Washington, D.C. and Sodom & Gomorrah

Washington, D.C. and Sodom & Gomorrah

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

October 18, 2013

In this week’s Torah portion the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by God because of their evilness. Lot, Abraham’s nephew chose to live there because of the external beauty of the area. He clearly never heard the maxim: “don’t choose a book by its cover.” The Torah describes it as something akin to a cross between the Garden of Eden and well-wateredness and fertility of the land of Egypt. Certainly there had to be plenty for everybody.

And yet the Torah indicates that amidst this land of plenty there was an embedded evilness that warranted its destruction. It is so bad that God Himself must go down to inspect and see if it is true. What did God find? Jewish commentators indicate an endless number of sins, even as the text will center on the episode of the strangers that come to visit Lot. They are more than unwelcome in Sodom and Gomorrah. There is an abject hatred of these strangers, so much so that the city descends on Lot’s home and demands that they be handed over for whatever malicious evil will be done upon them.

There are many questions for this complex story, but I will pose just two.

1. Why amidst the plush lushness of the valley, so much so that it is the object for takeover by several neighboring kings, that there is clearly more than enough for everyone, that the people didn’t want to share the wealth?

2. Why did God turn to Abraham and not Lot to save the city? God reveals His design to Abraham and affords Abraham the opportunity to enter into negotiations for the future of the city, all the way down to ten righteous people, which since God can’t even find that many, He destroys the place. Why didn’t God engage Lot, who was already living there instead of Abraham who was far off and didn’t even know the kind of people that were there?

Both questions and answers have immediate applicability to today. While I am loathe calling Washington, D.C. the modern day incarnation of Sodom and Gomorrah, as the old adage goes, “if the shoe fits….”

1. The answer to the first question – for some people, no matter how much they have for themselves, it is never enough. And not only that, because they do have so much, they care even less about anyone else. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah had an innate jealousy that their abundance could be shared and thus an equally innate hatred of the other. I am really mystified how they could accept Lot to live there and then turn on three measly strangers that come to visit. Nevertheless it is clear that even though Lot welcomed them into his home and he tried to bribe off the mob, he was not prepared to go any further. They overstuffed society had no ‘golden rule’ of ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ They had no consideration for anyone else who might have been poor or injured or incapable. They were self-center, concerned with self-aggrandizement and self fulfillment that they could not bring themselves to share the wealth.

2. Why not Lot? Didn’t he grow up in Abraham’s home; listen to his uncle’s teaching about justice and righteousness? While Lot is certainly a good person who welcomed in the strangers, that was about as far as he could go. He did not go outside his home to argue with the mob. He did not proclaim a vision of society. Lot did not share the ideals of loving others, sharing and caring, of chesed and mishpat, righteousness and justice. He was good enough to practice it himself, but he was not good enough to fight for it in the public space. Abraham was different. He didn’t give lip service. He walked enough of the walk to earn the right to do the talk with God.

What we have witnessed and endured this past period of time is surely a modern day incarnation of these issues.

While there might significant issues in the details of the Affordable Care Act, can anybody say with any sense of dignity and self respect that they deserve health insurance and others don’t?

Can anybody say that the richest country on the face of the earth cannot take care of each other, while Israel, which has a much larger per capita cost to defend itself, can have universal health coverage and we can’t?

Can anybody justify hurting millions of people, from veterans who have defended us in the past to those in the military who defend us now, from those validly counting on their weekly SNAP and social security to those hardworking men and women in other arms of the government which then extends like a spider’s web throughout our society with untold damage and harm, financially, psychologically and spiritually?

If that’s not Sodom and Gomorrah, I don’t know what is!

While debt is a serious issue and American financial health is very important, like Lot, where is the vision? Where is the wisdom to implement responsible government that addresses all the issues and all the needs of this country? Maybe all of them are no better than Lot in the Torah, a good man, but no better. A moral person in an immoral world, but no better. A likeable guy in an evil place, but no better. His best answer was “take my girls and leave me alone.” “Where there is no vision, the people perish” said Solomon in Proverbs. How close have we come?

That is why we are called the children of Abraham, because he had a vision of justice and mercy, kindness and consideration and was prepared to enunciate in the highest public place, before God, and Lot did not. When Abraham had no children, in the custom of the ancient world, Lot his nephew could have become the inheritor of the line of the family, and his descendants become the leaders. Oy for a world filled with people like Lot!

The need to be the children of Abraham is needed now more than ever before. “For I have known (Abraham), that he will command his children and his household after him, and they will keep God’s ways, doing righteousness and justice.” [Genesis 18.19] The battle has just begun.

        Shabbat Shalom