Sefer Bereishit Parshat Noach: On the Value of Diversity

Parshat Noach is of course known for the story of Noah and the flood—but it later contains another of the most famous biblical stories, the Migdal Bavel, the Tower of Babel. Though it consists of only nine verses, the power of this story has caused it to be remembered for thousands of years.

After the flood, when the world repopulates, humanity is able to exist seemingly in peace. The people of the world all speak one language, and they all migrate to one valley, in the Land of Shinar. There, they say: ¹

Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world. ²

On its surface, this doesn’t seem so bad—the whole world working together with one common purpose. That sounds like a utopia, and the antithesis of so many of the challenges we face in our fractured and divided world today. A culture where everyone understands one another? That sounds amazing.

God, however, upon seeing the Migdal Bavel, takes issue and says (to the angels, presumably):

If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech. ³

Here we learn that the Torah values a certain diversity among humanity. If everyone thinks and acts in the exact same way, we risk limiting our individual and collective opportunities to contribute to the world, and perhaps worse, we run the danger of using the extraordinary powers that come with being human for improper purposes.

In social psychology, this is known as “groupthink,” which Psychology Today defines as, “a phenomenon that occurs when a group of well-intentioned people makes irrational or non-optimal decisions spurred by the urge to conform or the belief that dissent is impossible.” An article by Psychology Today explains, “The problematic or premature consensus that is characteristic of groupthink may be fueled by a particular agenda—or it may be due to group members valuing harmony and coherence above critical thought.” ⁴

The people in the Tower of Babel narrative could have used their resources and faculties to do amazing and necessary things. They could have eradicated poverty, built hospitals to care for the sick, established schools to expand the potential of all children, constructed places of prayer to express gratitude to God, or founded senior-living centers to care for those who need it. Instead, they seem to have used their unity to display power and demonstrate dominance.

To simply build a tower to show power and dominance is perhaps the most vain of pursuits. The tower was entirely purposeless except to build themselves up and flex their own muscles.

So what do we make of this story, which isn’t entirely pleasant and, with the dispersal of the human race, doesn’t have a satisfying ending?

One interpretation is that the people do not live up to the Divine ideal of humanity, of people working in concert with God’s will. Much like in the Garden of Eden, the people were given a chance to live in near-optimal circumstances, yet they failed and were punished for doing so.

We can see the parallels in our society today. How much do we use our shared capabilities only to build higher towers of our own power, to enrich ourselves, and express dominance? How much do we measure our national success not in alleviation of suffering, but in GDP? Might our society be punished for celebrating reckless growth and unchecked power?

Believing the earth is ours to dominate, as we are bidden in Genesis, ⁵ we have corrupted our mission. Rather than achieving a global redemption, we perpetuate a world of war, man-made climate disasters, and oppression of workers. Rather than worshipping God, we worship growth.

A different read of the Migdal Bavel narrative, however, is to see it as saying that human sameness is not the ideal. Put another way, unity and sameness are not one and the same. The challenge is to on one hand be united, while on the other respecting our differences and allowing room for all views and pathways to enhance the world. Perhaps, in Genesis chapter 11, we are seeing a necessary maturation of humanity, from a simple-minded and unwise population to a sophisticated and diverse spread-out family.

Maybe God does not want sameness, but rather for humanity to flourish through respect and cooperation as we navigate our many differences, be they religious, linguistic, or cultural. Our work of repairing the world will need a diverse and adaptable array of ideas, ones that are local and specific. Additionally, we know from this parshah and the previous one that humans are created in the image of God. It seems right that God’s presence in the world would seek to flourish through a vast variety of manifestations. ⁶

So far in the Torah, we’ve seen a major transformation in humanity’s development. Before the flood, God was angered by every person being only for themself. By the Tower of Babel, we’d become hyper-collaborative, and yet we still didn’t have the right values. We had not yet found that proper, necessary balance.

We can see the resonance of one of Hillel’s most popular quotes in Pirkei Avot:

If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? ⁷

Hillel’s statement in the Mishnah immediately preceding it, though, speaks to our story just as much:

He [Hillel] also used to say: One who makes his name great causes his name to be destroyed. ⁸

And so, God in Genesis wanted us to proceed to the next level of progress, in which we honor human equality and commonality, seeing ourselves in others and others in ourselves, while also upholding human uniqueness, difference, and variety. Here we are charged to hold in tension universalism and particularism.

We must always check ourselves to see which end of the pendulum we might be swinging too forcefully toward. Today, there is a strong inclination to become too absorbed in ourselves. Yes, with unprecedented wealth we’re capable of doing immense good. Indeed, many do just that and give of their time and resources to just causes and to other individuals in need. At the same time, movement-building for justice and community-building for spirituality have become increasingly difficult.

Fixing that does not mean checking our particularities at the door, but it does mean coming together with both like-minded people and those who may think differently. And, for many, that is very difficult. Some struggle with honoring difference, and some struggle with being a part of a collective, and some struggle with both.

If we work together, though, within the parameters of our particular talents and purposes, rather than building a self-glorifying tower, we can draw heaven and Godliness down to earth—not to escape society toward the heavens, as the tower-builders tried to do, but to repair and enhance our earthly existence.

Sources:

It is not clear from the text who this group is comprised of, as it simply states, “They said, come let us…” It is equally unclear precisely when this episode transpired, all of which is the subject of much debate, beyond the scope of this essay.
Genesis 11:4
Genesis 11:6-7
Psychology Today, “Groupthink” (accessed 2022)
Genesis 1:28
Indeed, the very idea of diversity being connected to our being created in the image of God is manifest in the many names of God used in the Torah, each representing a different trait and characteristic of God.
Pirkei Avot 1:14
Pirkei Avot 1:13