By Howard Feldman
Imagine a regular morning on the building site of the Tower of Babel.
The foreman calls a meeting. Everyone agrees that the tower is coming along beautifully. Everyone agrees that it needs to be taller. Nobody asks about the budget, the deadline or whether anyone has considered stairs.
The minutes record another unanimous decision. The man who had a question about the foundations hesitates, but then decides to save it for another day. He has a family to feed.
By lunchtime, they are several rows higher. The architect is pleased. The foreman is pleased. The workers have learnt to look pleased.
From a distance, it must have looked magnificent and unified.
I have always been drawn to this story, tucked towards the end of this week’s Torah portion. Noah gets most of the attention, with his ark and animals and considerable catering responsibilities.
But Babel feels familiar. Like an ancient story with a futuristic echo.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reads its single language as something imposed: an empire forcing different peoples to surrender their languages and identities. What looks like agreement conceals the suppression of difference.
Perhaps that helps explain the challenge to God. We tend to picture people building high enough to confront Him. But what if their rebellion was already happening at ground level? God created human diversity, and they were determined to eliminate it.
There is considerable power in deciding which words everyone else must use. Control the vocabulary, and you can narrow what people feel permitted to say, and which questions they dare to ask.
We are familiar with this strategy.
“Genocide.” “Apartheid.” “Holocaust.”
These words carry histories of immense suffering. They demand care, evidence and an understanding of what makes each distinct. Yet in some conversations, accepting their application to Israel has become an entrance requirement. The approved vocabulary gets you through the gate at Babel.
Question it, and you will find yourself on the outside.
We know how the pressure works. Before posting something, you think about who might screenshot it. Before challenging a claim at a work dinner, you calculate whether you have the energy. You consider whether expressing a view might cost you an invitation, a friendship or business.
Sometimes you say it anyway. Sometimes you decide to have another potato.
Eventually, you have eaten considerably more than you intended and said considerably less.
For many Jews, these calculations have become painfully familiar. Can we speak about Israel, our fears or something that has hurt us without first passing a test set by someone else? We begin editing ourselves before anyone asks us to. The conversation continues, and our silence is mistaken for agreement.
That is why I keep thinking about my imaginary man with the question about Babel’s foundations. He might have been wrong. But someone should still have heard him.
I think about that responsibility at Chai. We have microphones, an audience and the enormous privilege of being part of people’s days. We need to check facts, challenge claims and correct our mistakes. That includes examining language that has become so widely repeated that people have stopped questioning it.
It also means hearing challenges to our own assumptions. We cannot object to someone else’s compulsory vocabulary and then hand out our own at the studio door.
Babel’s builders feared being scattered. Yet their attempt to force everyone into sameness ended with the community dispersed and the building abandoned.
At Chai, we want people to feel they belong even when they disagree. That takes patience, confidence and a willingness to hear the question that holds up the meeting.
I hope the man worried about the foundations would feel comfortable calling us out.
I would rather he interrupted my morning than spent another day watching us build something he believed was unsafe.