Words Without Borders

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host the Madlik Disruptive Torah Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, as well as a video version on YouTube. This week’s parsha is Parashat Noah. We continue our discussion of division as a seminal force in the creation of the Hebrew Bible. Today, we’ll focus on the creation and division of languages and associated concepts and opinions, and how this linguistic diversity played out in later rabbinic texts. So join us for Words Without Borders.

So, Rabbi Adam, our second debut on YouTube. It’s been a lot of fun exploring this. I have to say that after last week, I put it up on YouTube. One of the things that I found that was fascinating is that people can actually comment on our podcast. And so I had a woman I want to thank, Sarah Richardson. Not only is she following us on the YouTube channel, which you can do.

Adam Mintz [1:21 – 1:22]: Holy cow.

Geoffrey Stern [1:22 – 4:18]: But she had a completely different feminist approach. Bereset Bara elokim “at” Aleph Tov. And I encourage you all to sign in to YouTube. Look for our channel and you can read it there. But it certainly does make this whole endeavor, doing it on YouTube a little bit more exciting. So, as I said in the intro, we are going to continue. We don’t normally continue one Madlik podcast with another, but this was irresistible because as you can see, we have the story of the Tower of Babel. And if it’s about anything, it’s about creating divisions and what those divisions mean in the most important form of communication that we have, which is language. So, we are in Genesis 11, and it says “Everyone on Earth had the same language and the same words.” There was total unity. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. Interesting. It says. So all of a sudden, we have now not only one language, but people are starting to travel. The translation that they give for Kedim is East as in “Yoma, Kedma, Tzophona, v’negba. But Kedim also is kind of an accolade for it’s for creation, as we’ll see in a second. So, this is like moving to the next chapter after Creation. And we’re all pretty familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel. Mankind said, let’s build this tower up into the heavens. And then God in verse 5 came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built. And God said, if as one people with One language for all. This is how they have begun to act. And then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. So, God recognizes עַ֤ם אֶחָד֙ וְשָׂפָ֤ה אַחַת֙. He focuses on the fact that they have one language. The truth is, Rabbi, these were people who were doing their first communal endeavor. And with this wonderful gift that God had given them, whether the gift was language, whether it was just the earth that they were on, they used that power to rebel against God. And almost God is the one, I think, that is bracketing this story with language. The narrator starts by saying everybody had one language. They had yahdut, they had unity. And then this is what they did with it. It’s not clear.

Adam Mintz [4:18 – 4:41]: It says, and this is that nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. It doesn’t have to mean that they rebelled against God. But the minute that you can do anything, then rebelling against God is within your reach all of a sudden.

Geoffrey Stern [4:42 – 6:22]: Yeah. So, I think there’s two things. There’s the assumption that they were up to no good, and there’s the assumption that it’s all because they had one language. You know, maybe they all had the same sandwich in the morning. You could have attributed it to that. But in any case, that’s the purpose of this story. And God in verse 7 says, let us. Same thing that he said when he created man. Not let me, but let us then go down and confound their speech there “so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” I love that. That they will not hear one person. The language of Re’ehu clearly has a sense of a comrade, not simply the other. So, God focuses on language as the channel that they use, the catalyst here. And he creates Babel. It’s not that farfetched to see that there’s a double entendre here between the word Babel and the place Babel. Just as we started Mkedem, they went from one place, they came to another. So, this is a myth in the most basic meaning of the word. You can call it a creation, an origin story. The interesting thing is we are going to be talking about language. So even Onkelos, who is this convert who converted to Judaism and made the first, I would say, approved translation of the Bible into Aramaic. He calls it was.

Adam Mintz [6:22 – 6:24]: It was Sefaria 2000 years ago.

Geoffrey Stern [6:25 – 8:11]: It definitely was, he says, when they traveled from the east and then in parentheses at the beginning. So, there is a double entendre here. It’s not only a journey in space, but it’s also a journey in the chronology of the world, and it’s a continuation of the story of creation. So, we are talking now about translation. I just mentioned a second ago that Onkelos made the translation. But, Rabbi, when we try to explain things one to the other, we can use different words in our own language, synonyms, or we can use other languages. It’s the most basic form of really understanding here. And certainly, translation is not altogether bad, as we’ll see. So that’s kind of what we’re going to be looking at again this week, where something is kind of maybe pigeonholed and targeted as evil, but ultimately both in our tradition as Jews, but also as the Western tradition, the universal tradition of knowledge and the growth of knowledge. Multiple languages are not a bad thing. And that’s kind of interesting that here we are again looking at what we did last week. We were talking about the creation of male and female, the separation from the Garden of Eden, which was a creation myth in the sense that it created who we are today. We wouldn’t understand who we are today without death. And the story of leaving Eden explains death to us. We wouldn’t understand how we are today without having the ability to procreate male and female. You about to say something, Rabbi?

Adam Mintz [8:12 – 8:18]: You didn’t read this gemara in megillah 3A. You say having different languages is good.

Adam Mintz [8:19 – 8:45]: But look at this story the Gemara relates to. When Yonatan Ben Uziel wrote his translation, Eretz Yisrael quaked over an area of 400 Parsa by 400 Parsa, and a divine voice emerged and said, who is this who has revealed my secrets to mankind? There is this idea that, you know, translations and other languages are dangerous because, you know other people are going to know our secrets.

Geoffrey Stern [8:45 – 9:01]: Interesting. You took it as other people are going to know our secrets. I took it in a different way. I took it as translation is a key to insight. It reveals the secrets just like that first Onkelos that we started today.

Adam Mintz [9:01 – 9:12]: So why did it quake? You think it quaked for good reason? I think it quaked because it was angry. Good. That’s why we learned Gemara, because there are different ways to understand it. That’s fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [9:12 – 13:01]: And in typical Gemara fashion, I think we’re both right, because I think what it shows is that translation is, at the end of the day, very powerful. So if we go on to look at Rashi’s commentary on the verses that we just read when it says am echad, that they were one people, they possess all the advantage of being one People and having one language common to all of them. And this is what they begin to do. Almost in one of the midrashim, it compares the people who built the Tower of Babel. They compared it to Adam, who used God, gave him this beautiful gift of Eve, and he used it. He said to God, she made me do it here too. They used language, but again, it’s this sense of they used unity and language against me. The next Rashi says that THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND. One asks for a brick and the other brings him lime. The former therefore attacks him and splits open his brains. So, by mixing up their languages, God wanted to disrupt all communication and not enable mankind to create something like the Tower of Babel. I think that’s kind of the dialectic that we’re in today, because the truth is that language is also an amazing tool. Having different languages is having an amazing tool to build. But as you say, the earth quaked. So, it’s a really fascinating question that is raised. But I really started by talking about creation myths. And you have to say to yourself, rabbi, I understand the story of the Gan Eden, because without Gan Eden, we wouldn’t understand death. You know, the Christians call it original sin. But the point is it had to explain to us where we are today. It’s fascinating to me that the next myth, the next narrative, the next story that the Torah felt compelled to introduce was about language. That, too, is absolutely fascinating, but not so much because it is a book. It’s a book that transmits through language. But I have up on the Sefaria notes now a famous, famous guideline that Ramban passes on to us. This concept of maasei avot Siman L’banim. The stories of the patriarchs are a sign for their children. I would argue the correct translation would be the stories of the foundational myths or foundational stories are a siman, are a sign, are a metaphor, are creating a reality for us. And that’s truly what we have here. For the story of the Tower of Babel. In modern language, it’s called an etiological story. It’s a story that comes to explain a culture or a norm. And Cassuto, who I’m now so happy to see is on Sefaria, says literally that. That this story is here to explain different languages, different peoples, different nations. So, I think we have to recognize how important that is for the biblical text. That just as it was important to explain to us how the world came to be, the next thing it does is explain how languages came to be, how countries came to be. How divisions came to be. I think that’s just from a point of view of what the sensitivity was, is just fascinating.

Adam Mintz [13:01 – 13:58]: Yeah, I mean, this is an amazing Cassuto. You want to read. The second paragraph in the Cassuto just tells you about these ideological myths. He says an etiological myth or an etiological story is a story that comes to explain a custom, tradition, social norm, or other natural or social phenomenon. In the Book of Genesis, there are many etiological mythology, such as the shape of the snake, which is explained as a punishment imposed on it by God for tempting Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of Knowledge. The existence of different languages explained through the story of the Tower of Babel and the rainbow following the flood is a divine sign that there will not be another flood. Right? I mean, everything is an etiological story in the book of. In these first two parshios, everything that happens is an introduction of that phenomenon into the world. Cain kills Abel, murder is introduced there.

Geoffrey Stern [13:58 – 19:24]: And I don’t think anyone should hear us wrong. Calling something a myth doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Calling something a myth means that whether it happened or not, there is a lesson here. The author is trying to give us a way to explain, at the end of the day, what does religion. Its most important tool is to explain our reality to us. And I think that’s exactly what this story does. And it’s just again fascinating to me that there was a focus on language. Now, to show you how important the focus on language is, earlier in our parasha, we already have this question of languages come up. So, whoever the author of our work needed to answer this one way or the other. In 10 it says, these are the lines of Shem, Cham and Yafet. These were the children of Noah. And it says in 10:4, the descendants of Yavan, Elisha, Tarshish and Kittim and the Dodanim, it says, and from these maritime nations branched out. These are the descendants of Yaphet by their lands, each with its language, their clans and their nations. So, this is almost independent of the story of Babel. It is already talking about different peoples, different lands and different languages. In this case, it’s talking about the Greeks and it’s talking about the Greek sailors who sailed to different islands. מֵ֠אֵ֠לֶּה נִפְרְד֞וּ אִיֵּ֤י הַגּוֹיִם֙ בְּאַרְצֹתָ֔ם אִ֖ישׁ לִלְשֹׁנ֑וֹ לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֖ם בְּגוֹיֵהֶֽם. So, my argument is that the tower of Babel was only one approach of explaining languages. The other approach was sea fearing people. If you notice when we started the parsha today, it already talked about travel and we mentioned it. There’s travel and there’s language. And the texts that we are dealing with were out to explain it. Sometimes, as you know, Rabbi at Madlik, we love to bring our discussion up to date and we love to talk about modern Hebrew. There are two Hebrew words that come to play here because what I didn’t show when we talked about Cassuto is he starts by saying that maasei Dor Haflaga. We always think of the Dor Hamabul, which is the generation of the flood. That’s the first part of our story. What the Tower of Babel is called is the Dor Haplagah, the dor, the generation of the disbursements, right out of lst week’s discussion. And so, the word palga in modern Hebrew can mean two interesting things. It can mean miflaga. We’re about to have elections next week. Please God, we should soon have in Israel. But the word for mitlaga, for a political party, came from the same word as the generation of the disbursement of divisions. And the other word, which is fascinating is to sail. La’flig. And I bring that up here because we’re talking about the Greek states that were created by sailing. So, it’s this confluence of generations being created, people traveling, and it all created for the need to explain the different languages that we have. So, I want to go fast forward now into Jewish tradition and into rabbinic tradition, because my argument today, Rabbi, is going to be that in the rabbinic tradition, having multiple languages was actually seen as something that was critical to our story. So, the first thing that we’re going to talk about is this shivim lashanot, this sense from the rabbinic mind that there were 70 languages. Now, we’re not going to go ahead and count all the languages, see how they came up with this number. But the truth is they had a tradition that there were 70 languages. And they had a further tradition that when God gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, he spoke it miraculously in 70 languages. So, we have the school of Rabbi Ishmael taught with regard to the verse, Behold is my word not like fire, declares the Lord. And like a hammer that shatters a rock. From this we learnt the school of Rabbi Yishmael. Just as this hammer breaks a stone into several fragments, so too each and every utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be he, was divided into 70 languages. So, and I think, Rabbi, part of this speaks to what you brought up before, that we wanted to make sure, that the nations of the world all understood it, all had access to it. But certainly, it was considered a miraculous part of God and part of the revelation at Sinai. And that speaks to the power of translation.

Adam Mintz [19:24 – 19:25]: Sure does.

Adam Mintz [19:27 – 20:03]: Just as the hammer breaks the stone into several fragments, if you break a stone, the fragments are part of the original stone. So too, the different languages are part of God’s Torah. That’s the image. That’s the important thing, that it’s not different. You know, that’s what you think. It’s impossible. We speak English and the Italians speak Italian and the Chinese speak Mandarin. How can we be saying the same thing? And the answer is that we can all be saying the same thing. And when it comes to religion, it’s all part of the tote.

Geoffrey Stern [20:03 – 22:28]: I totally agree. I once heard a lecture at Hadar, actually, and the focus was on this concept that what God said at Mount Sinai, everybody saw together, everybody heard together. And this rabbi said, you know, if you did a Google search and you came up with one answer, you would say, there’s something wrong with Google today. It’s broken. And so, I think what you say is true, but the other side of it is that there is this notion of that shattering rock into many thousands, infinite numbers of pieces, and that the languages, while they all translate the same thing, maybe they have a different nuance. Maybe, you know, we all talk about lost in translation. Every time you translate something, it becomes something slightly different. And I would say richer. So, the way I read these rabbinic traditions is in fact, that the translations add to the richness of the experience that was. Had a variation on the rabbinic text we had a second ago. It says all the people were seeing the voices. וְכָל הָעָם רֹאִים אֶת הַקּוֹלֹת. It doesn’t say voice, it says voices. Rabbi Yochanan said the voice would emerge and divide into 70 voices for 70 languages so that all the nations could understand that we’ve already said. And then it goes further. Come and see how the voice would emerge to each one of Israel, each and every one, in accordance with his capability. The elderly according to their capability. The young men according to theirs, children according to theirs, nursing babies according to their capability. Women according to them, and Moses too, according to that. So now we’re really seeing that the power of the same word to mean different things to different people. This is a pedagogic lesson about the richness of the Torah and the ability that it has within it. But again, I would argue it’s an absolute embracing of the multiplicity of languages. Not only different languages, but different nuances within the same language. It really is a celebration, I would say.

Adam Mintz [22:28 – 23:08]: That’s nice. I mean, that’s a good word, celebration. Not only is it good, but we actually celebrate the fact that God’s Torah can be split into different languages. Everybody can understand it exactly where they are. By the way, the word the 70 is just one of those round numbers. 70 could be a thousand, right? Did they. I think they once said, one of the mayoral candidates once said that in Queens there are 180 different languages spoken or something like that, so. Or 180 different dialects. So anyway, so, you know, there are a lot of different languages out there.

Geoffrey Stern [23:08 – 25:33]: It is. But I think we’re going to find that, and you know, Rabbi, I am not a numerologist, but we are going to find that 70s happen to be associated with this multiplicity of language, multiplicity of ideas and multiplicity of opinions. So, we’re going to pick up in that in a second. But I want to just add one more level to this multiplicity that we’re seeing here. We’ve seen it in translation to everyone, every inhabitant of the world. We’ve seen it in translation to every age group. And now we see not only in Shemot Rabba, it says not only did all the prophets receive their prophecy from Sinai, but all the sages who arise in each and every generation. Each one received their wisdom from Sinai. The idea was it went into the future as well. Because, Rabbi, languages changes, their language grows. Language takes on baggage and provides new insight. So again, language became a channel. It became a pathway for assuring that this tradition stayed dynamic and grew. And so, it’s really on every level, it’s horizontal, vertical, and into the future. But in Bamidbar Rabba, it adds something new to shivim leshonot. So, note there, it’s talking about the different utensils that were used in the temple, and one of them had 70 shekels worth. Why? Just as the numerical value of wine is 70, thus there are 70 aspects to the Torah. So again, I don’t think it’s by coincidence, Rabbi, that they use the same word, 70, when they talk about 70 languages and 70 panim. I love this Shivim Panim. Panim is a face. It’s also an angle that again, it’s just the nuance of language, but the nuance of transmission and of growth. There was a celebration of the diversity. What in the Tower of Babel could be said would be chaos, human chaos, social chaos. Here it’s not. Here it’s celebrated.

Adam Mintz [25:33 – 25:48]: Yeah, no, I think that’s a real. That’s a really important thing. And that is the idea that we’re celebrating these things. 70 multiplicity could be chaos, but instead it’s celebration.

Geoffrey Stern [25:50 – 28:51]: And clearly that’s the way the rabbis took it. I quote a rabbi from the 17th century, 18th century, who talks about not only the permission that we have, but I would say, the obligation that we have to reinterpret texts. And what he says is that. And again, he uses this concept of shivim panim l’Torah. He says that God is granted permission to interpret the meaning of the verses. You know, last week we talked about the Perushim, the Pharisees, as people that divided. We neglected to say another meaning for perushim is people who interpret texts, the word le pharesh. And so here too, it’s a way of splitting texts, of splitting meanings. Lehevin davar mitock d’avar, as we talked about last week. But here we’re talking about it on a textual level. And I just again find that to be totally fascinating. I think that one of the other, I think, implications of what we’re talking about today, where we’re saying that actually, while the story of Babel might have explained how language came to be, it was the fact that we have a multiplicity of languages is actually celebrated. This also has to do with opinions that it’s important in the Talmud, have a minority opinion, because you never know when that minority opinion will be useful. And so, it asks, why do they record their opinion of a single person among the many, even when the halacha goes after the many? And again, it says, looking towards the future, because that single opinion can be set aside like the odd man out, like the stone that was rejected by the builders, and then it can find its day. You know, we talk. And here we get to 70 again, Rabbi. The Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was also 70. And again, I think I said when we started that we were going to be talking about language, we were going to be talking about concepts, but we will also be talking about opinions. And if the Sanhedrin, as the main court, is anything, it was the ultimate arbiter of opinions. And there is this amazing concept, again, that goes for the singular opinion and its power, that if in a capital punishment case, you have unanimity, where everybody talks the same language, where everybody sees things identically you cannot have a conviction. So again, this too is a celebration of that lack of unanimity in language indecisions. It’s just, it’s kind of remarkable. It kind of pulls together many thoughts that we discuss at Madlik.

Adam Mintz [28:51 – 29:05]: Now, you know that There are also 70 nations on Sukkos. They say the number of sacrifices is 70 because the sacrifices were given for all of the 70 nations.

Geoffrey Stern [29:05 – 32:26]: And I think that probably goes hand in hand with languages because the idea was 70 people. You were determined, you were to determine. But you know, even if you continue in the same famous Talmud that says that if you have a conviction with unanimity of all seventy, it’s not a good conviction. Minutes later, Rabbi Yochanan says, they place the great Sanhedrin only men of high stature, of wisdom and of pleasant appearance and of suitable age so that they will be respected. And they must also be masters of sorcery. They know the nature of sorcery. So, anthropologists, if you will, they must know all 70 languages in order that the Sanhedrin will not need to hear testimony from the mouth of a translator. Here we get introduced to the word meturgaman. But again, knowing many languages was a sign of power and wisdom. In the rabbinic times. There are kings who identified as kings because, as in the case of Pharaoh knew every one of the languages. And Joseph says maybe he didn’t know Hebrew. Knowing languages was power. It was power. It was the power of understanding and control. And finally, we could not end a discussion of a translation if we didn’t quote the famous word of saying of Hayim Nachman Bialik, which is תרגום דומה לנשיקה מבעד לצעיף. That translation is similar to kissing through a veil. So, you have both. The fact that translation is ultimate power, but also a translation can be limiting. And I think the rabbis understood it all. Interesting. If we’re going to go to the last 70, it’ll be the Septuagint. The Septuagint in Greek is called 70. That’s what it you put LXX and you know you’re talking about the Septuagint. So here is this famous story. We already talked about the Targum Yonatan and Targum Onkolos, which were Aramaic translations that were sanctioned by the rabbis. But the Greek translation was also sanctioned by the rabbis. And here they put them into 72 rooms. Because I think what they did was they took a fixed amount, 6 people from every tribe, was it. But in any case, the Sanhedrin is also 70. Maybe it’s 72 there is this ongoing concept of to get both unanimity but also diverse opinion. You go to multiplicity of languages and you go to translation, and you go to this. This number 70. So, I think it’s kind of fascinating, especially if you think of Babylonia and the Babylonian Talmud, which was written in a foreign language, which is the source of all of rabbinic wisdom. There’s so much embrace and also, I guess, concern with our translation, that the story for Jews, which are textual people of Babel, is particularly powerful.

Adam Mintz [32:26 – 32:41]: This is great. Now we go back to Cassuto, who says this is an etiological

story. It’s an etiological story. And you’ve just traced how that number 70 and how that idea of language has really shaped so much of Jewish tradition. Tradition.

Geoffrey Stern [32:42 – 33:47]: But I think it’s. It’s again, getting back to the choice of the need to have such a myth so early in the Torah speaks also to us as a people that because we are a people that value transmission of texts, the explanation of texts, the understanding of text, who ultimately understand the importance of language, that this would have been one of our fundamental seminal myths that would come in the second chapter. And I think that speaks a lot to the fact that even in the earliest parts of Genesis, and this really speaks to what we were talking about last week. Even in the earliest part of Genesis, you can see the Sherashim. You can see the roots of everything that follows of us as a people, as us as a tradition. That, to me, is as fascinating as long as we’re talking about origin myths and.

Adam Mintz [33:47 – 33:58]: Fantastic. Really fantastic. Okay, Yasher koach. Thank you, everybody. We look forward to seeing you next week when we talk about Avram and Lech Lecha. Thank you, Geoffrey.

Geoffrey Stern [33:58 – 33:58]: We’ll see you then.