Passing Judgement on Nations (Vayera #1)

Do we have a right to assess the values of another nation? Ok, conventional wisdom says absolutely not and that our judgement is blurred by our own cultural biases, but what about from a Torah point of view? The answer to this is not straightforward, but Parshat Vayera can provide us with some very interesting insights. 

The first outside culture dealt with in this week’s parsha is the infamous Sodom. The second half of Genesis 18 contains a curious dialogue in which Hashem tells Avraham that he has decided to destroy Sodom and Amarah, and Avraham argues with him: “Will you end the innocent along with the guilty?” (18:23). Avraham, being a natural people person and a man whose greatest characteristic is chesed (loving kindness), assumes that the region cannot be ALL bad. He then attempts to find some salvation for the city in which his nephew has settled. He slowly whittles his plea from 50 innocent people to 10 innocent people, but Hashem assures him that there are not even 10. Avraham has no further argument left.

Why did Avraham try so hard? He wasn’t ignorant of Sodom. He had interacted with its people, with its king. He lived close enough to hear of the nasty customs that, according to the midrash, ran the gamut of punishing those who tried to help the poor to torturing guests who sought lodging in the city. And yet Avraham still believed he could find innocence.

The second outside culture that is encountered in this week’s parsha is that of Gerar, a small Philistine kingdom to the south ruled by a king known as Avimelech. This is Avraham’s first mentioned interaction with Avimelech and the people of Gerar. Perhaps because he is moving south, the same direction as Egypt where he had discovered the pernicious character of their king when it came to beautiful women, Avraham once again introduces Sarah as his sister rather than his wife (although it did cause him a bit of trouble previously). When Avimelech claims the beautiful Sarah, Hashem comes to him in a dream and corrects him. The next morning Avimelech confronts Avraham with a sentence that I found rather intriguing: “What did you see that you did this thing?” (20:10).

Avimelech assumes that there is a reason that he and his people were deemed untrustworthy by Avraham. And Avraham had reasons, but they were based, perhaps, on his understanding of Egyptian culture rather than Philistine culture. Avraham’s response is a mixture of apology and explanation: “Because I said, there is no fear of God in this region and they will slay me on account of my wife” (20:11).  (Concept inspired by commentary of Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch). Indeed, Avimelech demonstrates a true and genuine fear of God.

In parshat Vayera, we learn that it is human to judge others. God did not rebuke Avraham for trying to hide Sarah from Avimelech, He simply intervened, and no one came to harm. And although Hashem proved to Avraham that the society of Sodom really was rotten unto its core, Avraham is certainly presented as praiseworthy for his attempt to save “even ten.”

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch has a beautiful insight on Genesis 18:23, when Avraham asks God if he would ruin the righteous with the wicked: “Avraham put himself in the place of such an innocent person [the possible one among the many wicked] to be saved in the midst of the general terrible catastrophe. He feels what he would feel in such a position….and now he ventures to express the thought - whether perhaps the pain which the righteous would have to endure at seeing the terrible destruction of their fell-citizens all around them might not be worthy of consideration….”

Nations have character. The jokes about Irishmen, Germans, and even Jews, all have a morsel of truth, which is what makes them funny. Avraham made an assumption about the people of Gerar because of his experience with similar cultures - he was wrong about their lack of fear of God, but not wholly wrong about how they might behave. And Avraham was unable to see the  all-encompassing wickedness of the people of Sodom because he could not possibly relate to it, and so he tried to find merit for them. (Perhaps this is the Biblical source for those who so blindly try to excuse the violence of our enemies.)

As the Jewish nation, the Chosen People, we must learn many lessons from our great ancestors. We cannot blur all other nations into one. The Philistines were not like the Egyptians, even though they shared some cultural traits. At the same time, we have enemies, alas, and we must not assume that they view the world in the same way we do, as Avraham hoped for at least someone in Sodom.

There is only One Judge in this world, only One who can assess the ratio of goodness to evil, and the only One who can direct us to the right actions to take.

Avram, Lot and the Challenges of Differences (Lech Lecha)

Have you ever thought about the relationship of Avram or Lot? It seems almost a tangent to the unfolding of the history of the Jewish nation. Certainly, Lot is important, as is pointed out by commentators after the destruction of Sodom - he was the forefather of Moab and thus one of the progenitors of King David. Prior to the destruction of Sodom, however, one might wonder about the importance of Lot. Reading the narrative of Genesis 13 one realizes that part of the necessary development of Avram was recognizing the character flaws of his nephews and dealing with the need to let him go.

First, of course, there is the obvious Dvar Torah material: Avram asks Lot to split from him because he disagrees with Lot allowing his shepherds to graze on the lands of the Canaanite and the Perizzites. There are many important lessons one can learn from this - particularly in the age of copyright infringement...but the perek has several less obvious but equally striking details.

Lot is introduced into this perek with “V’gam, And also to Lot, who went with Avram...” (13:5). All these things (going forth from his land, finding Canaan in a state of famine, going down to Egypt and all that occurred there) happened with Avram and Sarai, and also Lot went with them. The verse concludes, however, by stating that Lot now had sheep and cattle and tents. Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch points out that the final word, “and tents,” is written in complete form to infer that Lot had “ceased being a member of Abraham’s household, had his own independent circle in which he was master of the house.” This, according to Rabbi Hirsh’s comments on the next verse, is why the land could not support all of them - because they were two different households with two different life missions. Whereas Avram raised sheep and cattle for sustenance, Lot raised them for wealth.

When Avram approached Lot to resolve the situation, he said to him: “Let there be no strife, please, between me and you, between my shepherds and your shepherds, because we are ‘brothers.’ Is not the whole land before you? Separate, please from me. If you go left, I will go right; and if you go right, I will go left” (13:8-9).

While Avram literally asks Lot to go away from him, he does so in a way that implies a desire for a connection to remain. He does not refer to his relationship with Lot as “kirovim, relatives,” but rather as “achim, brothers.” This sets a tone of equality in their relationship, even though one assumes that since Lot is the nephew, he is younger and has basically spent his life following Avram. Indeed, v’gam Lot tells us that the material possessions to which Lot is so dedicated are his only because he was part of Avram’s party.

Avram recognizes that Lot and he have different philosophies about life and that Lot is not then interested in change. He knows it is best to send Lot away, but he also hopes that Lot will someday change his stripes and look at the world through a more spiritual lens. Rashi points out that his wording “If you go left, I will go right; and if you go right, I will go left” is Avram’s way of telling Lot “Wherever you settle down, I will not go far from you and I will stand by you as a shield and as a helper.” This idea reminded me of the advice stated in Talmud Sanhedrin 107b: “Let the left hand repulse but the right hand always invite back.”

Lot, of course, proves his materialistic drive by looking at the land around him with a whole new perspective (“Vyisah Lot et ainav...Lot raised his eyes and saw,” but he had already been dwelling in this place, implying that he saw it in a whole new way - in this case with an eye of possession or greed).

Lot departs, and suddenly God visits Avram and tells him to perform an act very similar to Lot, to lift up his eyes and look out over all of the land. God then reaffirms his promise of offspring to Avram. Why? Because Avram is human. He has emotions. He is sad that he has had to ask his nephew to separate from him. As much as he believes in God’s promise of lineage, he somewhat perceived Lot as his successor. Lot was the youth who dwelled among his tents. But Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the “well-watered plain of the Jordan Valley” - he saw wealth ready and there for the taking.  Avram, on the other hand, raised his eyes and saw potential, and God told him to “get up and walk the land” - to take action so that all that the land possessed, all of its spiritual wealth a well as its physical grandeur, could be his.

Humans, Not Animals (Noah)

The generation into which Noah was born was a generation of corruption. Throughout rabbinic literature and Biblical commentary, one can find discussions of what it means that the people had become corrupted. They stole from each other. They took each others’ spouses. They were violent in their dealings. But one of the most interesting Midrashim is one that explains that God decided to wipe out ALL flesh (kol basar, not just all of humankind) because man’s behavior had begun to corrupt the behavior of other species. I am not going to explore the details of what behavior this midrash is inferring, but it goes along the lines of interspecies cohabitation and such.

So how could humankind have such an influence over animal-kind. How did man corrupt beast? The fact is that we do not (and perhaps cannot) understand humankind’s relationship with animals before the flood. In one particularly interesting set of verses in parshat Bereishis, Hashem determines that “it is not good for Adam to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him” (2:18). Hashem then brings all of the animals to man “to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name...but for Adam no fitting helper was found” (Bereishis 2:19).

According to one Midrash, Adam lived closely with the animals, which is why he was able to name them. Only when it was obvious that Adam was different from all the rest did Hashem create the division of Adam and Chava, so that now they were a pair. And while God gave them dominion over the land and the animals (“Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth” - 1:28), perhaps they were still closer in nature to the other creations. Indeed, perhaps this is why they could communicate with the snake.

There are lots of current discussions about what separates humankind from animal-kind, and the list of abilities often include speech and reason and discourse. Speech and reasoning and discourse...is it possible that these distinctions were the result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad?

Perhaps the generations just before the flood could have such influence over the animal kingdom because they did not distinguish themselves from them. After the flood, however, Hashem gives Noah and his family a new understanding of their relationship with the animals they had just preserved: “The fear and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky – everything with which the earth is astir– and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these” (9:2-3).

It is very hard for us, today, to understand both how Adam could have named the animals and how the animals could have been corrupted by a generation (and, one could add, how Noah and his family dwelt in a boat with all of the animals). Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsh points out that herein: “the attachment between man and animal is broken. Animals fear man, he is no longer their guiding master. Man has unlearnt [sic] to understand animals and they keep fearfully away from him.” He later adds, “the bond between humankind and the animal world is torn, and humankind is primarily directed to work on itself and for itself.”

These ideas are particularly fascinating in the 21^st century, in a world where people might have …an emotional support squirrel? PETA? Equivocating animal rights to the Holocaust and perceiving animals to be no different than humans? If world history is an arc, with the end being the coming of Moshiach, and we are in the final centuries before the messianic era, than perhaps there is a reason that people are once again blurring their understanding of the difference of humankind (made in the image of God) and animal-kind.