D'var Torah / Zamir Retreat 5761 / Parshat Noach "Vay'hi khol haaretz safah echat ud'varim achadim" (Br. 11:1) And it was, the whole earth had one language and one vocabulary. -- These, the opening words of the last aliyah tomorrow morning. 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 Himself 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." * A personal note. Recently, I have found it very difficult to pray. It is hard to summon kavannah, the proper mental state of concentration and intent for prayer. I find myself forced to choose between rushing through the words to keep up with the congregation, or taking the time to ruminate on the text, letting the words sink in, grappling with God. For many months, I avoided going to synagogue entirely, because after a session of meaningless prayers and empty words I'd feel disgusted with myself. But during these times, I'd come to Zamir and I'd make music, singing songs like le-Dor va-Dor that praise God, songs like Adonai Roi that affirm faith in God, songs like Sim Shalom that supplicate to God, even songs like Simona Mi-Dimona that affirm the joy of being alive. And it's in those moments of song that I felt that God was still approachable. "Lo bashamayim hi", the Torah is not far off in Heaven, it is here with us, and sometimes it even takes the form of a hemiolah and a bunch of hairpins. * 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 themselves 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. Zamir is a tikkun for that problem. As a chorus that spans all denominations of Judaism, and even crosses into other faiths, our performances and our very existance repair the damage that began at Bavel and continues to this day. When we raise our voices together, we also elevate our souls and those of our audiences. 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. Tonight, I've spoken about the same thing three times: for the world, it is the distance created at Migdal Bavel and diminished by Psalm 150; for the individual, it is the frustration of tefillat kevah and the fruition of shira u'zimrah; for the community, it is the danger of factionalization and the transformative power of harmonization. But at all scales of size and distance, it is the seeking of a meaningful relationship with the Divine through the so-called "universal language" of music, the anti-Bavel. And if Zamir is one step away from divisiveness, this annual Shabbat is a further step in that direction. This service, as many of you have heard me discuss in previous years, seeks a common devotional ground in the music that unites us. We draw on elements from every branch of Judaism, to try for one hour 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. Josh often reminds us that the literal meaning of "conspiracy" is to breathe together. In that spirit, may we be moved by the Psalmist's imperative: "Kol haneshamah tehallel Yah; All that has breath, praise God: Halleluyah."