Post-Election: Lot’s Mistake Is Israel’s Warning

As we might expect, the Parasha this week arrives right on time during instability and unpredictability after the Israeli Elections.

Vayeira comes with a message – if you stir trouble in the family, or you seek to separate from your family for personal gain or comfort, your path will be blocked and Hashem will find a way to have you navigate differently.

Last week Avraham and nephew Lot split and went their separate ways in order to put an end to quarreling between their camps. Lot chose to settle where there was opportunity to grow his wealth but surrounded by people who were wicked and immoral.

Avraham to his credit wished to avoid conflict within the family and offered “Please let there be no strife between me and you… If you go left then I will go right, and if you go right I will go left” (Bereshit Chap 12, Verses 8-9)

Good intentions aside, Avraham then found himself having to send a military force in to fight and rescue his nephew, his household and his possessions.

As if following Avraham’s exceptional personal example, in Parashat Vayeira we now see Hashem sending two angels to Sodom, again to rescue nephew Lot and family before this compromised town and famously evil townspeople were destroyed.

Lot is no simple character, not easy to comprehend his own moral standing. Protecting the angel visitors from the mob that awaited them, but offering his daughters to them instead.

And yet he was destined to be saved. By Avraham and then by angels, because at the end of the day he was family.

From Hagar’s behavior this week too, we learn something about sitting at a distance from our family to avoid the pain and discomfort of “seeing” their pain.
Hashem needed to open her eyes so she could actually see the well of water that was there all the time and so she could give water to dehydrated son Yishmael.

All this and then one word in the Parasha jumps out at us in a week of electoral standstill and societal soul-searching – “ויתמהמה” – And still he lingered.

Sodom is crumbling, destruction is upon them and Lot appears frozen in time and in place.
“ויחזיקו” – the angels had to grasp his hand and those of his family members and literally take them out of the city before they too were swept away in the devastation.

Quick to choose Sodom as home, but struggles to leave it when instructed to do so. Worried it seems for his resources and the wealth he needs to leave behind. Simply can’t bring himself to be rescued, this time by the compassionate hand of God.

There is a message here for the leadership of our country and those who seek to represent the various sectors, worldviews and lifestyles within it.
Don’t get stuck in the what was, don’t linger in the hope of preserving your place in your comfort zone forever, avoid focusing on what you have invested and what you might lose.

Rather open your eyes or minimally allow them to opened to see the well or the potential destruction. Look for what can be done, what other possibilities can be brought to fruition. Allow ourselves to be taken by the hand too, and led away from division and disaster.

And perhaps, for some sense of hope and consolation during this post-elections period, Parashat Vayeira reminds us that even if we linger, hesitate, procrastinate or make wrong decisions time-to-time, an outstretched hand will come in some form to bring us out, to a safer, better time and place.

We would be wise to watch for it so we don’t miss it altogether.