Two Minutes of Torah: Noach - Many languages or just one

In my family, my sister and I have very few complaints about the way that our parents raised us. I still regret the fact that I never got the Millennium Falcon, but over the years I have come to terms with this loss. The one major complaint, which continues as a subject of heated debates, is that fact that my parents did not bring us up bilingually. My mother’s first language is Hebrew and my father’s is English; so we were perfectly positioned to be fluent in both. But for reasons, which are still discussed, and as a result of the scholarship of the day, we were raised only speaking English. I have developed a comfort with Hebrew over the years; but I really wonder what might have been different had I really been bilingual. For one, it would have made my rabbinical studies significantly easier…

While in my family we tend to blame my mother for not speaking to us in Hebrew, perhaps we should really blame those people who decided to build the Tower of Babel. For it was as a result of their endeavor that God filled the world with a multiplicity of languages. And this eventually led to the early 1980s, and my upbringing with just one language.

Following on from the story of the flood it is not so surprising that the people of the time said ‘come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky’ (Genesis 11:3). However, according to the text, the building project was not motivated by a desire to survive a potential future natural disaster, instead they desired: ‘to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world’ (Genesis 11:3). This anonymous group of people was united by their common language and their common goal.

From the text it is evident that God was less than pleased by the prospect of the world uniting together as one, to build a tower with its top reaching up to the heavens. When reading the text it almost appears that their ability to build this tower will be symbolic of their ability to achieve anything they desire, a situation, which God is eager to prevent. The solution to this problem appears to be the common language and so God says: ‘Let us, then, go down and confound their speech’ (Genesis 11:7). Following the introduction of a diversity of languages God ‘scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth’ (Genesis 11:8), causing exactly the situation they sought to avoid. But then the place receives a name ‘Babel’ (Genesis 11:9), something which they had aspired to.

The story poses a whole variety of questions: Why was God scared by the potential of all humanity working together? Do we understand the introduction of different languages as a punishment or as a method to stop human cooperation? And what does God gain by scattering humanity across the planet?

We can imagine what the world would be like with all of humanity united by one language, but this appears to run contrary to God’s plan. Perhaps the clue is in the story which immediately precedes the Tower of Babel. The story of Noah reasserts the fact that we are all descended from the same source; all of us are the children of Noah, as we were all the children of Adam and Eve. And yet God does not desire a world of uniformity and conformity; God wants a world filled with difference and diversity.

The image at the end of the story of Noah is that of the rainbow, a natural phenomenon, where seven different colors come together to form something so much more beautiful and awe-inspiring than the mere sum of its parts. A red or orange bow in the sky would look nice, but a rainbow with seven distinct colors is something spectacular. Perhaps the rainbow is not just the sign of the covenant with Noah, but also the symbol of what humanity could achieve when embracing our differences alongside our similarities.

It is easy to work with, befriend and support people who are like us. The challenge is to work with people who are different, to befriend the stranger and to support people from different races, religions and cultures. Then we will not worry about building towers; we will instead celebrate our combined rainbows.