Is It Worth The Salt?

Is It Worth The Salt?
Rabbi Andrew Kaplan Mandel

Abraham has a nephew named Lot
who chooses to live in Sodom,
a city fraught with frightening cruelty.
Why would Lot go there, and why would he remain?
When do we stay in spaces or systems
that could compromise our safety or our values?

In the Torah portion this week,
a mob of Sodomites attempt to sexually assault Lot’s male visitors.

While Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
could not distinguish between
loving same-sex relationships and violent ones
and interpreted the sin of Sodom as homosexuality,
our rabbinic tradition throughout the ages
does not focus on male-male desire in this story.

Instead, the sages draw on other verses
from the Hebrew Bible, as well as midrashim,
about this famous city and conclude
that its chief sins were selfishness,
xenophobia, and the violent mistreatment of others.

Whereas Abraham models wealth shared generously,
the book of Ezekiel writes,
“Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance!
She and her daughters had plenty of bread
and untroubled tranquility;
yet she did not support the poor and the needy.”

According to the Talmud,
Sodom was a prosperous place
where even the dust was gold,
and its residents wanted to keep it that way.
“Why do we need travelers,
as they come only to divest us of our property?” they said.
“Come, let us cause the proper treatment
of travelers to be forgotten from our land.”

When newcomers in need entered the city,
they received a coin bearing the name of a resident of Sodom.
But then, they were not permitted to purchase food with that money.
When a newcomer inevitably died of starvation,
the resident would come and take the coin back.
This practice appears to have been a way to create a veneer of hospitality,
lulling the impoverished into a false sense of security,
gaining their favor before denying them their needs.

The Talmud reports that
the people of Sodom had beds
on which they would lay visitors;
when a guest was longer than the bed,
they would cut him,
and when a guest was shorter than the bed,
they would stretch him.
One size fits all in Sodom.

And as Nechama Liebowitz, a contemporary commentator, has observed,
the scariest part was that this behavior
was not simply the work of individuals
but was “clothed with a cloak of legality.”
The judges in court were named Perpetual Liar and Perverter of Justice;
There’s no attempt to mask who is presiding over this sinister system.

So, what’s a member of Judaism’s first family like Lot
doing in a place like this?

We got a clue last week,
when Abraham and Lot decided to part ways.
When offered different options for where to live,
Lot chose the fertile plain that led to Sodom.
The medieval commentator Rashi
reads Lot’s choice as motivated by materialism and greed.
Maybe as a person of means,
Lot was not immediately subject to,
or conscious of, his neighbors’ hatred toward foreigners.
Or maybe he chose to ignore it.

Regardless, not every commentator thought Lot was simply selfish.
Several sources note that Lot may have intended
to bring some goodness to Sodom.
After all, he did offer hospitality to guests.
But he had to do so by cover of night;
he wasn’t able to live his values outwardly.
And then he quickly found himself caught up in a xenophobic mob,
accused of being an uppity outsider,
compelled to compromise the safety of his own family
by offering up his unmarried daughters to the violent crowd.

And even still it was hard for him to leave.
The divine messengers had to strong-arm Lot
into fleeing the city before its destruction.
Was it just his possessions he wanted to save,
Or did he think that he could rescue the city from its immorality?
Lot’s wife famously turned into a pillar of salt
after looking back at Sodom;
she might have been concerned about her married daughters,
whose husbands laughed at Lot when he finally said to go.
Another source suggests that Lot’s wife’s attachment to material worth
and the life she was leaving behind
made her dither during her departure,
which led to her demise.

This tale raises all sorts of very hard questions, including:
In our personal sphere,
In our professional sphere,
In our public sphere,
when do we allow ourselves to be so seduced by self-interest
that we ignore the mistreatment of others?

Even more broadly, I’m sure many of us
have been in the place of Lot
– where we may not agree
with everything that’s happening in our midst,
but we also have benefits from the status quo
that we don’t want to give up,
and we may be convinced
that we can still uphold what we believe is right.

But this story invites us to look at what that does to us.
When you do not immediately conform to the mob,
you can get quickly vilified yourself,
you may end up hurting the people you love,
and you may remain so blind to the consequences
that you fail to know when to let go,
even when every other sign is telling you that your house cannot stand.
This is not a story that condemns wealth.
Abraham is depicted as quite well-off.
The difference is that he shares,
and that he doesn’t hang out with extremists.
So, clearly one of the messages of this story is:
Beware of those with whom you associate.
even if you can see distinctions between your values and theirs.
To be clear, those distinctions can exist.
In the Torah portion,
God doesn’t immediately destroy Sodom,
instead saying, “I will go down to see
whether they have acted altogether
according to the outcry that has reached Me.”
Therefore, before passing judgment on a whole group of people,
G-d finds it’s important to remain curious
rather than making assumptions.
This is particularly notable since presumably
G-d already knows everything
And still makes the effort to pursue due process.
But when Abraham becomes fearful that
G-d will eliminate the entire city
based on what the divine agents discover,
he urges G-d to avoid over-generalizing
and to save Sodom if there are a certain number
of righteous individuals there.
He is convinced that such people exist,
despite the city’s reputation.
Indeed, that outcry that reached G-d
– several sources attribute it to a righteous woman in Sodom,
perhaps Lot’s daughter,
prosecuted for showing kindness to a stranger.
This reminds us that we can’t paint with a broad brush
when looking at groups that we might be quick to discount.
It also shows that using our voice is
A tool at our disposal
when we feel the consequences of an immoral society.
It may be possible to maintain our integrity
In places and amongst people who challenge our values.
But if the spaces we occupy
must be brought to a reckoning,
may we protect everyone we can – and never look back.