Tower of Bavel and Music

[rhu]

[Adapted from a d'var Torah that I gave at the Zamir shabbaton 6 years ago.]

"And it was, the whole earth had one language and one vocabulary." ("Vay'hi khol haaretz safah echat ud'varim achadim (Br. 11:1)) -- These, the opening words of the last aliyah this Shabbat. The people decide "nivneh lanu ir, umigdal v'rosho vashamayim; let us build a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens." God decides this is a danger, and solves the problem by fragmenting their language and scattering the peoples.

We're so accustomed to this story, which most of us learned as children, that we don't even question whether the response was appropriate. Why did God choose to frustrate the builders of Migdal Bavel by fragmenting their languages? What a strange solution to an engineering problem! A more direct approach might be to make the rocks heavy, or slippery, or to have earthquake after earthquake swallow the structure. Perhaps after several attempts to erect their tower, the people would get the idea and give up.

For that matter, why did God perceive Migdal Bavel as a threat? "Migdal v'rosho vashamayim" -- a tower with its head in the heavens -- no matter how long they built, no matter how high the tower, we know that they couldn't have actually achieved physical entry into heaven. So, what's really going on here?

We might get a better grasp on the question if we examine the narrative backwards. This passage explains why different peoples speak different languages. The Tower is not the central feature here, it's the "macguffin" of the story, the symptom or manifestation of the *real* conflict. The opening verse is not merely providing historical context, it's the problem statement: "And it was, the whole earth had one language."

Rashi explains that the one language that everyone spoke before this incident was "Lashon Kodesh," the holy tongue, Hebrew. And we can see now that, because the entire world spoke lashon kodesh, they presumed an unwarranted familiarity with Hashem, a brazenness symbolized by the "Tower with its head in the heavens." Therefore the appropriate response was to scatter their language, an act by which God established a distance between God's self and the people.

Music has the power to close that gap. At the very end of sefer Tehillim, after the Psalmist urges us to praise God with every kind of musical instrument, he concludes the book with "Let everything that breathes praise God." On this phrase, "Kol haneshama tehallel Kah", the commentator Ibn Ezra cites Rabbi Shlomo haSfaradi: "This alludes to the neshama ha-elyonah, which is in the heavens." The act of praising God through music elevates the spirit and brings it closer to God, closing the distance that God introduced at Migdal Bavel. It is an act of qorban, the term used for the sacrifices in the Temple, but a word that literally means "that which draws closer."

Within our own community, we sometimes suffer a similar sort of fragmentation to the dispersion at Bavel. Jews, who have a uniquely intimate relationship with God, divide ourselves into "denominations" that both literally and figuratively speak different languages in prayer. Some of us are uncomfortable with an all-Hebrew service that explicitly prays for the restoration of the sacrificial offerings; others are equally uncomfortable with a service in the vernacular that omits those paragraphs. But by fragmenting our language, by focusing on what divides us rather than on what unites us, we run the risk of distancing ourselves from God.

Song is a tikkun for that problem. Music can repair the damage that began at Bavel and continues to this day. When we raise our voices together, we also elevate our souls. The music of our breaths is often polyphonic, but we must not let it degenerate to cacaphony. Song should unite, nullifying fragmentation; "Pesukei d'zimrah" should be an oxymoron.

The distance created at Migdal Bavel is diminished by Psalm 150. The danger of factionalization is mitigated by the transformative power of harmonization. Song gives us a means to seek a meaningful relationship with the Divine through the so-called "universal language" of music, the anti-Bavel.

Let us learn to use song and music as a common devotional ground, to try to stand thus before God: like those at Bavel, with a common purpose to experience a bit of Heaven; but unlike those at Bavel, to do so through elevating the spirit and not by storming the gates. May we be moved by the Psalmist's imperative: "Kol haneshamah tehallel Kah; All that has breath, praise God: Halleluyah."

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Very nice.

[cellio]

Nicely done.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

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