The Problem with Universal Language
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
There is a historical problem that presents at the end of Parshat Noach. The whole world has been destroyed in the flood. All human beings on earth at the time live together and are descendants of Noah and his sons. And yet, here we are, living in all corners of the earth, speaking every different language under the sun. Therein lies the problem – if we all descended from the same person how did we all end up in different places and speaking different languages? Enter Parshat Noach and the 11th chapter of Genesis, in which a tower is built in Babylon.
It tells of an attempt by humanity to build a tower whose top is in the sky. This tower appears to be an act of rebellion of some sort and so God disperses them and gives them languages that make them less intelligible to one another and thereby less united. Here is the answer to our problem – the dispersion of humans all over the earth and the multiplicity of languages is explained as the result, some might say punishment, of the building of the Tower of Babylon.[i]
Which is interesting, and helpful. Except for this – what’s so bad about having one language and people in one place? Many would argue that not only is there nothing bad about it but that it is in fact an ideal towards which we should strive.
I want to tell you about one such person. His name was Alan Haberman and he died earlier this year. He had a Jewish burial before his family sat Shiva for him in Natick Massachusetts. You probably never heard of him, he was a supermarket executive and a member of the Grocery Manufacturers of America. But the reason he matters to you and to me is that he is responsible for the Universal Product Code or UPC, the bar code. Those black and white lines that mark just about every aspect of modern life.
Alan Haberman led the industry committee that in 1973 chose the bar code and then cajoled manufacturers, retailers and the public to accept what was then a strange new symbol. Not even forty years later that strange symbol has lived up to the “universal” part of its name. It is on books and bananas, bus tickets and babies, bibles and bread.
Not since the time of Noah has there been such a universal language that could be expressed and understood in every corner of the world. Perhaps not surprisingly, that is how Mr. Haberman saw his innovation as well. “Go back to Genesis and read about the creation,” he said, “God says I will call the night ‘night’ and I will call the heavens ‘heaven’. Naming was important. Then the Tower of Babel cam along and messed everything up. In effect, the UPC has put everything back into one language, a kind of Esperanto that works for everyone.” [ii]
It’s interesting that Haberman mentions Esperanto, that language created in the late 1800’s by another Jewish man, Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof, an ophthalmologist from Bialystok, as an attempt to create connection and understanding between people of different countries.
I hate to give more fodder to the conspiracy theorists out there but really, what is it about the Jewish people and this notion of universal language? It’s true that the Tower of Babylon came at a time before there was such a thing as Jewish people, but clearly this sense of akhdut of unity through language emerges as a theme.
Throughout much of history our distinctiveness as a people has been to our disadvantage. From the time of the Book of Esther in the third or fourth century before the Common Era our difference was held against us. “yeshno am mefuzar u’meforad bein ha amim.” Haman tells King Achashverosh, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people.”[iii]
Read that and we can understand why the Alan Habermans, and Ludwig Zamenhofs and people of Shinar tried so hard to create and maintain a universal language. Even the Rabbis of the generations had to look hard to determine why God objected to strenuously to the builders of Babylon that He confounded their speech and scattered them over the face of the earth.
Most say that it had nothing at all to do with universal language. One suggests that it is part of a larger polemic in Genesis against the city, God cannot be found in urban areas (Jonathan Sacks). Those of us who live or have lived in cities might smile ironically at that one. Another that the people mastered new technology of building but failed to use it to create housing for the poor, sick and aging of their own community. (Benno Jacob) and still another who thinks that the building became a competition for fame and fortune rather than cooperation for the good of the whole human community. (Abarbanel)
It’s interesting that the majority of our predecessors chose not to deal with the issue of language. It is hard to understand how language figures into the whole episode as anything other than a symbol. The desire for a unified language symbolizes the desire for a centralized, uniform and unified society.
But I am unsatisfied with that answer. Where is the peshat? Where is the plain meaning of the text? Perhaps in the language itself. Look at the text. Safah achat, u devarim akhadim. Not only did they have one language, but they also had devarim akhadim – one discourse, one ideology, one consensus one of the commentators (Radak) says.
To have one opinion, one ideology, one consensus subverts truth. Subverts multiple truths. We are part of a tradition which says that debate, dissension, and disagreement when not done to be selfish or self serving is part of the highest good.
There is a wonderful story told about a rabbi of the previous century. Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik. When a central rabbinic policy making council - think of the Baltimore Board of Rabbis with no women and East European accents - was being formed, he chose not to join. He was asked why he had made this decision, and he replied, “When they introduced electricity into Brisk, it was amazing. We did away with the lamps, which were messy and costly, and our entire town is now lit by cheap, clean electricity. There is only one problem. In the past, when one person's lamp went out, the others remained lit, and there was light throughout Brisk. Now, however, when the generator goes out, the entire town is cast into darkness."[iv]
There is a cost for having one language and one consensus. As Jews we really should know that better than any. We come from a tradition that as a whole, values dissenting and minority opinions and preserves them on the page of our tradition. Our unity is not threatened by difference, not in language, not in color, not in denomination, not in gender, or in orientation.
[i] Richard Elliot Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, P.36
[ii] NYTimes obituary June 15, 2011
[iii] Esther 3:8
[iv] Rabbi Dov Linzer, Unity or Uniformity,
