Do you remember the story of the Tower of Babel? It is a part of our Torah portion for this Sabbath, though most people only remember the story of Noah, which is at the beginning of the portion. At first sight, the story of the Tower of Babel looks like a naive answer given a very long time ago to a child's question: "Daddy, why are there different nations, and why do people speak different languages?" "Well, dear, it was just like this. . . ."

Once upon a time all people were just one big family and spoke the same language. Then one day they got very proud and wanted to become like God. So they started building a great tower to reach up to Heaven to show how great they were. But when God saw the tower they were making, He got angry with them, and He came and muddled up their speech so they couldn't understand one another.

We know that the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis are a prelude to the great story of the people of God that begins with Abraham. In that prelude we find great scenes of the Bible, voiced in poetry, folktale, and legend based on stories circulated in the Middle East for many thousands of years. We have the story of Creation and the lesson that human beings are created in the image of their Creator. We find the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood that Joseph will read for us tomorrow, and then this perplexing story of the Tower of Babel. All of these stories are useful in illuminating the ultimate mysteries of human existence, mysteries that are still with us, in spite of all our sophistication.

Scientists-archaeologists and other experts-assure us that the story of the Tower of Babel in the land of Shinar, which is Babylonia or modern Iraq, is not necessarily a fairy tale. "Babel" is supposedly the ancient city of Babylon, whose Hanging Gardens were one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Cuneiform writing has been discovered describing the Babylonian ziggurats, which were high-rise temples built for the worship of the pagan gods.

Now did one of these great towers spectacularly collapse, thus giving birth many centuries ago to a tale that circulated to the wandering tribes in the Middle East? It seems likely, just as memories of a great flood are to be found in the records of more than one ancient civilization.

How are we to understand the biblical tower of Babel, particularly in the wake of the collapse of two of our own towers of renown? According to the biblical writers, God is supposed to have told Adam,

You go ahead and have dominion over all of my creation.

Henceforward nothing they have a mind to do will be beyond their reach.

And so now, we might think that, more than ever before, the human race worldwide ought to be flexing its muscles and rejoicing in this apparently infinite capacity to create and to achieve, but it hasn't worked out that way, has it? More than ever before, men and women are living in fear now. Each new invention seems to come to us with a blessing in one hand and a curse in the other. All over the world, human beings cower beneath the shadow of the Tower of Babel, the creation of their own genius and fear that it will fall upon them and that diseases believed to be long-since conquered will come back to haunt us and seek our lives.

The Rabbis in the Midrash theorized that the Tower of Babel collapsed for one reason only. It was not because men and women were exercising their God-given dominion, but because they were reaching for the throne of God Himself! The shadow of the Tower of Babel has stretched across the centuries to our own day.

Tyrants, dictators, warlords, religious fanatics of all flavors, have risen in every century to play God with the human race, leaving a trail of havoc and bloodshed in their wake. And that shadow has fallen on us in our own time.

This ancient story comes to us across the centuries to wise us up!  It means to tell us what happened when human beings confuse the Creator with the created!

The evil people who masterminded the sadistic attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, they don't want multiple languages. They want to hear only one language, and that's their own! They will define God and share what everyone needs to know about God's creation.

Historian Richard Reeves said, when asked by CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield to put the attack of September 11 in historical context:

Your generation has been misled. This has been building since the Crusades. It was inevitable that East would eventually meet West.

Anyone who reads the daily papers carefully knows that the world is caught between two eternities, Jihad and McWorld.  Jihad reflects the tribal past, and McWorld anticipates the cosmopolitan future.  They operate with equal strength and opposite directions, one driven by parochial hatred, the other by universalizing markets. . . . In this sense, fundamentalism is not a religion (writes Mr. Barber);  it is a world view that requires the annihilation of all contrary convictions.

Shortly after the tragedy in New York City, a minister friend of mine was visited at his church by a New York City police officer who appeared unannounced at his door. He had attended a candlelight service on the Wednesday night before and wanted just to say thanks. But mostly he wanted to talk about the events of the previous three days, and his time spent at ground zero: the horrific carnage, the dogged determination of the searchers, the anguish of the victims' friends and relatives. He spoke to my minister friend about how upsetting the smell was, but even more the swirling shred of paper in the streets: torn photos, charred calendar pages, partial memos, unreadable degrees, incomplete lists.

But this policeman told my friend the minister that, strangely enough, he has never felt better about being a cop.

The people have been wonderful to us and to each other. Everyone offers to help and applauds what we do. If I could go to work every day and feel like I do now, I wouldn't worry how contract negotiations were going. The city could keep the extra money. Today, everyone is concerned about the right thing, and angry about the right thing, and happy about the right thing. I just want it to last after the crisis has passed.

You and I, dear friends, standing in the wake of the Tower of Babel in its second fall, we need to summon the faith to be heroes by acting in ways that can help to make a difference in the future. We need to keep the foundations of decency strong. We need hope, which is grounded in the sense of that to which we as a nation have been called.

Perhaps one of the most powerful photos that appeared in the days following the tragedy showed the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center, the Babel of our times, but with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground. Did you see that photo? That Statue of Liberty represents the best of who we are. She is. . .

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name, Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows worldwide welcome. . . .
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!