Rav Elie Lemmel - Noah 5787

It's done, the flood has taken place, humanity was submerged by the waters and now a new civilization is re-emerging. And here, we have the story of the Tower of Babel. So, let's look at the text. And indeed, it tells us that humanity decides to create this famous tower, but specifies something: "and we will make a name for ourselves there." So, what does that mean?

And our masters say, "Yes, they want to go and fight against God, in a way." It is quite curious, though. Obviously, this text goes much further. First of all, it specifies that to build this famous tower, they take bricks and stack them, and through that, they will make a tower. Interesting.

But does the Bible, does the Torah really need to tell me what the construction system of the Tower of Babel is? And the masters of the Jewish mystical tradition, the masters of Kabbalah, will tell us that these bricks symbolize the universe of knowledge, of learning, what we might call today the realm of science. And indeed, humanity at the time is saying, "We are going to have, we possess knowledge about the 'how' of the world, about the operating model of the universe in which we find ourselves, at their level, of course." Well, from the moment we know how things work, we will be able to develop a certain mastery. So God exists, but we'll leave Him up there.

We don't want Him to interfere in our lives. And we have a wonderful lesson here: that, indeed, scientific knowledge, which allows us to understand the 'how' but never the 'why ' of things, can be the element that gives the individual the illusion of independence to set God aside. Because even if He exists, we no longer need Him. The end of the Tower of Babel shows us that things will not happen that way.

It is up to us to decide if we want to draw consequences from it. M.