Parshat Vayeira opens with a 99-year-old man recuperating from surgery rushing to host three visitors – who turned out to be Divine beings, bearing some good and some not-so-good tidings.
The good news for Abraham was that he would again father a son, this time with his beloved wife Sarah. The not-so-good-news was that God was planning to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the Dead Sea plane, where his nephew Lot was living.
While the sedra casts Abraham in a positive light, it does the opposite for Lot. Where Abraham was seen as a person of principle who lived a Divinely inspired life, his nephew by the end of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode couldn’t have been more discredited.
What, if any, are the moral messages of this contrast?
As background, Abraham adopted Lot after Haran (Lot’s father and Abraham’s brother) died prematurely in Mesopotamia. Though the two had lived and travelled together extensively, affluence led to territorial arguments, causing a parting of their ways.
Lot chose the more fertile Jordan valley for his grazing flocks, and eventually settled in Sodom, a town inhabited by the “wicked, and sinners against the Lord, exceedingly” (Gen. 13:13). Yet, despite his surroundings, Lot was perceived as righteous in the eyes of Abraham and God. Even as his town of choice was about to be destroyed, Lot hesitated to flee.
The late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed out that in a world created by a universal God, Abraham, though not without shortcomings and flaws, was an example of moral leadership, religious devotion and conviction to a higher ideal.
Lot, tutored by his uncle, began that way but his convictions seem to have diminished over time. He still knew to offer hospitality to strangers (Gen. 19:2). Yet, what occurred with his surviving daughters is horrifying and inexplicable. (They both became pregnant by him.)
Despite our revulsion towards Lot, his descendants perplexingly merited to be the ancestors of Ruth the Moabite, whose example set a precedent for Jewish conversion, and whose descendent David is the progenitor of the Messianic line.
As a tale of contrasts, the Torah reader wants to identify with Abraham and to shun Lot. But, in fact, during our lifetimes we regrettably become a combination of both – behaviour we are proud of and the opposite. Environment, and the company we keep, whether real or virtual, plays a much larger part in our decision making and character formation than we are willing to admit.
We live in an age of siloing and echo-chambers, and the constant exposure to corrosive social media. Like the detrimental influence of Sodom and Gomorrah, for our spiritual and mental wellbeing, it is even more important to manage where we spend our time and to check by whom we are being influenced.
