Transcript
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My kids love this story. They're
building a tower. A tower that's going
to reach to the heaven. Why?
Why has God got the best place? Why are
we stuck down here and he's up there?
More than that, they still remember the
flood.
We cannot let him have control over us.
We're going to go up there. We're going
to take over. No more destruction. We're
in charge now.
And they got this wonderful unity.
Everybody's joining together. They're
halfway up the half-built tower. One
calls down, "Pass me up a brick. And up
comes the brick. Give me an axe. Up
comes the axe."
And God's watching this and he's saying,
"This is what you're doing with unity.
You're coming to try and defeat me. Me
who gives you everything. Your whole
life just comes from me.
I'm going to change up your language.
Each person's going to speak a different
language. You're not going to understand
each other anymore.
And our sages tell us to what happened
was somebody called down. Pass me up the
brick.
And the person passes up cement. And he
GOES MAD. I ASKED for a brick. You give
me this. And he PUNCHES HIM. PASS ME THE
AXE. HE gives him a shovel. He takes THE
SHOVEL. HE SMASHES THE GUY'S HEAD IN.
This is why this place is called BL. BL
means mixed up, muddled up and and it
becomes part of the English language. A
babble, a babble of voices, a confusion,
an incoherent confusion of voices.
Babylon comes from this. This is where
it comes up. A confused place with all
different voices that nobody really
understands. No coherent path. Our sages
ask a question.
This doesn't make sense.
You've got the generation of the flood.
They weren't trying to destroy God
and yet they're completely wiped out.
And then you have the generation of the
tower of Bavl
and they're trying to fight God and
they're not destroyed. They just have
the language mixed up a bit.
How can that be? And they give a really
deep answer. They explain.
You're right. It looks on the surface as
if the people of the tower are much,
much worse. But God values unity. Yes,
it was unity for the wrong thing. But
unity, peace among people is Hashem's
highest value. It's what he wants from
us more than anything. In the times of
the flood, they were killing each other,
stealing from each other. There was
strife and quarrel.
Nothing was protecting there.
In the times of the tower where there
was unity, the unity itself protected
there.
But I want to ask another question
because there's something that doesn't
make sense in the story that I said at
the beginning.
Okay. So, the guy gave you cement
instead of a brick. He passed you a
shovel instead of an axe. What?
Because he gave you the wrong thing, you
got to smash his head in.
I don't know. Just just use actions to
make your your your your meaning clear
if he doesn't understand you.
And I think this is the answer. Listen
to this.
You see
their unity was unity but it was very
very surface. It was unity based on the
fact that we have a common purpose. We
have a common language but if you take
that away
nah really deep down they don't like
each other. You're different from me.
You're different from me. You're an
alien. You're a foreigner. Nah. I'm not
interested in you. Do you know what real
unity looks like? Real unity looks like
this. I love you. I care about you. Even
when you're so far from perfect.
You're my family. Even when you have
different opinions to me, even [snorts]
when you vote for the wrong politician,
even when you have completely messed up
world views, you're still my family and
I love you. Whatever happens, that's
real unity. We could be speaking
different languages, but we still love
each other. That is what we need to aim
for. That is the real unity that God
wants from us. This week's episode was
sponsored as a merit for Shalmer, a
speedy recovery for Alan Mikl Benbasha.
If you would like to sponsor a future
episode, please send me an
