In Parshat Vayera we read about God’s destruction of the
city of
What was so terrible about Sdom that it had to be utterly
destroyed and still remains a wasteland today?
According to the prophet Yechezkel (Yechezkel 16:49):
“Behold this was the sin of Sdom, your sister: She and her daughters had pride,
fullness of bread and peaceful serenity, but she did not strengthen the hand of
the poor and needy.”
The Midrash Pirkei DeRebbi Eliezer states: “They issued a
proclamation in Sdom saying: Everyone who strengthens the hand of the poor and
needy with a loaf of bread shall be burnt by fire. Plotit, a daughter of
a very poor man in the street and she felt bad for him. What did she do? Every
day when she went out to draw water she put in her pitcher all kinds of
provisions from her house and she sustained the poor man. The men of Sdom said:
How does this poor man live? When they ascertained the facts they brought
Plotit forth to be burnt by fire. She cried out: Sovereign of all worlds!
Maintain my right and my cause at the hands of the men of Sdom! And her cry
ascended before the throne of glory. In that hour God said: I will go down and
see whether they have in fact done what she is crying about. If it turns out to
be true then I will overthrow the city.”
Nechama Leibowitz points out: “Their wickedness was the law
of the land and whoever violated the law and performed a good deed prompted by
his own instincts of pity was condemned to be burnt at the stake. There was no
remedy for such a society but total destruction.”
We must learn a lesson from what happened to the selfish
people in Sdom and make every effort to make laws that protect the poor and the
needy to ensure that nobody in the
