It’s not about sex. On Parashat Vayeira
There are many jokes about Jewish lawyers (not all appropriate for a synagogue, so don’t expect me to tell one!). And this is because there are many Jewish lawyers for many reasons. There is definitively something in Jewish culture that encourages the legal profession, apart from the will to please a Jewish mother!
For example, we are chatty people, as everyone who has visited a synagogue knows. Keeping silent is not our forte, and for lawyers, words are literally the tool of the trade. The Talmud is full of legal discussions about the implications and the meanings of laws and rules. Lawyer’s business, as you know.
But there are deeper reasons for this unique relationship of many Jews with the legal professions. In this week’s Torah portion, we read an episode often referred to by those who believe that Abraham, the founder of our faith, was the “first Jewish lawyer”.
Let me recap. The Almighty has decided to punish the city of Sodom for its inhabitants’ many sins and iniquities.
Just an aside: we all know what the word Sodomite means. The term derives from this Biblical episode and from the sin allegedly committed by the inhabitants of Sodom. But that’s not correct! According to the Biblical text and Rabbinic interpretation, the primary sin of the Sodomites had no sexual connotation. The prophet Ezekiel describes the residents of Sodom as arrogant and insensitive to human needs. They had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquillity, yet they refused to support the poor and the needy.
The Midrash describes Sodom as a beautiful town in an area full of natural resources, precious stones, silver and gold. Every path in Sodom was lined with seven rows of fruit trees. But the residents of Sodom were so greedy that they overturned the hospitality law and prohibited giving charity to anyone. The cries of the children left without food were why God decided to act and destroy the town. Because children of refugees asked for the destruction of these cruel, horrible human beings.
There is much we can learn from the story of Sodom, but it has nothing to do with sexuality.
Now, let’s get back to the Biblical story. Abraham asked God whether God would sweep away the innocent and the guilty. He asks if there were 50, 40, 20, or 10 innocent people in Sodom, would God not spare the city for the sake of the innocent ones? And each time, God agreed to do so.
Abraham’s main argument goes this way: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly? You, God, claim you are just, and You are about to destroy an entire city with all the inhabitants, wicked and just alike!”
Abraham does not address God the way other populations in the ancient Middle East do with their prayers, asking for the favour of good health for themselves. No. Abraham reminds God of His own promises and asks God to be consistent. It is totally new and revolutionary compared to the time they lived in. There is enough to see in this episode to consider Abraham a lawyer who addresses God with the code of law in his hands.
It is all very remarkable. In a time and era when God was perceived and imagined only as a punisher, and prayers were supplications from human beings. Abraham introduces a new concept, God as Merciful and loyal to His own words. But let us not forget that Abraham’s peroration did not work. God, in the end, will destroy Sodom. From the beginning, God knew that the just individuals living in Sodom were not 50, 20, or 10. The perverted city deserved its fate; there were not just people.
Which brings us to the question Why? Why did God allow Abraham to exercise his dialectic skills when He knew already that it was useless and that no righteous individuals were left? We should look closer at the Torah portion to answer such a question. The Torah portion begins with the episode of the three angels who visit Abraham and Sara and announce that, despite her age, she will conceive a son and become a mother. Then the Torah portion continues then with the episode of Sodom. The birth of Isaac takes place some years after the confrontation at Sodom.
When Abraham confronts God about the fate of the people of Sodom, he knows he is about to become a father. And perhaps God is teaching Abraham not to be a lawyer but rather how to be a father.
Think about it. God already knows that there are no just people in Sodom. God already knows the aberrations and horror in that city. Still, God does not say to Abraham, “give it up, the city is all evil, there are no just people there, in this very moment, children are starving and crying.” On the contrary, God concedes that just people may exist in Sodom. And if they exist, even if they are only ten, out of hundreds of thousands, God won’t destroy the city. All of this was to teach Abraham how to pray and that God listens to the prayers. Maybe not today, tomorrow, another day, perhaps another year, but God does hear. And this is what Abraham has to teach his children.
The divinities worshipped in the Ancient Middle East were despotic sovereigns or whimsical kings. Unsurprisingly, the rulers who ruled those cities were tyrannical and oppressive like those gods. Enter Abraham, an older man who once lived in the city of Ur and brings into the scene God not as a despotic ruler but as a family person, a parent who cares about children.
The God worshipped by Abraham did not order them to build a temple. but rather to raise a family. It is a completely new religious worldview, especially at a time when marriages were dictated by the design to build alliances rather than by the project to love and protect each other and to raise children.
There are, of course, good reasons to think of Abraham as the first Jewish lawyer. However, at Sodom, he did not precisely achieve the acquittal. Nonetheless, the story of Sodom has so much to teach about contemporary issues, such as welcoming the refugees and cancelling poverty, and the beauty for all of us Jews to create families.