time to treasure what makes me different and what makes others' differences so valuable.
 
With that in mind, one can read the Tower of Babel story in a different way than most people. The Tower is well-known story even though it competes for attention in this week's Torah portion with the most popular bible story of all time, Noah's Ark. 

A typical reading of the Tower story is that all of humanity spoke a single language, which they applied to challenging God. They used the language to build a tower tall enough to reach toward heaven. As they got higher and higher God interrupted construction by confusing their language and scattering peoples across the world. 

From this perspective, the dispersion is a punishment for challenging or disrespecting God. Much of this perspective is informed by two Hebrew words about the language they spoke, dvarim achadim (lit. "a unitary [set] of words" or "one language"). In other words, their unitary speech emboldened civilization to challenge Heaven. 

But the Netziv (Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin), 19th century Lithuania) turns that reading of the Tower story upside down. He interprets "one language" to mean the Tower was being built to preserve a homogeneous humanity. Those who were building the Tower did so because they feared groups of people heading off on their own, speaking their own unique language. It seems to me this meant they built the Tower to keep people close as if in a totalitarian state. To hold everyone to a single language; to keep everyone the "same."

In that sense, the Tower and "one language" was meant to reinforce the human wish to avoid differences and keep everybody the same. Unitary language both inspiring and reinforcing unitary behaviors.   

From the Netziv's perspective confounding speech and dispersing people was not a punishment for challenging God, it was a response to the human threat to elevate homogeneity over diversity. Humanity and its language was scattered in order to ensure diversity and variety. 

Read this way, the divine plan celebrates diversity, honors differences, and empowers unique choices. It is a good reminder that when our impulse is to hide in the anonymity of being the same, we should encourage ourselves to be unique and value our differences with others. We should topple the Tower of Babel in our minds and make space in the rubble to embrace difference.