The Very Last Joke He Told at the Tower of Babel

They built the Tower, Shmully Rabinowitz sat on the sidewalk telling jokes. Nobody listened. His absolute best was the victim of cosmic bad timing: he got to the punchline exactly as language fell apart. But God got it. A classic, God said. A great one. There and then God vowed to tell it over to the Prophet Elijah at the End of Days, so Elijah would share it with the world. By that time everyone would have learned what a joke is, and what’s a skyscraper. They would know which one is mighty. They would know which rises to Heaven.