OU TORAH YU TORAH and NAALEH.COM Dogma or Desire? By Shira Smiles

Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein Parshat Vayera contains a very disturbing scene that illustrates the social character of the city of Sodom, the place Lot settled in after he separated from his uncle Avraham. Two men/angels enter the city. Lot, along with other important people, is sitting at the gate. Lot, having been raised in Avraham’s home, steps forward and invites the men to his home. Indeed, Lot insists they spend the night in his home rather than out in the square overnight. Shortly after the strangers enter Lot’s house, all the townspeople, young and old, surround the house and demand that Lot send out the men so that the townspeople can do with them as they wish. Lot refuses. Instead, he goes out his door, closing it behind him, saying, “I beg you, do not act wickedly,” offering to appease them by giving them his virgin daughters for their pleasure instead, “in as much as [these men] have come under the shelter of my roof.” The angels/strangers then open the door, quickly grab Lot back inside, and strike all those at the door’s entrance with blindness. Even so, the Sodomites continued vainly to find the door, and ultimately Hashem destroyed the entire city with fire and brimstone.