D'var Torah By: David Segal for ReformJudaism.com
- This is Noah's chronicle. Noah was a righteous man; in his generation, he was above reproach: Noah walked with God. - Genesis 6:9
The world's first "skyscraper" was built after the great Flood. All of humanity, unified by a single language, decided to build "a tower that reaches the sky" (Genesis 11:4), known today as the Tower of Babel. I've always taken this story as an act of defiance and hubris; God reacted by dispersing the people and confusing their speech.
A midrash depicts the height of the people's arrogance: " 'Come,' they said, 'let us make a tower, place an image on its top, and put a sword in its hand, and it will seem that it is waging war against [God]' " (B'reishit Rabbah 38:6). If there was any ambiguity in the Torah, the midrash has removed it. These people were asking for God's retaliation!
Hubris wasn't their only transgression. Careful readers will note that the "Babel builders" (as one of my bar mitzvah students likes to call them) disobeyed a direct command of God from earlier in the parashah. After the Flood, God blessed Noah and commanded him and his offspring: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1). Rather than filling the earth, these people settled in one valley. Rather than being fruitful, they devoted themselves single-mindedly to a self-aggrandizing construction project.
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