Religious Pluralism | Parashat Hashavua-- The Weekly Torah Portion

AND GOD SAID: LET THERE BE DIVERSITY

Parashat Noach: Genesis 6:9 - 11:32

By Rabbi Amy Levin

But a close (and more mature) reading of the end of this week's parasha suggests that my Hebrew teachers (good and patient people though they were) may have been mistaken in their definition of the essential sin.

Take a look at the way the builders of the tower themselves expressed their ambition: "Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its head in the heavens, and we will make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered over the face of the earth." (11:4)

No doubt the words "a tower with its head in the heavens" (ומגדל בראשו בשמים) is what lead my Hebrew teacher, and many others, to conclude that the sin that had to be blotted out was, indeed, hubris. The trouble with such a conclusion is that it contradicts a major principle of our tradition: i.e. that we are SUPPOSED to strive to become closer to God. He is meant to be the ultimate role model for humanity; we are meant to develop all of God's attributes to the best of our limited human ability in order to draw closer to Him, in order to know Him better.

Granted, the method attempted by the tower builders to achieve this goal may have lacked sophistication -- but I don't believe that God would have rained such punishment upon them if that was what irked Him about the tower.

Both Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra (11th century Spain) and the Rashbam (Rabbi Shmuel Bar Meir, 11th century France) were loathe to define the sin of the tower builders as such, and in their commentaries to our parasha they remind us that Moshe himself said (Deuteronomy 1:28) "large cities and fortresses [reaching] the heavens". [Don't let the context of this verse confuse you -- it was irrelevant to the commentators, so just go with their flow here.]

The Rashbam goes on to point out what he believes the sin of the tower builders to be: "God had commanded them to 'be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth' and they chose to settle in one place."

Now the fear of this generation to be scattered and their intent to build a high tower are very understandable if we remember that this is a post-flood generation. If another flood should come -- the tower might spare lives. And after God's clean sweep of the earth, the rest of the world must have seemed an intimidating prospect.

But God was not prepared to tolerate a homogenous, centralized world. When He "came down to look at the city and the tower" His reaction was not anger that the tower builders had dared build a tower to the heavens, but rather that as one people with one language they seemed to have but one idea among them. Their punishment? Exactly what they feared -- they were scattered over the face of the earth and vested with different languages and cultures.

It is as if God declared: Let there be diversity in the world. God could easily have conceived of humanity as sharing one world-view, one vocabulary, one goal -- instead He forced His human creations to develop a world of diversity, a world of machloket l'shem shamayim and nuance.

Let this week's parasha encourage all of us to welcome the differences between us, instead of fearing them, to develop each in our own direction with integrity, and to respect the beliefs and commitments of others -- for this is the kind of world God clearly meant for us.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Amy Levin has served as rabbi of the Masorti (Conservative) Family Congregation of Beit Ha-Kerem, Jerusalem, since September 1995. She is one of the first women to study in the rabbinical school of the Masorti/Conservative Seminary of Judaic Studies in Jerusalem. In addition to her congregational work, Amy teaches Talmud at Hebrew Union College's new Liberal Yeshiva -- a program designed to introduce English speakers to the basic texts and concepts of the Jewish tradition. Amy made aliyah in 1981 and is the mother of two wonderful teenagers.