Noach

Alastair Falk

Alastair Falk is Director of Educational Leadership at UJIA. He has been a Headteacher of 3 schools, is a former Jerusalem Fellow,and was the original instigator and first co-ordinator of Limmud.

In just nine short verses, humanity and language are dispersed. The story of Babel is brief, but it resonates through the ages. The image of people unable or unwilling to understand one another seems to lie at the root of every conflict. So we instinctively support those wishing to understand and listen to the voice of the other.  And yet, it is God, the great "oneness" who "descends" to scatter and confuse the builders of Babel. The reason is not clear. Is it because, as the verse suggests, "nothing will be outside their capabilities"? Is this a replay of the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree in case "mere" man knows too much? Can God really be threatened by these warrior builders of Babel? 

Traditional readings stress that it is what they propose to do that is their sin. With all their advantages of unity of purpose and unity of speech, all they can think of creating is a tower to aggrandize themselves and to "make a name" Note the singular: one name, one way of describing, one creed. Adam names all the animals, each species distinct and different. Noach is told to take two of every kind into the ark. The future of the world is, it seems, bound up with ensuring diversity. And those great genealogical lists that  precede and follow this story, name after exotic name, just that, no description, just their names, as if each name in itself is something unique. But for Babel the aim is to make "a name" one overarching definition, admitting of no differences.

When we read the story of Babel, from the perspective of our century, we understand the dangers of one name, one set of beliefs, one ideology. The people of Babel have reworked the natural world, making bricks and mortar, building towers of strength. Again this might seem to be fulfilling God’s words, "fill the earth and subdue it". But this is harsh a subjugation of nature itself, turning the earth into stone and mortar. Even the Hebrew is short and hard. "kol, haharetz sfa echat v davrim acahdim" - what Rashi describes as sharp, calculating words. This is a world of bricks before people, of buildings before biographies. They have no before or after, only the cold, hard now, where one language dominates rather than unites.

And so, God is pictured, with a delicious irony, as "descending" to these "children of men" to see their great tower. One is reminded perhaps of Shakespeare’s "man, proud man, most ignorant of what he’s most assured, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as makes the angels weep." But we read Babel also with the experience of history. We know a different symbolism of towers and walls, holding in one "truth" to keep other voices out. Babel is the totalitarian state, where there is one official voice, one correct language, one "common good".

Post Babel, we may all be scattered and stuttering, but at least when we search for a common voice, it is by embracing diversity, and believing that each has, in her or his own way, something of value to say.