Dear Friends,
Why did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? Was it because the people were inhospitable and did not welcome visitors? Or, did the people practice depraved or deviant sexual behavior? Were the people xenophobic, belittling and demeaning others?
It could be any or all of these possibilities. God only declared that the outrage and the sin of the people was so great and that they would be destroyed.
A commentary, however, offers an instructive answer to our question, and one which has bearing on our world, today. Rabbi Gunther Plaut, in The Torah, A Modern Commentary, basing his insights on the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 50:9), wrote: “The sin of Sodom consisted not only in what its people did but in what they failed to do. Thus, no one raised his voice in protest when the crowd molested Lot’s guests. Failure to protest is to participate in the sin of a community.” (Plaut, p. 135)
Today, days after a most contested election, and after months of protest in the streets over racial inequity, police brutality, and now election results, our Torah and commentary prompt us to reconsider the act of protesting. The commentary urges us not to be quiescent and complicit in that which upsets or outrages us. As Americans, we have many rights, including the rights to assemble and to exercise free speech, and we have one galvanizing responsibility: to use our vote to express our voice. We are privileged to live in the nation which established the experiment of representational democracy – ever since Washington, Adams and Jefferson – and that experiment is still churning new results in today’s test-tubes. If Torah teaches that failure to protest is to participate in the sin of a community, then we should applaud ourselves for using our voice, our footsteps and our ballots to make our most central and personal protests – irrespective of our political leanings.
One last word – also from the Sodom and Gomorrah vignette: we must remember to protest properly. We should use our voices and express opinions; use our ears and listen to one another. Violence – either in the ancient biblical cities or in today’s American cities – is not protest but brutality, and ancient and modern commentators all have condemned the bloodshed of Sodom and Gomorrah. The pen is mightier than the sword.
Sodom’s sin, according to this midrashic understanding, was that the people failed to exercise their moral consciences.
This Shabbat when we read of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode, let’s appreciate our voices, and use them.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
Why did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? Was it because the people were inhospitable and did not welcome visitors? Or, did the people practice depraved or deviant sexual behavior? Were the people xenophobic, belittling and demeaning others?
It could be any or all of these possibilities. God only declared that the outrage and the sin of the people was so great and that they would be destroyed.
A commentary, however, offers an instructive answer to our question, and one which has bearing on our world, today. Rabbi Gunther Plaut, in The Torah, A Modern Commentary, basing his insights on the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 50:9), wrote: “The sin of Sodom consisted not only in what its people did but in what they failed to do. Thus, no one raised his voice in protest when the crowd molested Lot’s guests. Failure to protest is to participate in the sin of a community.” (Plaut, p. 135)
Today, days after a most contested election, and after months of protest in the streets over racial inequity, police brutality, and now election results, our Torah and commentary prompt us to reconsider the act of protesting. The commentary urges us not to be quiescent and complicit in that which upsets or outrages us. As Americans, we have many rights, including the rights to assemble and to exercise free speech, and we have one galvanizing responsibility: to use our vote to express our voice. We are privileged to live in the nation which established the experiment of representational democracy – ever since Washington, Adams and Jefferson – and that experiment is still churning new results in today’s test-tubes. If Torah teaches that failure to protest is to participate in the sin of a community, then we should applaud ourselves for using our voice, our footsteps and our ballots to make our most central and personal protests – irrespective of our political leanings.
One last word – also from the Sodom and Gomorrah vignette: we must remember to protest properly. We should use our voices and express opinions; use our ears and listen to one another. Violence – either in the ancient biblical cities or in today’s American cities – is not protest but brutality, and ancient and modern commentators all have condemned the bloodshed of Sodom and Gomorrah. The pen is mightier than the sword.
Sodom’s sin, according to this midrashic understanding, was that the people failed to exercise their moral consciences.
This Shabbat when we read of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode, let’s appreciate our voices, and use them.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
