The people spoke one language and were like “one nation.” And that was trouble, somehow. That is the story of the Tower of Bavel, in the end of this week’s parsha, parashat Noah. 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 out of 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 even 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 ahavaha, love. Before the Shma, we speak of God’s love for us in the paragraph beginning Ahavah Rabbah, “a great love have You loved us,” and afterwards, we speak of our love for God, ve’ahavta, “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 the same truth. God’s unity is manifest in a thousand colors and our ability to step out of ourselves to love each one.
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Wonderful, beautiful. Made my day.
ReplyDeleteIt made me wonder about two things. First, love of others seems to require exactly the appreciation of differences you describe. But love of G-d seems different because He is One, and it is this Unity we are commanded to "love." Does your definition apply to this love to?
Also, it seems to me that Avraham's hesed is hierarchical; he is always giving to those in need. (It seems especially true that he wasn't able to see anything unique about Sarah until G-d told him to.) I think that Yaakov and his life, with all the squabbles was where we begin to see this idea of everyone having unique identities and trying to fit them together. Perhaps Avraham is the beginning of the process.
Thanks.