This weeks Torah portion is the story of Noah and the flood, culminating in the beautiful gift of the rainbow, the sign of God’s promise to never destroy the world by flood again.

But this week I’ve been thinking more about a brief story later in the Torah portion. It is only nine verses long, tucked between two genealogies. It is the brief saga of the Tower of Babel.

I’m sure you know the story. A group of people decided to make bricks and build a tower. God came down and saw what they were doing, and decided to stop them. God did this by confounding their speech, so that they could no longer understand one another. The people promptly gave up the project, and scattered across the face of the Earth.

This week especially, I’ve been wondering why God would want to stop humans from communicating and collaborating. What was God afraid of? That they would build the tower so high they would get to heaven? That they would take over God’s job? That they would create a utopian society?

As the terrible conflict in Israel and Gaza continues, I keep thinking: What if Arabs and Jews had always spoken the same language? Would it have made a difference, or would we still be in the midst of a deadly conflict that benefits no one?

In the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books, Douglas Adams dreamed up a tiny fish that you could slip in your ear, which would immediately make you capable of understanding every language. Not surprisingly, he called it the Babel fish.

But Adams realized that magically understanding language doesn’t translate to true understanding. I may understand your words, but I might not grasp what you mean. Other things get in the way. Traumas and experiences, both good and bad, inform my perspective. My people’s history influences my world view. I come to every human interaction with a lifetime of experiences that I cannot set aside. They are a part of me, just as yours are a part of you.

There is a saying that you cannot understand another person until you have walked a mile in their shoes. The problem is that shoes aren’t enough. You’d have to inhabit their mind and body to understand their essence. And my guess is that a temporary journey into someone’s mind wouldn’t be enough either.

One of the recurring themes of the early chapters of the Bible is the idea of separation; dividing light from dark, water from earth, day from night, good from bad. God did more than create. God divided, distinguished between types of creatures, and strove to establish a sense of order. But humans continually got in the way of God’s plans. As soon as God began to establish rules, we began to break them.

Perhaps the message of the Tower of Babel is that we were not meant to understand each other. At least, not automatically. We can never walk in another’s shoes. But we can try. And language is the key.

When we overcome language differences, we are forced to understand a little of how the other person thinks, and perhaps why they behave as they do. Making the effort to learn another language is a step towards understanding.

It’s just a small step, and I know that despite the fact that Arabic and Hebrew share many words, it hasn’t helped ease the situation. And yet I honestly believe that being able to communicate is the only way to begin to address our differences.

We humans are, and always have been, storytellers. I pray for the day that we can tell our stories to one another, and begin to build a bridge of understanding. One story at a time.