Vayera

A Loss of Perspective

Rabbis Steven Pik-Nathan and Laura Duhan Kaplan

What makes Sodom and Amorah (Gomorrah) such sinful cities that God wanted to destroy them? The Torah tells us that the people would gather into a mob to abuse visiting strangers. The Sages add that only the wealthy were welcome as guests in Sodom. The poor were abused, humiliated, expelled or killed.

Midrash Pirkei d' Rabbi Eliezer (3rd century) tells a story about Lot's daughter, who was sentenced to death in Sodom for giving bread to the poor on her way to the well. Her cry of protest reached God, who sent angels to investigate the city's crimes. When not even ten righteous people, the minimum needed to constitute a community, could be found, God realized the cities could not fix their moral problems.

In Sodom and Amorah, it was considered a crime to squander the city's wealth by sharing it with the transient poor. This is not an unusual view: most countries require immigrants to possess a certain amount of property, or the power to earn it, in order to stay. Most countries, however, also have social and moral critics, groups that support the poor, and individuals who advocate that rules should be bent for immigrants in particularly difficult circumstances. Sodom and Amorah, however, had none of these. The cities had lost the ability to judge and correct themselves. And this loss destroyed them.

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