Genesis 18-22:24
Not Lot
by Rabbi Jeremy Rosen
Lot does not seem to be a very nice person. His uncle (and brother-in-law) Abraham takes him under his wing when Lot’s father died, and they reach Canaan. Together they are forced by famine to go down to Egypt where they both prosper. On their return, there is tension between Lot’s shepherds and Abraham’s, and they agree to part company. Lot is given the choice and decides to move down towards the cities of Sodom and Amorah despite their reputation for venality. Lot gets caught up in a struggle between warring kings and is captured. Abraham rescues him.
This week’s reading concerns the destruction of the corrupt cities of Sodom and Amorah. And the moral decline of Lot. Whereas Abraham was always known for his hospitality, the people of Sodom had no regard for strangers. When visitors came to Lot, he welcomed them. Something of Abraham's values still remained. The men of Sodom gathered around Lot’s house demanding he hand them over to do with as they pleased and in an amazingly cruel way, he offered his two daughters to the mob instead. What a distortion of values. Fortunately the visitors intervened.
Sodom was destroyed. Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt and Lot and his two daughters escaped up the mountain. Looking back at the devastation the daughters think, mistakenly, that the rest of the world has been destroyed. As the lone survivors, they want to keep mankind alive through their father. They get him drunk, first the elder and then the younger. Was he complicit, twice? There are different opinions in the Midrash as to whether the girls or Lot took the initiative!
What is the Torah telling us with this very strange narrative? That however good a person is, society, the company one chooses, can exercise a highly destructive influence, and distort one’s moral judgment. Lot may have started as a good man, taught by Abraham. The rabbis even say that he was shocked by Abraham’s treatment of Sarah. But the further he moved away, the more he was influenced by the corruption of Sodom. He lost his moral compass and that influenced his family accordingly.
Today more than ever, we are so susceptible to outside, social influences and mob rule from universities to businesses, that we and even more so our children, can easily slip down the ladder of moral judgment and value. We have to be strong and choose the right company and values instead of the easiest and the lowest.
Shabbat Shalom
Jeremy
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Jeremy Rosen was born in Manchester, England, the eldest son of Rabbi Kopul Rosen and Bella Rosen. Rosen's thinking was strongly influenced by his father, who rejected fundamentalist and obscurantist approaches in favour of being open to the best the secular world has to offer while remaining committed to religious life. He was first educated at Carmel College, the school his father had founded based on this philosophical orientation. At his father's direction, Rosen also studied at Be'er Yaakov Yeshiva in Israel (1957–1958 and 1960). He then went on to Merkaz Harav Kook (1961), and Mir Yeshiva (1965–1968) in Jerusalem, where he received semicha from Rabbi Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz in addition to Rabbi Dovid Povarsky of Ponevezh and Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Shapiro of Yeshivat Be'er Ya'akov. In between Rosen attended Cambridge University (1962–1965), graduating with a degree in Moral Sciences.