Destination Babel

Abstract

This article proposes a contemporary reading of the Tower of Babel story. The objective is to set the foundations of an ethic of communication that considers the notion of a global community formed by those who “speak the same language.” Our analysis is a trilateral hermeneutic exercise that places the story of the Tower of Babel in the contemporary context: the narrative of the Bible, according to Chouraqui’s very literal translation from the Hebrew text, the rabbinical exegesis of the Midrash, the Talmud of Babylon and the Zohar, and the imperative of responsibility according to Hans Jonas. Alongside to Jonas’s heuristic of fear, based on futuristic projections of catastrophic scenarios, we propose a heuristic of memory that sheds light to the ethics of exile as a key notion to accept imperfect and disruptive communication in a more compassionate and collaborative way.