The Advocacy of Abraham and the New York City Mayoral Election

How could Abraham have made the plea that he did on behalf of Sodom, in this week’s Torah reading? Didn’t he understand mathematics? Didn’t he follow the polls?

Upon hearing that God intends to destroy that city due to its wickedness, Abraham advocates for a reprieve, arguing that if 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, or 10 righteous men can be found, the city should be spared (Gen. 18: 23-33).

Maimonides, in his Laws of Repentance (3:1-2) establishes that for a society to be worthy of survival, just like an individual, it has to be assessed as righteous overall. Therefore, it is determined by its majority element. Sodom, he proceeds to document, failed by that metric and was destroyed.

As such, it is difficult to understand what Abraham had hoped to accomplish with his negotiations. Still, he was apparently not completely off base; God initially agrees to his opening offers, with his attempts only failing due to the impossibility of finding even ten righteous men in the city.

The Lechem Mishnah (1:2) addresses this question, asserting that, in fact, this would not have been a legitimate exoneration, failing, as it does, to meet the majority standard. Rather, it would be a reprieve of grace, due to the merit of Abraham’s prayer, in conjunction with the presence of that small group.

However, this also requires explanation. If such an approach could be effective, why not even less than ten? (See R. Shmayahu Shulman, Merish BaBirah)

This question places the focus on what exactly was the nature of Abraham’s argument. Clearly, he understood that he had no claim that Sodom could be redeemed by finding most of its character to be genuinely righteous. Rather, true to his own character, he had hoped for a different approach to be possible.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “The Revenge of the Tipping Point,” discusses the concept of “small group variations”, and the notion of an “overstory” which is the pervasive cultural narrative, set of expectations, and social conditions that govern behavior within a particular community. When a group is controlled by a monoculture, it is vulnerable to social epidemics, as everyone is operating within the same rigid set of cultural norms. However, if there is some significant minority that thinks differently, it can introduce friction into the culture and provide different ways of thinking and behaving, and responding to stress and harmful societal threat. This acts as “a social immune system” that fundamentally changes the dynamic of the group.

This element is, by definition, a minority, and does not need to define the character of the entire population. Nonetheless, it does have to be more than one person. Gladwell speaks of a “magic third” threshold that is required to impact the culture in a meaningful way. Notably, he points out that certain universities manipulate admissions to keep minority proportions below a certain level, in order to maintain a dominant culture and prevent significant social change.

Abraham, again in keeping with his own character, had an ambitious perspective on how much could be accomplished by a motivated counter-cultural minority. He started with a low number of righteous people, and then pushed it even lower, seeing how far he could go; while realizing, as a number of commentaries emphasize, that they would have to be “b’tokh ha-ir” (18:24), within the city, people who interacted with others, engaged with a broader population, and had the potential to impact upon the character of those around them.
God, who as noted a few verses earlier (18:19), had a deep appreciation for Abraham’s ability to transmit his value system vertically and horizontally, was willing to grant a broad latitude to his requests, even if it ultimately reached a limit.

This week, much of the Jewish population of New York City is deeply concerned over the results of the mayoral election. The fear extends not only to the identity of the winner and his priorities, but to the implications of what his victory reflects about the character of the electorate overall; is support for terrorism, global intifada, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism increasingly acceptable in America’s most Jewish city?

The advocacy of Abraham, and Gladwell’s concepts of the overstory and small group variations are of crucial importance at this moment. There is room for enormous impact even without an electoral majority. Those who care about Israel and about the well-being of Jews worldwide, and about the rule of law in a peaceful world, must continue to make their voices heard and their presence felt even more clearly within the new landscape of New York City and beyond its borders as well. We must stand firmly against any effort to defame Israel, and most importantly act as a tool to sanctify God’s name at every opportunity, and to serve as ambassadors for the Jewish people. And then, like Abraham, we may “return to our place”.