This week we look at why the people of Sodom were so despicable. REMEMBER TO VOTE! Michael (MichaelStrassfeld.com) mjstrassfeld@gmail.com photo by Brett Sayles
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A word of Torah:
Last week, we discussed how Abraham and Sarah were known for their quality of being hospitable. In this week's Torah portion, we encounter the in hospitable people of Sodom who are the opposite from Abraham and Sarah. In the midrash, the people of Sodom are described as ingenious in the ways they are cruel and inhospitable to strangers. One midrash tells how they each gave a poor traveler a coin with their name on it, thereby appearing to be generous to the traveler. However, they then refused to sell the traveler any food. When he died from starvation, they each took their coin back (Sanhedrin 109b).
What made the people of Sodom exemplars of evil was their underlying attitude, as described in another midrash: The inhabitants of Sodom said: “We live in peace and plenty—food can be got from our land, gold and silver can be mined from our land, ---What need have we to look after wayfarers, who come to us only to deprive us? Come, let us see to it that the duty of entertaining travelers be forgotten in our land.” (Numbers Rabbah 9:24). It was not scarcity of resources that pushed the inhabitants to discourage travelers. It was done in order to hoard their riches.
Perhaps they thought that newcomers to their land should work their way up the economic ladder “just as we did?” However, the truth was that they had pulled the ladders up behind them. They made sure that no one would be able to come to their land of abundance and succeed.
The real evil of Sodom was that this uncaring attitude to the needy traveler was ensconced in law. It wasn’t just that a lack of generosity was encouraged in Sodom. Their persecution of travelers wasn’t a momentary passion. In Sodom, it was against the law to help the stranger and anyone caught helping them was put to death. (See Malbim,19th century commentator, on Gen 19:2). The society itself had been corrupted, not just some individuals. This is why the city was condemned by God for destruction.
The rabbis had a term for acting like the inhabitants of Sodom-- (midat s’dom). We will explore in next week’s newsletter how the rabbis not only described the people of Sodom as deplorable, but said halakha could be used to compel people not to act in the manner of the people of Sodom.
Intention/kavana for the week
This week the people of Sodom serve as a model of how not to be in the world. Their cruelty to outsiders and their creation of justifications for their behavior to others resonate with this moment in America. Sometimes there are not two sides. How can it be that everyone doesn't condemn a hammer attack on an innocent person or the spouting of anti-semitism by prominent people in our culture?
Song:
A wordless melody, niggun of the Bobover hasidim also known as the mashiach niggun.
