What happens when everyone speaks, but nobody listens?

Rabbi Jeremy Schneider | Parshah Noach: Genesis 6:9-11:32

I have learned to approach certain conversations carefully from the bimah: Israel, politics, religion —and, on more than one Shabbat, the temperature in the sanctuary.

Our congregation includes passionate conservatives, equally passionate liberals, and plenty of people somewhere in between. They don't leave those differences at the door. But they still pray together, celebrate holidays together and show up for one another when life gets difficult. Most of the time, anyway.

I've always believed there's something wonderful about a synagogue filled with people who don't necessarily agree. After all, if we only wanted to spend time with people who thought exactly like us, we could probably just stay home.

This week's Torah portion, Noach, includes a fascinating story that often gets overshadowed by the ark, the animals and the flood: the Tower of Babel.

The Torah tells us that everyone on earth spoke the same language. They settled together and decided to build a city with a tower reaching toward heaven. God saw what they were doing, confused their language and scattered them across the earth.

I've always found this story a little puzzling. What's so terrible about people speaking the same language and working together? Isn't that something we should celebrate?

The Torah never fully explains God's objection, and commentators have offered different interpretations. One possibility is that the problem wasn't their ability to communicate, but their insistence that everyone thinks and acts alike. Perhaps they had created a society where there was little room for anyone who saw things differently.

I wonder if we've created our own version of Babel today.

We live in a world where it's remarkably easy to surround ourselves with people who agree with us. We watch news that reinforces our opinions, follow people who share our views and sometimes assume that anyone on the "other side" must be uninformed, misguided or worse.

I've heard congregants say they no longer discuss politics with certain family members. Lifelong friendships have ended over elections. People who once enjoyed each other's company now avoid one another because of something they read online.

I understand why. Some disagreements touch our deepest values, and not every conversation is worth having. But I worry about what happens when we stop being curious about one another.

One of the things I appreciate most about synagogue life is watching people who disagree about almost everything still find ways to care for one another. I've seen congregants with opposing political views stand together at a shiva minyan, volunteer at a temple event or celebrate a child's bar or bat mitzvah.

Nobody asks how someone voted before bringing them a meal when they're sick.

Jewish tradition has never required everyone to agree. Just look at the debates between the schools of Hillel and Shammai. They argued about everything from Jewish law to how we should live our lives. And more than two thousand years later, we're still studying their disagreements. There's something remarkable about a tradition that preserves both sides of an argument.

Maybe that's what Babel has to teach us today. We don't need a community where everyone agrees. We need one where people can disagree and still feel that they belong.

Sometimes listening to someone doesn't change our mind. But it might change how we see that person.

We've become awfully quick to decide that someone who disagrees with us isn't worth listening to. That's a shame, especially when that person might be sitting right next to us at services next Shabbat.

And if we really can't find anything else to agree on, we can always go back to arguing about the sanctuary temperature.