The people of the Tower of Bavel spoke one language and were like “one nation.” And that was trouble, somehow. What is wrong with unity?
Every day we say in the Shma that God is One. We affirm our faith in the ultimate unity of the divine and of all of creation. We are part of God’s One-ness in some way, and it often seems that the goal of religious practice is to dissolve the boundaries between self and other and between self and Other. So what was wrong with the Tower of Bavel?
The kind of unity they were engaged in was a unity of sameness. The kind that we strive for is a unity built out of love. Love does not require sameness. Indeed, it thrives on difference, as the popular saying, “Opposites attract” indicates. Love celebrates difference, particularity; when we love someone, what we love is all those crazy (and sometimes annoying) little quirks that make them unique. Love is the bridge across difference.
God didn’t want a world of automatons working together because they naturally had no differences, naturally agreed with each other. He wanted a world where people learned to work together and connect with each other across difference. And the most essential tool for that purpose is love.
That’s why Avraham, the star of next week’s parsha, is known for the attribute of hesed, loving-kindness. Olam Hesed Yibaneh. The world will be built out of hesed, out of loving-kindness, not out of the the bricks of a Tower built by sameness.
The Shma, too, makes this point clear. Before and after we say that God is one, that our goal is to feel the unity that exists in this universe, we speak of ahavah, love. Before the Shma — “a great love have You loved us,” and “You should love God with all your might, . . .” The unity of the Shma is built out of a love that helps us bridge the enormous chasm between ourselves and heaven.
We are not the same, and the goal never was for us to be the same. Looking out the window this time of year, the leaves seem to speak this truth; God’s unity is manifest in a thousand colors and in our ability to step out of ourselves to love each one.
Photo by Taryn Elliott from Pexels
