Maureena’s Torah Reflections
Parashat Noach. Genesis 6:9-11:32
Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city (Gen. 11: 7-8)
This Torah reading is composed of two different sections. The first 77 verses deal with the flood while the following 76 verses refers to the building of the tower. The inhabitants, of “one language and the same word” decided to build a city and a tower that reached heaven, to make a name for themselves, lest they be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
Seeing this, God said, “behold there are one people and they have all one language come let us go down and confuse their language so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth” (Gen. 11:7).
Many interpreters interpret this text as a punishment from God. But not Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an acclaimed scientist and Judaica.
For him this was an action of God for the benefit of humankind. “To have all of one language and one speech, all of humanity a single bloc, without differentiation, and, as a result, without conflicts, where there will be no differences of opinion and where there will be no struggle over different viewpoints and values, is tyranny. One cannot imagine greater tyranny.”
Prepared by Prof. Sr. Maureena Fritz nds
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“Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies.”
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate, No. 4