Parshat Vayera: Building a New World

 This week’s parashah/portion is Vayera (Bereshit/Genesis 18:1-22:24) . It begins with the arrival of three divine messengers (or angels) at Abraham and Sarah’s tent. They inform Abraham that God will give the elderly Sarah a child. The prophecy comes true, and they name their son Isaac. God then informs Abraham that Sodom and Gomorrah will be destroyed, though Abraham attempts to convince God otherwise.

Abraham convinces God to spare the cities if there are at least 10 righteous people. Unfortunately, he could not. And so the three messengers went to Sodom and Gomorrah in order to save Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family, who lived there. As the messengers , Lot and his family flee the cities, Lot’s wife looks back, even though they were commanded not to. As a punishment she was turned to a pillar of salt.

Later, God’s promise is fulfilled and Sarah becomes pregnant and bears a son, Isaac. Eventually, God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham takes Isaac to Mt. Moriah and prepares to sacrifice him. At the end an angel tells him to stop. He is told that it was a test of faith and Abraham offers a ram to sacrifice instead. He then returns to Sarah alone.

I would like to focus primarily on the story of Sodom and Gomorroah. These two cities have come to represent evil and wicked behavior in our culture. Yet, what made these particular cities so evil? What was their sin? The Torah never makes this clear, so we must look to the rabbis.

We read the following in Pirkei Avot/The Chapters of Our Fathers, a classic rabbinic text from the 2nd century:

"There are four types of character in human beings:

One that says: “mine is mine, and yours is yours”: this is a commonplace type; though some say this is a Sodom-type of character.

[One that says:] “mine is yours and yours is mine”: is an unlearned person;

[One that says:] “mine is yours is yours is yours” is a pious person.

[One that says:] “mine is mine, and yours is mine” is a wicked person."

At first the opening line might seem strange. After all, to say “what’s mine and mine, and yours is yours” does seem commonplace and not evil. However, the rabbis believed that this represented the sin of Sodom.- that people cared only for themselves to the extreme. They would not do anything to help another person, nor share with them. According to Rabbeinu Bachya (1255-1340), “the sin which sealed the fate of the Sodomites was that they despised charity, i.e. they legislated against people who practiced the virtue of giving charity or being otherwise charitable. They did not even take care of their own needy who were suffering from hunger.”

To step back for a moment, I must confess that when I sat down to write this week’s commentary, I was trying to figure out how to connect it with the current situation in our country. I don’t just mean the election, but the crisis in our country which is rooted in how people behave towards others. This includes racism and other forms of prejudice, as well as the hatred that people are showing towards one another and how that is tearing us apart.

The truth may be that our country needs to be torn apart, as is happening, in order to eventually become whole. Racism and inequities have always been deeply rooted in our society. But until recently most people were able to at least feign civility or hide their true feelings. That is no longer the case.

Like in Sodom and Gomorrah, so many people care only about themselves, This includes their thoughts and beliefs. Their ideas have become like precious possessions. In terms of beliefs and actions our society has gone beyond “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours” to a warped version of “what’s mine is mine, and yours is mine.” This could be summed up as “what’s mine (possessions, beliefs, actions etc) is mine and what’s yours should be mine as well.”  In other words, you should believe and act as I do. That is the only way. If not, then you're wrong. You are not a part of society. unless you embrace my beliefs, act as I do, and vilify those who do not as evil, then we’ll be just fine.

This type of thinking has always been true of extremists of any kind, such as the KKK, white supremacists, etc. However, it has become true of many seemingly ordinary people. They don’t wear white hoods or swastikas, yet their beliefs and actions have their roots in the same soil of bigotry, hatred, xenophobia, and hyper-nationalism. 

In a country filled with division and hatred what are we to do? We can’t, nor would we want, to suffer the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, just as those two cities were destroyed, we somehow need to destroy the society we’ve built from the roots up in order to build a new, just, and equitable society.

This won’t be easy. After all, systemic racism has been growing and thriving for over 400 years. It’s not going to disappear overnight. And yet, we must work towards that end. The same is true for other types of hatred which have been growing for years: homophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, Islamophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and more. We must all work to rid our country and our world of them.

This can only be achieved through both a systemic and an individual approach. Together we must work to dismantle the oppressive systems in our country and our prejudice and bigotry. For only by doing both can we, our country, and our world truly change. Only by addressing the personal, can we truly change the communal.

As Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, Lot, his wife, and their children were instructed not to look back as they fled. Lot’s wife disobeyed these instructions and, when she looked back to see the place she called home being destroyed, she was turned to a pillar of salt.

But the story doesn’t end with destruction, for Sarah and Abraham eventually give birth to Isaac. With that miracle the creation of the Israelites, and eventually the Jewish people, has now truly begun. 

What happened to Lot’s wife is a cautionary tale. For though she was looking back with morbid curiosity, I also believe she looked back because she still had an attachment to that place, in spite of all the evil. And that destroyed her, as attachments to the past often do.

Just as the incident of Lot’s wife represents attachment to the past, no matter how destructive,  the birth of Isaac is about focusing on the future. It is about the creation of a new world of love and joy. After all, in Hebrew his name Yitzhak means “he shall laugh.” The future may not be easy, but it will be joyous and filled with laughter if we do it right.

We can’t look back to the past. The “good old days” were never really good, except for the privileged few. But even for them they were built on the backs of those who were suffering. If we try to look back we may not turn into a pillar of salt, but we can easily get stuck and unable to move ahead. 

Just look at the people who are so adamant about holding on to confederate statues and monuments, or the celebration of Columbus Day. They don’t see the hatred, oppression, and violence those represent. And so, they might as well be pillars of salt. They are stuck. They are unable to hear and move on.

If we move ahead and create a new world, a new reality, we will all be reborn anew. We will be able to laugh and to celebrate. And we will be able to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah that they’re descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. All of humanity will shine brightly. Each casting it’s light on the other. 

In this new world our characters will be represented by the new rule “ there is no mine. there is no yours. There is only ours, there is only God’s. This is how it meant to be.” Amen.