gamorrah – Sim Lev

We must build a wall to protect you from the Moabites.

We must build a wall. You cannot trust the Moabites.

The Moabites are on the other side of the salty Dead Sea and the Jordan River. A river is not big enough to keep the Moabites away from our land. They will take everything we have if they get the chance.

The Moabites are dangerous and brutal. They will destroy you if they get the chance.

We must destroy the Moabites before they can destroy us. We must kill their kings. Their king Eglon is a murderous tyrant. You will never be safe as long as he reigns. You must kill him.

You must kill every Moabite that stands in your way. You must capture the Moabite city of Heshbon. We need it to keep the Moabites away from us.

We must build a wall to protect you from the Moabites.

They must never come near you.

You must never meet them.

Because, if you met the Moabites, you might see that they are not monsters. You might see that they are like you.

And then you would not be able to kill them.

And then you would ask why we are building walls.

And then you would ask who was building these walls.

So you must always abhor the Moabites. You must fear them and revile them.

We must build a wall to protect you from the Moabites.

It must be high enough to protect you from them. It must be high enough to protect you from yourselves. It must be high enough to protect you from peace.

You may not immediately notice it, but nestled in this week’s Torah portion is an early example of war propaganda. In the vulgar and violent story of Lot is an origin myth for the Israelites’ greatest enemy: the Moabites.

The scene begins as God destroys Sodom and Gamorrah, two cities so wicked and licentious that they have to be wiped out and turned into the Dead Sea.

Only Lot and his daughters escape from that awful place. They retreat into the mountains on the east of the Jordan. There, the two daughters get Lot drunk, seduce him, and use him to sire their children.

The oldest is called Moab. And to really drive the point home, the Torah adds explicitly: the father of the Moabites.

The women in this story are not even given names. They are just grotesque plot devices to tell us how awful the Moabites are.

Those people, Israel’s nearest neighbours to the east, are so wicked that they came from Sodom. Their ancestors are so twisted that they were born of incest, drunkenness, and assault. It is a story to inspire revulsion in its Israelite listeners.

This is part of a general campaign of literary warfare against the Moabites, continued throughout the Torah.

Isaiah promises that the Moabites will be trampled like straw in a dung pit. Ezekiel vows endless aggression and possession. Amos says the whole of Moab must be burned down. Zephaniah swears that Moab will end up just like Sodom, a place of weeds and salt pits, a wasteland forever.

The war propaganda reflects real wars. The ancient Israelites did repeatedly wage war, conquer, and capture Moabites. They did kill their kings, and they did turn Moab into a vassal state.

Based on the Moabites’ texts, we can see that it also went the other way, and that Moab also captured, conquered and slaughtered Israel.

We do not know how many Israelites or Moabites died in these wars. We do not know how many people grieved their families and homes. All that remains is the propaganda of the competing tribes.

Today, it is hard to imagine why anyone would have hated the Moabites so much, or even that we would believe the hyped-up stories of how vulgar they were. With centuries of hindsight, we can see that they were probably very similar to the Israelites, but dragged into wars for the glory and material wealth of their kings.

Of course, there were dissenting voices at the time. The Book of Ruth can be read as a polemic about love between Israelites and Moabites. It is a beautifully humanising story where the central character, Ruth, is portrayed as a Moabite who is kind, loving, devoted to her family, and committed to Israelites.

As long as there has been war propaganda, there has been anti-war propaganda, and our Torah contains it all.

This Shabbat, we honour Remembrance Day. We think of all of those who died in wars past, and those who served their countries in military operations. This feels so close to our hearts, as we reflect on the great toll wars took on military personnel and their families, including many in our communities.

We remember the pain of those who have lived through and died in the awful wars that have passed.

This solemn day dates back to the armistice of the First World War, on November 11th 1918. The following year, England hosted France for a shared banquet as they recalled the ceasefire. From then on, it became an annual day of reflection on the horrors and sacrifices of war.

During the First World War itself, even as the conflict was ongoing, many challenged the war. The great British-Jewish soldier-poet, Siegfried Sassoon, charged that the war had been whipped up by jingoistic propaganda.

In July 1917, Sassoon published “A Soldier’s Declaration,” which denounced the politicians who were waging and prolonging the war with no regard for its human impact.

Sassoon lambasted “the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.”

It is true that people like me, who enjoy peace, cannot even contemplate the pain that people went through in fighting wars and enduring bombing.

Today, we honour them.

Honouring them does not mean parroting propaganda and whipping up war.

Quite on the contrary. It is the duty of every civilian to ensure as few people as possible ever have to fight in wars. It is our responsibility to minimise the number of people who suffer and die in armed conflicts. It is our task to pursue peace.

We, who will never know the sacrifices of the front line, must heed Sassoon’s call, and resist the drive to war.

So instead:

We must tear down every wall with the Moabites.

Yes, with the Moabites, and, yes, with the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Koreans and the Iranians.

We must find commonalities and engage in shared struggles.

We must learn to trust our fellow human beings and distrust the propaganda of war.

We must cease all killing. The machinery of war has destroyed too much and taken too many lives. We must endeavour to put an end to violence and destruction.

We must learn to understand the people we are told are our enemies.

We must tear down every wall.

Shabbat shalom.

It was a dark night in an Eastern European shtetl. Shabbat was just about to come in. The Baal Shem Tov sat at the dinner table, surrounded by friends and family. Every spare inch of space had somebody sitting in it. The Baal Shem Tov was not a rich man, although many of the acolytes of the movement he founded later would be, and he would have to make a thin chicken soup stretch to feed everyone. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Standing in the doorway was a vagabond. He smelt bad, his beard was unkempt, his clothes were untidy. He asked: “can I come in? Can I eat?” The Baal Shem Tov looked back at the full house, looked over at the steaming pot of thin chicken soup, looked back to the man, then up to Heaven and said: “If God has made enough room for him on this planet, then surely I have enough a room at my table.”

The Baal Shem Tov was a model of hospitality. In this week’s parshah, we read about Abraham, who was, too, a model of hospitality. Two strangers come to approach Abraham, and he cannot do enough for them. The Torah is usually noticeably scarce on detail, but on this occasion, we hear everything he did. He bowed, he welcomed them, he gave them water and bread-cakes, he washed their feet, he offered them shade. He even killed a calf for them, and in those days meat was far more expensive than it is today.

Abraham doesn’t even know who these people are yet. As it turns out, they are messengers of God. But they could have been anyone. Nevertheless, from the outset Abraham addresses them as if they are angels. Perhaps it was that Abraham could sense something in them. Perhaps he had been expecting God. But I think, most likely, Abraham simply saw the face of God in everyone.

Rashi tells us that Abraham always used to sit at the entrance to his house, so that he could invite anybody in who walked past. The midrash tells us that Sarah always had a listening ear. She was known everywhere for how tirelessly she worked to cultivate a garden for visitors to sit. Their tent was open on all sides, so that they could welcome people coming from every direction. And from this story, the rabbis derive a mitzvah, perhaps the most important commandment of all: the duty to be hospitable.

The next story in Genesis is a parallel. Two angels turn up in Sodom. Lot invites them to stay the night. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surround the house. They threaten to assault their visitors. When Lot objects, they deride him for being a foreigner and try to break down the door. Lot offers his daughters up to the baying mob.

Although there is a modern Christian interpretation that the story of Sodom is in some way about homosexuality, the rabbis did not have such a tradition. For them, this was a story about hospitality denied. This, they said, was a city so wicked that they would not even allow their residents to show any hospitality or compassion to strangers. This, they said, was a city where even neighbours were not kind to each other; where a dog-eat-dog ideology took root so that nobody worked together. This was a city so wicked that even people like Lot, who should have been righteous, ended up turning against their own daughters and denying them the childhood they deserved. That is why the angels destroyed Sodom.

Which city do we live in? Which house do we inhabit? I often wonder what the two angels would make of our neighbourhoods and homes if they came to visit. While we have more technology and medicine and infrastructure than the prophets and tsaddikim could ever have anticipated, we have just as many people in need of hospitality. Our society seems more isolated than ever.

Manchester is known for its hospitality, but even here we can see the isolation. We already know older people who live in loneliness. We already know younger people who are desperately reaching out for a community, only to find nothing. We have seen newcomers turn up in this city only to encounter racism, hostility and closed doors. We have all seen the number of rough sleepers on our streets rocket over recent years.

In that situation, we have the same choice that was facing Lot and Abraham. Will we throw open our doors to let people in, or will we take the cruelty we experience in society and turn it on the people in our own homes? Will we increase the love or increase the isolation? This is a societal problem, but it will only change if people welcome each other, get to know each other and build solidarity with each other.

So, we must start with ourselves and our own homes. Jewish life is not something that happens in the synagogue. The synagogue is just a place we come to get respite and reenergised as we live a Jewish life. Jewish life happens in what we do the rest of the time. If we spend the rest of our week building communities, showing hospitality and modelling loving-compassion, that is when we’re living Jewish lives. Hospitality is one of the most important mitzvahs because it affects how we interact with everything. Being welcoming to people helps to break down isolation. It helps to create a sense of community. And it makes better, kinder people of ourselves.

Let’s all make the effort to be better hosts and to give more time to each other. Choose to be like Abraham and Sarah. Choose to be like the Baal Shem Tov. As Jews, let’s be the people who decide not to let an isolating and inhospitable society last. The struggle for community begins here, with us.

besht

This sermon was first delivered Shabbat Vayeira, 3rd December, at Manchester Liberal Jewish Community

Tag: gamorrah

Being hospitable