AND ABRAM SAID TO LOT,

"PLEASE LET THERE BE NO QUARREL BETWEEN ME AND BETWEEN YOU AND BETWEEN MY

HERDSMEN AND BETWEEN YOUR HERDSMEN, FOR WE ARE KINSMEN. IS

NOT ALL THE LAND BEFORE YOU? PLEASE PART FROM ME; IF [YOU GO] LEFT, I WILL GO

RIGHT, AND IF [YOU GO] RIGHT, I WILL GO LEFT."

(Bereishit

13:8-9)

if [you go] left, I will

go right Wherever you

dwell, I will not distance myself from you, and I will stand by you as a

protector and a helper. And he ultimately needed him, as it is said (below 14:14): And Abram heard that his kinsman had

been captured, etc.

(Rashi

Bereishit 13:9, Judaica Press translation)

…the disagreement was over

the prohibition of robbery, the same thing that was the main cause of the Flood

– as Rashi says, "For the earth has become full of robbery -Their

verdict was sealed only because of robbery." That tipped the balance,

bringing destruction to the world and all it contained – that divided Lot and

Abraham, it removed Lot and his descendants from Abraham's world, making Lot

the father of Amon and Moab, but not of Israel.

Lot – who had walked with

Abraham – separated from him when he was asked to walk in Abraham's path and

desist from robbery… – this is not merely a geographical separation of

location, but a profound difference of world view.

(Nehama

Leibowitz, Iyyunim BeSefer Bereishit, pp. 91-92)

Don't Look Behind

Marcel Langbeheim

The

story of Abraham's nephew Lot begins in our parasha and ends in the next – Vayeira.

I would like to begin from a moment just before the story's end, the dramatic

moment before God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, when Lot and his family try to

escape the city:

And

the city."

 But

perish." (Bereishit 19:15-17)

And

the cities, and the vegetation of the ground.

And his wife looked behind him, and she

became a pillar of salt. (Bereishit 19:25-26)

While

the angels press Lot to leave the town, one of them tells him something that

seems to constitute a prohibition but can also be understood as mere advice:

…he

the entire plain. Flee to the mountain, lest you perish."

The

seriousness of that prohibition/advice becomes clear the moment that Lot's wife

transgresses it and turns around:

And

his wife looked behind him, and she became a pillar of salt!

Many

exegetes understand the prohibition against "looking behind" literally;

claiming that it comes to keep mortals from gazing upon the Divinity or It’s

agents while the destruction is being carried out.

I

would like to take a somewhat different tack and try to uncover the deeper

meaning of "looking behind."

Did

the angel mean to suggest that Lot should act in the spirit of 18^th

century German Sturm und Drang literature, as when Friedrich Schiller

had a character in one of his plays tell her husband:

Schau

vorwaerts Werner und nicht hinter dich!

Look

forward Werner, and not behind you!

It

is quite doubtful that this is what the Torah is up to.

Even

in the army – the most blatant symbol of the spirit of "Forward!" – units

gather together after each operation for follow-up discussions in order to draw

conclusions from their experience so as to improve their performance in the

future.

The

importance of "looking behind" is especially salient in

psychoanalysis, which claims that it is impossible to move forward in the

present without "looking behind" to understand the past.

One

of Judaism's central ideas is also based upon retrospection. Without thinking

about our past and inspecting our deeds, teshuvah – "repentance"

or "return" – would be impossible.

If

so, what is the true meaning of the advice, do not look behind you?

Rashi

adopts an interesting perspective:

do

not look behind you – You

dealt wickedly together with them, but in Abraham’s merit you are saved. You do

not deserve to see their punishment while you are being saved. (Judaica Press translation)

Rashi's

intention is clear. Lot is not any better than the other inhabitants of Sodom

and it is only thanks to Abraham that he is saved. It is strange that he

chooses the expression ainkha kedai – "you do not deserve" –

while RaMBaN corrects this to anikha rashai – "you are not

allowed."

According

to Rashi it is indeed not worthwhile – not kedai – for Lot to look

behind to the period of his life that tied him to Sodom and Gemorrah. It

appears, and this point is made by the majority of commentators, that every

step Lot took after leaving Abraham's protection and turning in another direction

– in every sense of that phrase – was a step in the wrong direction.

And

evil and sinful against the Lord. (Chapter 13:1-13)

The

language of Scripture leaves no room for doubt. Lot chose Sodom for economic

reasons, even while he was completely aware that the people of Sodom were

very evil and sinful against the Lord. For Lot, the ends justify the means.

According

to Rashi: "Nevertheless, Lot did not hesitate to sojourn with them. And

our Rabbis (Yoma

38b) learned from here that (Proverbs 10:7): The name of the wicked shall rot.

Explaining

the verse, and he pitched his tents until Sodom, Hizkuni claims in Lot's

defense that the word ad – "until" – does not imply that he

actually lived inside the town, rather, as scripture puts it, Lot dwelled in

the gate of Sodom (19:1).

Most

of the commentators understand the word "until" as describing Lot's

gradual approach, tent by tent, slowly but surely, "until" Sodom,

using money to buy his way into the xenophobic town.

Lot

did not really want to arrive in Sodom, but rather only "until"

Sodom. His intention to stick to Abraham's path even while living in Sodom was

perhaps good, but his execution of that intention was deplorable.

When

coming to explain the expression haketza'akata – whether according to

her cry – the midrash tells us the terrible story of Lot's daughter:

[The

people of ] Sodom announced, saying: "Anyone who helps the poor,

destitute, or stranger by [giving them a] loaf of bread shall be burnt by

fire!" Lot's daughter Plotit was married to one of Sodom's great men; she

saw a poor man starving in the town square and her soul became saddened for

him. What did she do? Every day when she went out to draw water she would put

all kinds of food from her home into her pitcher and feed that poor man. The

people of Sodom said: "What is sustaining him in life?" until they

came to know the matter and took her out to be burned. She said: "God of

the world! Do justice for me with the people of Sodom!" and rose up before

the Throne of Glory…

We see that Lot's daughter was the recipient

of a better "Abrahamic" education than her father was. Her moral

education moved her to help the poor man, but her environment did not allow her

to practice what she had learned and for that she paid a heavy price. Lot

certainly understood that his environment did not allow him to live according

to "Abrahamic" principles. Despite losing his daughter in such a

horrifying fashion, he did not draw the correct conclusions and remained in

Sodom.

Lot was also full of good intentions while

being visited by the angels, but the consequences of his deeds were far from

good.

RaMBaN (Bereishit

19:8) explains the situation aptly:

Praise of this man led us to denounce him; he

took great pains to protect the guests who came in under his roof, but when he

tried to placate the townspeople by giving up his daughters – that was just

evil-hearted, for fornication with women was not beyond the pale in his eyes,

and he did not think he was committing great violence against his daughters. Regarding

this our Rabbis said: "It is normal for a man to give himself over to kill

or be killed for the sakes of his daughters or his wife, and this one hands

over his daughters for them to be abused! The Holy One blessed be He told him:

"You are saving them for yourself!"

Lot has yet to understand that he must leave

the destructive environment in which he lives. He is humiliated by his

sons-in-law, natives of Sodom, who laugh at him:

But he seemed like a jester in the eyes of

his sons-in-law. They said to him: "Fool of all the world! There are

lyres and harps and flutes in the town – and you say that Sodom will be

destroyed? (Midrash HaGadol)

Even

so, Lot does not pack his things, but rather tarries. (Rashi: But

he tarried – in order to save his possessions.") Only through

force do the angels manage to take him and his family out of Sodom:

But

he tarried, and the

daughters, out of the Lord's pity for him…

Even

when the angels are forcibly pulling him out, Lot continues in his egocentric

way and argues with them about shortening his escape route.

Lot's

wife has a completely different response. True, most of the exegetes relate to

her as a wicked woman who behaves in the manner customary in Sodom, but that

really does not have any support in Scripture.

I

understand the expression "to look back" as offering a way to view

Lot's wife in a more positive light.

Notice:

it is written And his wife looked behind him and not that she

looked behind herself. Perhaps Lot's wife froze in her place and

became a pillar of salt because she stands – nitzevet – facing

the destruction her husband left "behind him"; a catastrophe that

arrived in the wake of a series of bad decisions resulting from Lot's lack of

will and ability to see what was going on around him and his inability to get

up and remove himself from Sodom in time.

Isn't

it possible to view Lot's wife as someone concerned about the fate of her

daughters and sons-in-law who were left behind (as per RaShBaM and RaMBaN on

verse 14)? Isn't it a human reaction to look back to the place where one's

children remain?

Daniel

Mendelsohn's new and fascinating book, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six

Million (Harper-Collins), traces the fates of six of his family members who

died in the Holocaust. He uses ideas drawn from the book of Bereishit,

including the episodes of Flood and of Sodom and Gomorrah in order to explain

the Holocaust's complicated story to himself and to the reader. He compares Lot's

behavior and his wife's reaction to the traumatic reactions of Holocaust

victims:

…it

seems clear that Lot and his family are commanded not to look back at it not as

a punishment, but for a practical reason: because regret for what we have lost,

for the pasts we have to abandon, often poisons any attempts to make a new

life, which is what Lot and his family now must do, as Noah and his family once

had to do, as indeed all those who survive awful annihilations must somehow do.

This explanation, in turn, helps explain the form that the punishment of Lot's

wife took – if indeed it was a punishment to begin with, which I personally do

not believe it was, since to me it seems far more like a natural process, the

inevitable outcome of her character. For those who are compelled by their

natures always to be looking back at what has been, rather than forwards into

the future, the great danger is tears, the unstoppable weeping that the Greeks,

if not the author of Genesis, knew was not only a pain but a neurotic pleasure,

too: a mournful contemplation so flawless, so crystalline, that it can, in the

end, immobilize you.(pg. 448)

The

angels' message to Lot is then very clear:

You,

who lived in Sodom for so long knowing that you had chosen the wrong path, but

did not change it and did not get up and leave, now do not look behind

you – run for your life lest you be destroyed!

Lot's

wife was of a different, much softer mettle. She could not take the strain and

was transformed into a pillar of tears.

Marcel Langbeheim

is a chemist and the owner of a chemical plant

Love and Hate Mekalkalot et HaShura – Cause Disregard

for Acceptably Dignified Behavior

13 Years Since the Murder of Yitzhak Rabin z"l

The Sages teach us: "Thirteen years old for

years after Rabin's murder, the time has come for contemplation and the

assumption of responsibility for one of the most shocking events in the entire

history of the State of Israel: the murder of a Prime Minister by a young Jew

in the name of his Jewish faith.

Soon after the assassination which shocked many

members of Israeli society – and not only those who identified with Rabin's

politics – Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion

in Alon Shevut, gave a lecture which was later published on a discussion in the

tractate Yoma 23a involving the murder of one priest by another in the temple. The

murder was motivated by religious fervor, as the Talmud explains:

The Rabbis taught: There

was an incident involving two priests who were similar to each other and who

were running and ascending the ramp [of the altar]. One of them entered the

space of four cubits around the other – he took a knife and stabbed him in the

heart. Rabbi Zadok stood on the steps

of the hall and said: Our brothers, the House of Israel, listen! It says: If

out… (Devarim

21:1,2). On whose behalf shall we bring the eglah

arufa (broken-necked calf)? For the city or for the Temple?

The whole assembled

public began to cry.

The boy's father came and

saw that he was still in his death-throws. He said: He is your atonement, my

son is still convulsing, and the knife has not been made ritually impure.

This teaches us that they were more concerned with the

ritual purity of objects than they were with blood shed.

Murder out of religious zeal has its precedents; the

Jerusalem Talmud also describes Beit Shammai's violent "victory" over

Beit Hillel.

The Talmudic story cited above teaches us that a

warped order of religious priorities (the ritual purity of objects before

bloodshed) disrupts judgment and any standard of moral and human behavior. In

this story R. Zadok asks a deep question: Who is to be held responsible for the

murder – the azara – the sanctified area or the "city" -the

street.

This difficult question – and perhaps it is a

rhetorical question – can also be asked in our own day: who must perform moral

self-inspection? Must the spiritual leadership offer a self-accounting? Did the

religious leadership merely echo the street and not take the lead?

It is not accidental that R. Zadok's question is left

unanswered.

If, almost thirteen years after the murder, a persons

or persons unknown tried to kill Prof. Sternhell because of his opinions and

that did not cause a great outcry – we must deduce that Israeli society learned

nothing from Rabin's murder, which was not an isolated incident. It was

preceded by the grenade thrown at demonstrators which killed Emile Gruenzweig

and the slaughter in Me'arat HaMakhpeila.

If pages that are meant to publicize words of Torah

instead publicize incitement against Arabs and accusations against

"leftists," one cannot be surprised by the creation of an atmosphere

sanctifying a "religious war" and a struggle for principles in which

all means are justified.

Perhaps the time has come for responsibility to be

taken for management of disagreements – even the most difficult of them – so

that there will be no need to say: Our hands did not spill this blood and

our eyes did not see.

Pinchas Leiser – editor

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