How we treat the (non-hostile) stranger

I firmly believe that God wants us to focus first on making a positive difference in the lives of those closest to us. Our responsibility to everyone else comes second. Yet there is something particularly revealing about how we treat people outside our immediate circle—those who are not part of our family, community, or tribe.

This week’s Parsha, VaYera, revolves around the striking contrast between how Avraham and the people of Sedom treat the angels disguised as travelers.

Avraham goes out of his way to welcome them, offering food, shelter, and hospitality. The people of Sodom do precisely the opposite. They see strangers as unwelcome intruders to their pristine neighborhood. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l offers a profound insight. Avraham’s great discovery was of a conscious, unique, and personal God who is beyond nature and who is most interested in our conscious and unique persons. This led Avraham to become interested in what God is interested in – the Divine Image in every human being.

The people of Sodom, by contrast, were idolaters or atheists who lived in a world of the impersonal god called nature or other gods within nature, each with its own power. In such a worldview, the conscious, unique person is not the center, power is. 

For Avraham and we, his children, every person matters because every person is created in God’s image (I speak here of the non-hostile-other, the hostile-other is a more complicated relationship). For Sodom, strangers did not matter because they added nothing to their power. 

Helping strangers may not be our highest priority in how we spend our time and attention, but how we treat them reveals our highest priority. To know HaShem is to honor His image in every human being.

Shabbat Shalom