Recently seen on Facebook: “Ese momento when publican un meme auf English, Deutsch und Espanol aber du are poliglota und expert in memes and du kannst camprender drei languages al miso Zeit.”

The reader who is as enamored with languages as I am will no doubt understand this sentence completely, and it is the perfect statement with which to introduce the last part of this week’s Torah portion, Noah, the tale of the Tower of Babel.

According to the Torah, as the Earth’s population grew, everyone spoke the same language. This common language enabled this now relatively large population to work together on a project, a tower that would reach into the heavens and enable humankind to usurp God.

Not pleased at all with this new human obsession, which consumed every waking moment and every resource available, God decreed that humanity would not continue to speak a single language. Rather, now the people would speak different languages and gather together in smaller groups based on their particular common language.

And so it is that different languages developed the world over. No longer would people be able to understand those from a different geographical and linguistic location. They would become confused — a play on the name Babel — in their attempts to communicate.

My paternal grandfather, with whom I was very close, immigrated to the U.S. from a part of Poland that was sometimes under German control, sometimes under Russian. As an entrepreneur, he found it useful to learn a number of languages, and the family lore is that he spoke seven.

As a child, I picked up relatively quickly and easily the Yiddish my parents spoke when they did not want us to understand. After a brief traumatic introduction to French, I went on to study German in high school and college. I learned to read Hebrew two weeks after we were given the primer and in Hebrew school in junior high learned some modern Hebrew.  In rabbinical school I became a fluent Hebrew speaker and studied other Semitic languages: Aramaic, Syriac and Arabic. With all of this language, there are so many more to which I have not even been exposed.

There has been a modern attempt to create a universal language, Esperanto, and the story is told of an early convention of the leading scholars in this new language. How exciting it must have been to hear the universal language employed in the lectures and in the hallways. One person even reported to have overheard the universal language employed: “Nu, vos macht a Yid?”

I learned a profound lesson in the first 10 years of my career as a hospital and community chaplain. Initially, I was responsible for providing pastoral care only to Jewish patients in the nominally Jewish hospital in which I was based. Several years into the program, I decided that my part time chaplains and I would take nursing units instead and visit everyone. When I visited patients from other religious backgrounds, I found that I had to ask them to define terms that sounded as if they were common to both of us but actually meant different things to each of us. This enabled me to provide better care to them.

With Jewish patients, they and I always assumed that we had a common vocabulary and a certain level of comfort with one another due to all that we had in common. However, once I began inquiring into what terms and expressions meant to patients who were not Jews, I found it useful to do the same with Jewish patients. There would be times when we spoke the same language but meant something different.

The story of Babel is not only one of a primeval development of language; it is a story that continues to this day. There are a myriad of languages and dialects spoken by people that require one to carefully define terms. But there are also times when people speak the same language and cannot effectively communicate with one another.

Language is much more than words. It represents a culture and its history as well. To best understand another, it is vital to understand that person’s culture and background. When one takes the time to ask, “What does that mean to you?” one can better participate in a truly meaningful conversation.

To do otherwise is to just babble.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Josef Davidson is a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Association, which coordinates the weekly d’var Torah in the Jewish Light.