Parashat Noach: The Same Language, The Same Words

The whole world spoke the same language, the same words (Bereishit 11.1).

Rashi: שפה אחת the same language — The Holy Tongue (Hebrew) (derived from Midrash Tanchuma, Noach 19).

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"Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.”

William Shakespeare: The prologue spoken by rumour to henry iv part two.

When I heard about the concert back in January, I immediately bought tickets.  After all, it’s not every day that one is treated to the sight and sounds of an artist with the musical pedigree of Graham Nash, former member of both The Hollies and of course, Crosby, Stills and Nash.  The icing on the cake being the addition of his friend Peter Asher whom he has known for over six decades.  It was even advertised as ‘Graham Nash - More Evenings of Songs & Stories with Special Guest Peter Asher’.  The location being the auspicious London Palladium and the event was nearly sold-out.

So off we went on the Northern Line from Edgware and made our way to the theatre, braving the rain in the process.  We took our seats and thoroughly enjoyed Peter Asher’s performance which (slightly misquoting the famous advertising slogan) ‘did exactly what it said on the tin’.

We were entreated to light-hearted stories, self-deprecating humour, songs and even the rare opportunity to hear Paul McCartney’s original demo of ‘World Without Love’, the famous number one hit which he had originally sung with his late lamented friend, Gordon Waller.

He completed his set by entreating us to sing the last verse of that song alongside him and the other two accompanying musicians.  Forty-five minutes of pure joy.  He left to a rapturous applause by the audience.

Following the interval, Graham Nash came on and played a couple of songs.  When it came to the third, he introduced it by telling us that his father had fought in the Second World War and this had influenced his decision to write the upcoming song.  He then started to talk about the fact that we now have social media and its connection to current conflicts.  He briefly referred to the Ukraine War (choosing not to mention anything about Putin) and proceeded to talk about Gaza, declaring that he believed that ‘the Israelis were committing genocide against the Palestinians’.  This was greeted by a rapturous clapping following, after stunned silence by boos, including from yours truly.  I turned around to Stephnie and told her that we were leaving.  We left the auditorium and met with a few people in the lobby which I believe were both Jewish and Gentile, all stunned and angry at the spectacle that we had just experienced.  When we spoke with the staff of the Palladium in the entrance hallway, they were shocked and told us that they couldn’t understand why so many people were leaving the theatre, granted that Nash was playing for another hour.

A cursory search for Graham Nash on Google comes up with the following:

Graham Nash is a proponent of peace through his music, activism, and social commentary, which often advocate for peace, social justice, and environmentalism.

That a so-called ‘proponent of peace’ felt the need to espouse an ancient antisemitic blood libel (being cheered on by an enthusiastic audience) is proof-positive to the dangers of what can happen when ‘the whole world speaks the same language, the same words.’  Not in the Plain of Shinar in ancient Mesopotamia (Modern Day Iraq) but in the heart of the West End of London.  5000 km or approximately 3,100 miles away.

The generation which built the tower is descended from the sons of Noach and is known as Dor Haflaga, or the ‘Generation of the Towers’.  Led by the evil King Nimrod, who infamously tried to have Avraham Avinu, the world’s first monotheist and our Founding Father, executed by throwing him into a furnace, led a campaign to ‘build us a city and a tower with its top in the heavens’.  In other words, to dethrone Gd.

Sixty years ago, on Shabbat, 22^nd October 1955, Rabbi Norman Lamm ztl, former President of Yeshiva University delivered a powerful sermon entitled, ‘The Generation of the Tower and a Towering Generation’ and I quote the following edited extract:

In this morning’s Sidra we read of the generation of Noah and the evil lives they lead.  Their punishment, as it is recorded in the Torah, was complete destruction – except for Noah and his family – in the Great Flood.  Following that episode, we read of another generation following in the footsteps of the first.  This is the dor ha’haflagah – the Generation of the Tower.  The people of this generation had evidently failed to learn from the tragic lesson that its predecessors had been taught.  They were a people marked by arrogance and haughtiness.

Remember friends, that the Torah does not describe merely poetic myths.  We have substantial corroboration of that episode from the science of archaeology.  We know that the Mesopotamians of about 3,600-3,800 years ago began to dwell in big cities and in them to build tremendous pagan temples.  These temples were constructed as high towers as a sign of the equality of the builders with the pagan gods they worshipped.  In their writings, some of which we still have, they boast to building into the heavens, even as is recorded in today’s Sidra.  (See Kasuto, Me’Noach ad Avraham, for all this information). 

At the turn of the present century, the very tower of which the Bible speaks was discovered, in ruins, by a German archaeological expedition.  It was clearly an impressive and imposing structure.  These tremendous towers served both to express and inspire these Babylonians to imagine themselves a superior race, a ‘herrenvolk’. Ultimately, the cities and the towers were destroyed and all further construction was frustrated.  If later today you will reread that part of this morning’s portion, you will observe the terrific sarcasm with which the Torah describes the entire episode.  Just one example: the name Bavel (or Babel or Babylon) given to that place by G-d.  This is a sarcastic pun, because the Mesopotamians themselves called their city Babel because in their language the name was derived from the words Bab-Ili, meaning the Gate of the G-d – or in the plural, Bab-Ilani meaning the Gate of the Gods (whence: Babylon).  However, in Hebrew the name Babel is similar to the root Balol which means ‘confusion’.  So the Torah tells us that what these mortals thought was their gate to their own goodness, was nothing more than the confusion of their poor minds…

https://lammlegacy.org/the-generation-of-the-tower-and-a-towering-generation-1955/#

These words could have been written in a contemporary setting.  How many people in the field of politics, media and entertainment, who see themselves as ‘Herrenvolk’ arrogantly peddle the lies spewed out by Hamas and its supporters?  Nash is just one example of how ‘arrogance and haughtiness’ lead to the perpetuation of comments that have not a single grain of truth.  The kind that led to the terror attack in Manchester earlier this month, where the same language of hate is used throughout the world.

To the point where even music, which has the power to erase the differences between nations and ethnicities, becomes itself a victim of this malaise.

And yet, Rabbi Lamm continues:

Despite the sarcasm and bitterness and ridicule which the Torah heaps upon this Generation of the Tower, the indictment of this generation is not complete.  Just compare these two generations, that of the flood and that of the Tower:  The Generation of the Flood was, with the exception of Noah and his family, completely and utterly destroyed; the generation of the Tower was not destroyed at all – it was merely punished by internal dissension and great exile and dispersion.  Why is it that the generation of the Tower was treated with such comparative leniency despite their sins of arrogance?

Our Rabbis gave us the answer, based upon a clue in the Bible itself.  Our Torah mentions vayehi kol Haaretz safah achass – all the world was one language, meaning of course that there was unity, cooperation, friendship.  And therefore, dor hamabul al yedei shehayu shetufim begezel lo nishtaira meihem pleitah, aval eilu al yedei shehayu ohavim zeh es zeh nishtayrah meihem pleitah.  There is something that can be salvaged from the Generation of the Tower, something of lasting and permanent value, and that is: love, friendship.

What our Rabbis got from this episode of the Generation of the Tower was that every generation can become a Towering Generation if it learns that love; that even if people are arrogant and G-dless and criminal, they can escape heavenly wrath if they will learn to love G-d’s creatures.  The only way of nishtaira meihem pleitah, of surviving a world of coldness and treachery and mass-production and bold projects which obscure the individual is through ahavah (love).

In this 21st Century in which we live, we are experiencing something that has not been accessible to our ancestors, that of a ‘common language’ which is spread throughout the world and a means by which to transmit this.  The language is, of course, English and the tool we use is the Internet.  Even though English is spoken by approximately 1.46 – 1.5 billion (which constitutes 18%) of our global population, it is regarded as the most spoken language (including non-native speakers).  The internet enables non-English speakers to translate the language into their native tongues.

It is the accepted ‘currency’ throughout the world’s air, sea and rail routes and even on the International Space Station (alongside Russian)!

We are truly at a time when historians will note that ‘the whole world spoke the same language, the same words.’  It is the just a case of which ‘words’ we choose to speak and what the impact of continuing to misuse this gift will have on how our communities both locally and internationally.

Sadly, despite the fact that we speak one common language, we are deeply divided.  Instead of harmony, we have disorder; instead of homogenous, we have heterogenous; instead of unity, we have dissension; instead of ‘Us’ we have ‘I’ and instead of tolerance, we have intolerance.  Instead of hate, we should have love for, as our Rabbis taught ‘all G-d’s creatures’.

As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Let us reframe the use of language to bring people together.  I have no problem with musicians or anyone else expressing a personal viewpoint in the appropriate location but the term ‘know your audience’ is as relevant in front of an audience who paid hard-earned money for a pleasant evening out, as a teacher standing in front of a class or a Rabbi delivering a sermon to his community.

If we can speak the same language with the same words and bring people together, we have proven that we are not the Dor Haflaga, the Generation of the Tower but one who builds towers of love, mutual respect and understanding between individuals, communities and nations.  Now there’s an idea for a song that we can all join in with, Graham Nash.

Shavuah Tov.

Yom Kippur: People of the Year - William (Bill) Shatner

His is a voice that will be recognizable to most people who remember the 1960s (and in my case, the ‘70s).

“Space, the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission: To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

These are of course the words spoken by the actor William (whom everybody calls ‘Bill’) Shatner when he introduced the Star Trek episodes from the original series.

If you recall, over Rosh Hashanah I referenced Time Magazine’s famous annual feature in honouring someone they felt

"For better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Bill is the subject of this final ‘episode’ in my own series describing the people I have nominated to be my Yamim Noraim/Days of Awe ‘People of the Year’.  I will duly explain why I feel he deserves this award, particularly on Yom Kippur.

In 2005, the journalist Abigail Pogrebin wrote a fascinating book titled ‘Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish’ (Broadway Books, New York) which described her interviews with sixty-two of America’s ‘most accomplished Jews’ (as per the dust jacket).  One of these was with William Shatner (pp 352-355).

His entry begins with the following paragraph:

Star Trek’s Captain Kirk used to recite the four questions and lay tefillin during morning prayers.  That’s difficult to imagine.  William Shatner’s image has never exactly been Jewishy.  He’s sandy haired and barrel chested – his bearing, at the height of his fame, was that of a classic leading man.  “There was a whole thing where people would say, ‘Funny you don’t look Jewish,’” Shatner recalls.  “The racial stereotype bothers me to this day.  I’m very sensitive to it; I find it offensive.”

Bill recalls how he hailed from a traditional home in Montreal which, though Conservative was, as he states, “Pretty much like Orthodox here (in the United States).”  His mother kept a kosher home, he had a bar mitzvah and, as I said, wore tefillin for a few years.  He also had to deal with significant antisemitism from the kids in his school.  He adds that he had willingly missed a school football practice because it was Yom Kippur with the result being that he was never able to regain his position on the team.  The author writes that,

‘He says he didn’t try to convince his parents to let him skip Yom Kippur services; he knew that by that age it was sacrosanct.  “It wasn’t a choice,” he says matter-of-factly.  “It was Yom Kippur.”

Bill’s most famous role, of course, is that of the aforementioned, Captain James T (for Tiberius) Kirk alongside his friend of nearly 50 years, Leonard Nimoy, who played ‘Mr’ (later to be promoted to‘Captain’) Spock’, the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer and first officer aboard the USS Starship Enterprise.  He was four days younger than Bill.

Sadly, Leonard passed away in 2015 and a year later, Bill published a memoir called ‘Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man’ (William Shatner with David Fisher, Sidgewick & Jackson, UK).

Having read the book earlier this year, it moved me in a way that very few tomes have managed to do.

Leonard grew up in Boston and, like Bill, lived in a home where his parents kept kosher.  In fact, their upbringing was quite similar in that their parents were working class.  Bill’s father was in the shmatte/rag trade whilst Leonard’s was a barber.  They both came to the decision that they wanted to pursue a career in acting when they were eight years old.

It was not until July 1965, just over 60 years ago, that they encountered each for the first time on the set of a new futuristic science fiction series which was to be called ‘Star Trek.’  Bill doesn’t remember the moment they met and he writes that when they first started working together, although Leonard was ‘personally invested in the character, Bill ‘made the mistake of treating Spock with less than complete respect.  It was not a mistake I made a second time.’

The working relationship that was initiated back in those heady days of the mid 60’s developed into a deep friendship between the two like-minded individuals over the next five decades.  This was no doubt reinforced by the critical and commercial success of the motion pictures which began a decade later when Bill and Leonard revisited their roles over a twelve-year period in the six films which concluded with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in 1991.

At this point in the Drasha, you will no doubt be wondering why I have spent the last three pages taking you on a voyage to explore what seems like a ‘five-year-mission, seeking out old lives and space captains to boldly go where no Rabbi has gone before on Yom Kippur’…

Please bear with me just a little longer and all of this will (hopefully) make sense, particularly on this holiest day of our calendar.

Behind the ‘glitz and glamour’ of Hollywood’s brightest lights (million dollar special effects), lies a decades-long friendship between two proudly Jewish men.  One that no-doubt emanated from the values they were brought up with and shared both in their professional and private lives.  In 2013, after decades of heavy smoking (at one point, he got through two packs a day) Leonard was diagnosed with COPD, although the signs had been there since 2006.

Towards the end of the book, Bill writes:

I often think about friendships.  Our friendship.  All friendships.  The complexities that bring two lives together sometimes briefly, sometimes for almost a lifetime.  There are fleeting friendships and enduring friendships.  It is such an all-encompassing word, but it doesn’t sufficiently define the depth of any relationship.  There are so many metaphors that might be applied, but ours covered an ocean of time, and as in any voyage, between the calm seas we encountered moments of turmoil.  One of my greatest regrets is that Leonard and I were not as close as we had been during those last few years of his life.

He goes on to describe an incident where he made a film about the ‘many captains of the Enterprise’ and Leonard expressly stated that he didn’t want to appear in it.  Bill didn’t think that Leonard was being serious as this seemed so trivial and when a cameraman filmed him at a convention without Leonard’s permission, he got angry and refused to speak with his old friend again.

Despite Bill trying to reach out and apologise, attempting to heal the rift, Leonard never spoke to him again and passed away a month or so short of his 84^th birthday.

Bill writes how puzzled he remains, granted that they had flown together following the convention and Leonard hadn’t demonstrated any animosity or anger towards him.  However, for some reason only known to Leonard, he decided to cut Bill out of his life.

Bill wrote a heartfelt letter to his old friend letting him know how much he loved him in the hope that Leonard would have read this before he died.

In one of the final passages, Bill writes:

I think about Leonard.  I miss him.  Even when we weren’t in touch, he was always in my life.  And when I think about Leonard and all the adventures we had together, I remember his own lust for life; I remember his desire to explore and experience life in all its infinite wonders.  I think of his spiritual side, in which he never stopped searching for answers he knew he would never find.  I think of his generosity and his commitment for equal justice for everyone.  I think of his never-ending passion for the arts and his quest to nurture creativity in young people.  And I think of him standing in front of me, his palm held high, his fingers separated in the Vulcan salute, smiling knowingly.

I look back and the reflection I see is my own life…

I cannot think of a more appropriate metaphor that represents Yom Kippur than the friendship and love that these two men had for each other and how it sadly dissipated.

In the week (and if you are Sephardi, month) leading up to Rosh Hashanah and throughout the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah/10 Days of Penitence, we recite Selichot. The root of Selichot is סלח, from which we have the word ‘selicha’ which means ‘forgiveness/pardon/excuse’ and when you wish to say, “Excuse me (or literally forgive me)” in Ivrit, the term is ‘selach li’.

Chazal tells us that for Gd to forgive a person on Yom Kippur, he must first seek that forgiveness (also known as ‘Mechila’ in Hebrew) from his fellow human being.  If he asks three times and the response is not forthcoming, the onus shifts on the respondent to make the necessary moves to heal the wound.

The tragedy of Bill and Leonard’s relationship was that when Bill tried to apologise, to say ‘selicha’, Leonard was too angry to respond until it was too late for him to do so and the hurt that ensued followed him to his grave.

We are fallible and I am sure that every single person here can relate to the way both men felt and, in particular, the sense of loss that haunts Bill to this very day.  He wrote his book to help him heal and let the world know how highly he thought of Leonard.

Yom Kippur is the day when we ask Gd to forgive us for the slights that we have caused Him over the year.  Those occasions when we didn’t live up to the expectations that He has of us and by extension, we have of ourselves.  When, as Elton John famously sang ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word’, we admit our guilt and stand in front of the Creator of the Universe on the holiest day of the year to say ‘Sorry’ or ‘Forgive me.’

Over three thousand, three hundred and thirty years ago, we committed the seemingly unforgiveable sin of creating a Golden Calf.  To call it an insult to the True Gd would be an understatement and yet, in His infinite glory, He forgave us and we realised that this was the case, when Moshe descended from Sinai clutching the second set of Commandments on the 10^th of Tishri – today’s date.

I chose Bill as my final ‘Person of the Year’ because he really represents the very essence of what it means to be a Jew.  Our pride, angst, shame and ultimately, innate desire to make amends, the qualities that define us.  And to paraphrase his quote about Leonard – our commitment for equal justice for everyone.

I feel that he should join Omer Shem Tov and the Israelis that I described in my Drashot/Sermons on both days of Rosh Hashanah.  These are not only my ‘People of the Year’ but also deserve a mention in everyone else’s list.  We need them to remind us of how blessed we are to call them our own (and I include Sawsan Kheir, the Druze Psychologist).  Each one in his or her own right represents the very best of us and just as importantly the imperfections that make us who we are.

On Rosh Hashanah, it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  Let us reflect on who they are and how they can impact who we are.  Because, one day, what you do might earn you a place on somebody else’s ‘Person of the Year’ list.

I pray that Hashem Yitzbarach, Gd Almighty hears our pleas, forgives us and grants our people a year of peace and healing both in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora.  May we see the return of the hostages to their loved ones and the proliferation of wise and thoughtful decisions on the part of those who represent us on the world stage.

May you and yours be blessed with an easy and meaningful fast.

With the warmest of wishes from Stephnie, me and our children.

Chag Sameach and Gmar Chatimah Tovah. 

May it come to all of Israel.  

Amen.