Va-Yera: Judge and Justice
Parshah for Shabbat, Saturday, Oct. 30, 2004:
Va-Yera [Bereishit, Ch. 18, verse 1 - Ch. 22, verse 24]
This parshah contains the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a tale of iniquity and punishment. These sinful cities are irredeemable, despite Abraham's great efforts on their behalf. "Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?" he famously asks God. This is the great question that must be asked of all systems of law. The word judge is both noun and verb. We call senior judges Justices. We expect they will deal justly, but that expectation has its origins in this parshah.
It is clear that Abraham has had it with blind obedience. He learned his lesson on Mount Moriah. God deserves our faith, our thankfulness, our worship - but that's it. When God asks us to do something that violates our conscience, we can say no. We can resist, we can make demands of our own. God is God, but even God is not above the law. For the sake of even one righteous person, the wicked should not be destroyed.
One can argue from that, that an innocent man should never be punished, even at the risk of letting the guilty go free. That is the ultimate in justice. Given that at least 100 Americans on death row have been freed when it turned out they had been wrongly convicted, we should think long and hard about the immorality of capital punishment. We have almost certainly executed an innocent man - there is no greater violation of God's justice.
If God himself must be just, then none of us has an excuse to do otherwise. It is incumbent upon all of humanity to establish a system of justice. We still have a long way to go to fulfill that Noachide commandment.
This parshah also contains the unpleasant tale of Lot and his daughters. Lot, who resides in Sodom, has taken two angels into his house. The evil men of Sodom demand that he send them out to them to be raped. Rather than dishonor his guests, Lot offers the rowdy townspeople his two virgin daughters. The angels don't let this happen, but the fact that Lot made the offer cannot but disquiet any modern reader. The fact that the Torah is silent about Lot's offer is even more disquieting.
But there is a lot in the Torah that is disquieting. We will deal with this in future weeks. Anyone who attempts to read the Torah as a coherent, unified, consistent whole has to do a lot of intellectual juggling and rationalizing. The Orthodox insist that every word, every letter in the Torah is identical to what they believe God dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai. Even Conservatives sing "Vzot ha-Torah" - this is the Torah - "asher sam Moshe lifnei b'nai Yisroel al pi Hashem b'yad Moshe" - that Moses displayed to the children of Israel from the mouth of God by the hand of Moses. Except, we don't really teach that. We teach that the Torah was compiled, possibly by Ezra the Scribe in the fifth century B.C.E., from a lot of extant holy texts.
That's for later discussion. What's important is that there is no explanation given for Lot's treatment of his daughters. Perhaps he recognized his guests as angels, or for some other reason had faith that God would not let him sacrifice his children. But none of that is in the bare text. Lot simply says, take my daughters but leave my guests alone. That's carrying hospitality to an extreme. A lot of ancient middle eastern cultures did indeed demand that a man protect those he had given refuge to, no matter the cost. But sacrifice your virgin daughters? And the Torah doesn't condemn this? What was God thinking?
(Note: all citations from Eitz Chayim ("Tree of Life"), the official Chumash (printed version of the Torah) of the Conservative Movement (copyright 2001 by the Rabbinical Assembly; Hebrew text, based on Biblia Hebraica Stuttgarensia, copyright 1999 by The Jewish Publication Society; English translation copyright 1985, 1999 by The Jewish Publication Society).
(Except as otherwise specifically noted and referenced, all commentaries are mine.)
Va-Yera [Bereishit, Ch. 18, verse 1 - Ch. 22, verse 24]
This parshah contains the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a tale of iniquity and punishment. These sinful cities are irredeemable, despite Abraham's great efforts on their behalf. "Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?" he famously asks God. This is the great question that must be asked of all systems of law. The word judge is both noun and verb. We call senior judges Justices. We expect they will deal justly, but that expectation has its origins in this parshah.
It is clear that Abraham has had it with blind obedience. He learned his lesson on Mount Moriah. God deserves our faith, our thankfulness, our worship - but that's it. When God asks us to do something that violates our conscience, we can say no. We can resist, we can make demands of our own. God is God, but even God is not above the law. For the sake of even one righteous person, the wicked should not be destroyed.
One can argue from that, that an innocent man should never be punished, even at the risk of letting the guilty go free. That is the ultimate in justice. Given that at least 100 Americans on death row have been freed when it turned out they had been wrongly convicted, we should think long and hard about the immorality of capital punishment. We have almost certainly executed an innocent man - there is no greater violation of God's justice.
If God himself must be just, then none of us has an excuse to do otherwise. It is incumbent upon all of humanity to establish a system of justice. We still have a long way to go to fulfill that Noachide commandment.
This parshah also contains the unpleasant tale of Lot and his daughters. Lot, who resides in Sodom, has taken two angels into his house. The evil men of Sodom demand that he send them out to them to be raped. Rather than dishonor his guests, Lot offers the rowdy townspeople his two virgin daughters. The angels don't let this happen, but the fact that Lot made the offer cannot but disquiet any modern reader. The fact that the Torah is silent about Lot's offer is even more disquieting.
But there is a lot in the Torah that is disquieting. We will deal with this in future weeks. Anyone who attempts to read the Torah as a coherent, unified, consistent whole has to do a lot of intellectual juggling and rationalizing. The Orthodox insist that every word, every letter in the Torah is identical to what they believe God dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai. Even Conservatives sing "Vzot ha-Torah" - this is the Torah - "asher sam Moshe lifnei b'nai Yisroel al pi Hashem b'yad Moshe" - that Moses displayed to the children of Israel from the mouth of God by the hand of Moses. Except, we don't really teach that. We teach that the Torah was compiled, possibly by Ezra the Scribe in the fifth century B.C.E., from a lot of extant holy texts.
That's for later discussion. What's important is that there is no explanation given for Lot's treatment of his daughters. Perhaps he recognized his guests as angels, or for some other reason had faith that God would not let him sacrifice his children. But none of that is in the bare text. Lot simply says, take my daughters but leave my guests alone. That's carrying hospitality to an extreme. A lot of ancient middle eastern cultures did indeed demand that a man protect those he had given refuge to, no matter the cost. But sacrifice your virgin daughters? And the Torah doesn't condemn this? What was God thinking?
(Note: all citations from Eitz Chayim ("Tree of Life"), the official Chumash (printed version of the Torah) of the Conservative Movement (copyright 2001 by the Rabbinical Assembly; Hebrew text, based on Biblia Hebraica Stuttgarensia, copyright 1999 by The Jewish Publication Society; English translation copyright 1985, 1999 by The Jewish Publication Society).
(Except as otherwise specifically noted and referenced, all commentaries are mine.)
posted by Tom Beck at 5:06 PM
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