Finding Common Language - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everybody hope you all had a great Shabbat we sure did we were coming off the high of Edinburgh Mitzvah and we had wonderful Fellowship guests over Shabbat and new friends as well so we were very very blessed this past Shabbat and in reading the portion something that really struck me was from the end of the Parsha the story of the McDouble the Tower of Babel now everyone tries to figure out what exactly were they doing wrong what was their sin were they trying to build a tower to avoid a future flood so they could rebel against Hashem were they silly enough to be building a tower thinking they could reach Hashem and you know wage war against him they were doing something wrong but that's not what I want to talk about the story starts out by noting seemingly unimportant things says that they had one language and devarim ahadim which usually is translated as having a common purpose one purpose together and then that seems pretty good I mean don't we want to have common language the ability to communicate and the ability to think together set a purpose and then when they set the purpose it seems like the sky is the limit so to speak right they're able to create Technologies instead of just building with stone the raw material that are you know outside on the floor they're able to invent a new way of building a more efficient a more um you know effective way of building by making bricks and the Torah is telling us these seemingly unimportant details but maybe they are important because true this Society was doing something sinful and there are many interesting explanations on what it was but they were doing it effectively meaning they were uh together cohesive successful technologically advancing Society and when Hashem wanted to break apart their evil plan what did he do I mean when we read Exodus we know that Hashem has no lack of creativity in the plagues that he can bring upon a sinful Society it seems like the choice that Hashem made in terms of breaking this evil group apart was kind of surprising Hashem could have sent illness you know plague pestilence uh they you know death there's a million things that Hashem could have done but he chooses to deconstruct their language to bring apart their ability to effectively communicate and understand one another's words and maybe that's also an important message for us today it's as if the Torah is telling us pay attention Society can survive a plague there was still Egypt after the plague and there was Egypt after frogs and there was Egypt after the Nile turned into blood but the Tower of Babel never reunited that story is a story that had permanent outcomes permanent separation of this cohesive society that was never really able to recover back into whatever you know purpose they were trying to achieve and it's as if the Torah is saying pay attention because you want to break apart Society the fastest surest longest lasting most effective way to do that is to confuse the meaning of words and what speaks more powerfully than that to our time it's as if everywhere I look there's almost an inability of people to communicate with one another because we don't even understand what we mean it started with PC I mean I remember when I was younger There Was You know the politically correct you're not allowed to say this you have to say this don't call people that there's a new word for that so if you're using that word that word is not allowed then it became uh well you know people want to be called new words you have to respect that you have to respect them so now these new words we don't really know what they mean but there's a whole slew of new words and then it became we don't even understand what the existing words mean anymore I saw the most insane headline in one of the magazines saying uh you know in the context of of uh Twitter saying free speech the new threat to democracy I was like I thought I knew what Free Speech meant and I thought I knew what democracy meant I don't think ing the same thing you know it's like as if words have lost their meaning the fact that there is such a documentary as the famous documentary what is a woman having asked you know my grandparents 100 years ago if they understood what it meant to say the words male or female I mean these are the most obvious simplest most ancient words have essentially lost their meaning we don't even know what we're talking about when we say male and female what is family What is marriage words that seemed to have so much meaning what is life what is the end of life uh what is democracy what is freedom any of these things it's as if the movement today in society is to break down language Orwell seemingly prophesies this in his book 1984 where he describes the ministry of Truth having its main job to be creating new meanings for words and taking away the old meanings of existing words and it's as if the Torah portion is already telling us the most dangerous thing to any society that's functioning normally if you want that Society to continue functioning normally you need a Common Language and the biggest threat to society functioning normally is when people start changing the meanings of words if you want to know what the final purpose and the final outcome of starting to jiggle around what the common understanding is in our ability to communicate with one another effectively you want to know what the final outcome of that is going to be it will be the breaking apart of society so if you're ready for that then go with that you know if that floats your boat keep on going but no be awake and be aware of the dangers of changing the meaning of every way that we are normally communicating I think that's a very important message for our time and then Shabbat really drove that home for me because we were people of all different backgrounds in all different languages we were kind of the in gathering of that Babylonian change language over Shabbat we had American friends staying here on the farm we had our German friends staying here on the farm we had Jews and non-jews we had Israelis people who are from here who speak Hebrew you know trying to get out some words in English we had somebody translating but in the end it felt like we were able to build common language even if technically our language was not the same by setting for ourselves common purpose we were able to unite and kind of create this universal language which I think is really the purpose of what we're doing here on the fellowship we often talk about this idea that coming together in the fellowship is an effort to kind of create a Common Language of Torah that's not uniquely you know insular to one group but rather but rather open and inviting to everybody so that we can so that we can set for ourselves a common goal by creating words that connect us you know having this type of speech having these types of meetings and learning tour together to create a bridge that connects us to be able to understand one another and the most I think striking moment for that for for me in that context was on at the end of Shabbat at havedella all of these people from different places coming together and Jeremy has a song that he wrote that I'm sure you guys know called Hashem let us go to shalim and together build the house of Hashem and everyone German speakers English speakers Hebrew speaking speakers were all singing this song together I want to show it to you guys for a second [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] and at that moment I realized that maybe this is sort of the correction of the Tower of Babel in in the mcdonaldville in that story Hashem broke apart language because everyone came together for a negative purpose and that was a society that needed to be destroyed but after thousands of years of everyone being dispersed there was this you know there's this movement now towards creating a Common Language of let's come together and not build the Tower of Babel let's come together let's create a new common language but come together to build the house of Hashem and so I want to thank everyone who is here for Shabbat and invite everyone on the fellowship hopefully to come and join us we're having more and more uh opportunities to have Fellowship members over here at the farm and it's such a joy and such a pleasure so with that I wish everyone a good week of common purpose and us to continue and I bless us to continue working together throughout this year to build our common language of Torah and fulfilling the Commandments and a common purpose towards bringing the future Redemption bye guys have a great week