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 as the dawn rose, the angels pressed Lot, saying, "Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you perish because of the iniquity of the city."

 But he tarried, and the men took hold of his hand and his wife's hand, and the hand of his two daughters, out of the Lord's pity for him, and they took him out and placed him outside the city. And it came to pass, when they took them outside, that he said, "Flee for your life, do not look behind you, and do not stand in the entire plain. Flee to the mountain, lest you perish." (Bereishit 19:15-17)

And He turned over these cities and the entire plain, and all the inhabitants of 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 said, "Flee for your life, do not look behind you, and do not stand in 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 Lot raised his eyes, and he saw the entire plain of the Jordan, that it was entirely watered; before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as you come to Zoar... and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, and he pitched his tents until Sodom. And the people of Sodom were very 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 men took hold of his hand and his wife's hand, and the hand of his two 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 [being obligated to perform] the commandments." Perhaps now, thirteen 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 someone slain is found in the land... your elders and magistrates shall go 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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