Unity

The Tower of Babel would seem to have been driven by the most lofty of ideals - unity amongst all mankind. In that way it would appear to be a clone of the Bais HaMikdosh, the Temple in Jerusalem. The Bais Hamikdosh was built on top of the Even Shisiyah, the rock which holds together, unifies, the entire world. The Mishkan, the Tabernacle which preceded the Temple, was formed by pillars with hooks on them. The hooks are called in Hebrew ווין, vovin. Vov is the Hebrew letter that forms a conjunction, the equivalent of the English word "and." The Temple as a place of Connection. The High Priest prayed on Yom Kippur that Hashem should respect the wishes of the community as a whole, over those of a selfish individual.

Why, then, is the unity of the builders of the Tower so disparaged and rejected by God?

Midrash teaches us that as the Temple was built each stone made room for every other stone. Conversely, we see by the building of the Tower that as they tried to fit in the stones, the stones fell down. This alludes to the root of the distinction between the two forms of unity.

In the Bais HaMikdosh the unity was created by each partner to the unity seeing that the other had the space they needed. It was not a forced unity demanding that people fit, whether or not they actually did. On the contrary, efforts were made to see to it that each person had the space they needed to fit in properly. The builders of the Tower, by contrast, had decided that everyone had to be united. And they were determined to do all they could to force-fit everyone into the unity whether or not they really fit where they were place. Such a unity was doomed to failure.