November 1, 2024

Many Holocaust survivors remained permanent refugees long after arriving in North America. They kept packed go bags and hidden gold bars, just in case they needed to flee. Even after finding for themselves a safe haven, these survivors never fully trusted it; and so they were always on the lookout for danger, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

This mindset may seem like it should belong to medieval Jews, but actually, it’s not of the distant past. It certainly wasn’t foreign to my parents’ generation, which had seen Germany change overnight from “Berlin is Jerusalem” to Berlin is a nightmare. It is not even distant. Last year, Jewish university students in New York had to quickly pack their bags and run home as well.

One fascinating example of this attitude is found in the writings of Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona, who lived in the early 1300s, in his interpretation of the Tower of Babel.

The Biblical text about the Tower of Babel challenges its readers. The text, which is found in Parshat Noah, is quite vague. People move to a valley and want to make sure that they never separate. So they begin to build a city with a great tower in the center, with which they will make a name for themselves. God then descends to the tower and confuses the languages of the builders; the resulting communication gap halts the construction. From there, each language group spreads out over the world.

It is unclear why God did this, and how the builders sinned.

The lack of clarity may have to do with a lack of context. Contemporary scholarship identifies the Tower of Babel with the Etemenanki Ziggurat. This ancient building, (literally the “Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth,”) was quite impressive, reaching nearly 300 feet tall; and it was intended to literally reach up to the Gods, and be a display of technological dominance. But from a biblical perspective, these notions are absurd; man is not God, and not at all God’s equal. God metaphorically has to descend to see this tower that the builders claim “reaches the heavens”; and the name the tower makes for its builders is not of greatness, but rather impermanence and dispersion. From this perspective, the text is a subtle satire about hubris.

However, this explanation does not exhaust the full meaning of the text. Many commentaries wonder why God would desire the confusion of languages and the divisions between nations. And this brings us back to Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona.

Rabbeinu Nissim explains that at the time of the Tower of Babel, the vast majority of the world were pagans, and they persecuted those who served God. and that’s why the dispersion was good. He explains:

There is no question that the division of nations and governments was good for the handful of righteous individuals in those generations. When the people of a certain kingdom would oppress them, they would move on to a different land where they could serve God as they desired. This is the case in our present-day exile; when persecution renews in the lands of Ishmael (i.e., Muslim countries), its fugitives flee to another land. And (when needed,) people will sometimes flee from those places back to the lands of Ishmael. This is for us a little bit of sustenance during our servitude.

National differences increase the chances that maybe one country would be good for the Jews and serve as a refuge from the bloodthirsty mob. And for much of medieval Jewish history, that was precisely the case; people had a mental map of where they might flee if they needed to.

Modern readers take a very different view than Rabbeinu Nissim. Ludwik Zamenhof, who invented the universal language of Esperanto, did so because he believed that a common language would allow different communities to bridge their differences. He grew up in Bialystok, and observed the enormous animosity between Russians, Poles, Germans, and Jews; as he explained once in a letter, “In such a town a sensitive soul feels more acutely than elsewhere the misery caused by language division and sees at every step that the diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of enemies.” So he dreamt of reversing the dispersion of Babel. Even when he was only 10 years old he wrote a play entitled “The Tower of Babel or the Bialystok Tragedy in Five Acts.” That became his life’s work.

To Zamenhof, the division of languages was a curse. And that may well be the meaning of the Biblical text as well. Many commentaries have noted the textual similarities between the Tower of Babel and the Garden of Eden narratives; and both narratives end with a tragic expulsion from an extraordinary home. Perhaps, had the builders of the tower been righteous, they would have achieved the unity envisioned by Zephaniah, of a day when “I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the Lord, and unite to serve Him.” It is quite possible that Zepahniah’s “pure language” is precisely the one spoken by the people in the valley. If only they had been worthy of that linguistic unity, history would have been different.

Esperanto achieved peak popularity in the early to mid-1900s, the heyday of internationalism. At the same time, The League of Nations was meant to achieve world peace by bringing countries together; the world would change through dialogue and cooperation. Today, internationalism continues to reside in the United Nations, where it has been commandeered by dictators and stands in service of the corrupt. Uniting the world didn’t improve it much.

A very different reading of the Tower of Babel is offered by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book The Dignity of Difference. Sacks wrote in the aftermath of 9/11, and much like Zamenhof, is searching for ways to help bring about world peace. Because the attack by Al-Qaeda was done in the name of religion, Sacks felt a particular urgency to find a way to end religious hatred.

Sacks turns to the Tower of Babel, which he argues emphasizes the importance of respecting differences. The world was created with enormous diversity, and no two humans are the same. Because of this, Sacks sees the tower as an attempt  “to impose an artificial unity on divinely created diversity.” Quoting the commentary of Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Berlin, Sacks argues that the builders of the tower didn’t respect difference; they were authoritarians who were determined to weed out nonconformists like Abraham. Instead, God disperses the people of the valley to diminish centralized power, and to have them claim their God-given diversity.

Sacks sees the post-Babel division and dispersion as a blessing. Only through pluralism, respecting the perspectives of those different than us, can a diverse population of individuals function together peacefully. Sacks went so far as to write in the first edition of his book that “God has spoken to mankind in many languages: through Judaism to the Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims… God is the God of all humanity, but no single faith is or should be the faith of all humanity.” This was denounced by the ultra-Orthodox as heresy; by the second edition of the book this was changed.

God belongs to everyone; unity is found by embracing diversity.

Sadly, the word diversity has taken on a different meaning since Sacks wrote his book. Today, lurking behind a supposed multicultural campus culture is a network of radical academics and administrators ready to cancel anyone who thinks differently. Diversity can be used in authoritarian propaganda as well, a weapon to silence those who deviate.

What is fascinating is that both Sacks and Zamenhof imagine they can solve the Jewish problem of antisemitism by first solving the world’s problems. But maybe they have it in the wrong order.

After the Tower of Babel, Abraham appears on the world stage. Now, solutions start with one man, one family, and one people. Reversing order, the micro becomes the template for macro solutions.

Jews must never forget the prophetic dream of world peace that Zephaniah mentioned. But before that, we have to survive. We simply can’t fix the Tower of Babel right now.

Maybe, after the last year, we need to consider solving the problems of the Jews first.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.