When Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev was appointed the rabbi of Berditchev, he sat down with the communal leaders to work out the terms by which they would guide the community. The communal leaders, wishing to protect their own prerogatives and to protect their rabbi’s time, proposed that they would only consult the rabbi concerning new policies but that they would have free reign to implement old policies without involving the rabbi.
Some time later the communal leaders gathered before Rabbi Levi Yitzhak to explain a new policy they wished to enact to regulate the presence of beggars whose numbers had swelled in Berditchev and had negatively impacted the quality of life. “We propose a ban on public vagrancy and begging,” the elders explained to Rabbi Levi Yitzhak. “Those in need will be referred to a soup kitchen but will no longer be allowed to go from house to house in search of food or money.”
Rav Levi Yitzhak listened to the proposal and then said to the communal leaders, “I understand the appeal of this plan but there is no need of you to consult with me. This isn’t a new plan at all. It was already instituted generations ago by the inhabitants of the wicked City of Sedom.
The city of Sedom and its wickedness are an important theme of these chapters of Sefer Bereishit and are a recurring trope of later in Tanakh and in rabbinic literature. However, the precise nature of the sin of Sedom is never spelled out. Christian biblical interpretation understands Sedom as a place of sexual perversion, whereas Jewish interpretations, starting with Tanakh and continuing with rabbinic literature have understood Sedom and its wickedness in altogether different ways. Perhaps the clearest description of Sedom is from Yehezkel, the prophet Ezekiel who compares Sedom to a city we might not expect.
One of the pleasures of taking the CTA to O’hare Airport is looking at the posters advertising all of Chicago’s “sister cities.” Chicago has 28 sister cities including Athens, Milan, and Petah Tikvah. The concept of sister cities dates back to the Middle Ages but only became popular in the 20th century when Toledo Ohio and Toledo Spain formed an agreement to be sister cities.
But the Prophet Yehezkel claimed that Yerushalayim had a sister city and the sister city of Yerushalayim was none other that Sedom.
הִנֵה־זֶ֣ה הָיָ֔ה עֲוֺ֖ן סְד֣ם אֲחותְֵ֑ גָא֨ון שִבְעַת־לֶ֜חֶם וְשַלְוַ֣ת הַשְק֗ט הָ֤יָה לָה֙ וְלִבְנותֶ֔יהָ וְיַד־עָנִ֥י וְאֶבְי֖ון ל֥א הֶחֱזִֽיקה׃
“Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and the needy.”
There is evidence that Sedom was rebuilt after its destruction is described in Parashat Vayera that we heard this morning and whether or not it was rebuilt it remained a potent symbol to Yehezkel that he uses to chastise his Jewish brothers and sisters. Sedom is a symbol of a city so evil that it could not endure. And the evil of Sedom is defined as arrogance, selfishness, and the callous disregard for the needs of others that could allow one to enjoy the good life in the midst of suffering that takes place beyond the scope of one’s concern.
This is apparent from the episode in Parashat Vayera when the men of Sedom surround the home of Avraham’s nephew Lot and demand that Lot hand over the angelic guests who had taken shelter in his home. Ramban, the Medieval scholar Nahmanides, explains in his Torah commentary, that the residents of Sedom were outraged that Lot had extended hospitality to outsiders. Sedom, in those years, was the most lush and verdant region of Eretz Yisrael and the inhabitants of Sedom did not want others to migrate to their region and did not want to share their resources with others. According to the ancient rabbis, the inhabitants of Sedom were so fearful of outsiders being attracted to the prosperity of Sedom that acts of charity and hospitality were punishable by death. And they had good reason to be fearful. We know from Sefer Bereishit just how hard it is to grow food in Canaan. There are good years and there are years of famine and there is scarcity of water and perpetual challenges of earning sustenance from the land. Sedom might very well have been flooded by immigrants had they been welcomed.
The men surrounding Lot’s home were not motivated by a sexual interest in Lot’s guests, but were motivated by a commitment that their city not become a place of sanctuary to visitors. That is why they only want to victimize the guests and not Lot’s daughters. That is why they express outrage towards Lot himself, an immigrant to their city who had the nerve to subvert their culture by his attempt at hospitality.
Another interpretation of the sin of Sedom comes from the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot. One who says “Sheli, Sheli v’Shelkha shelkha” – what is mine is mine and what is yours, is yours, is a moderate and neutral way of being in the world. But then the Mishnah says, “yesh omrim” there are those who say that this attitude is midat Sedom, it is a Sodomite worldview. This Mishnah is most often understood as a condemnation of a strong endorsement of the idea of private property. Indeed, even a cursory read of Bava Batra makes clear that Judaism does not endorse a strong ethos of private property, rather, we have limited rights to use certain property if we do so in harmony with our neighbors and in the context of a community.
But Sara recently shared with me another interpretation of this Mishnah. “Sheli sheli” what is mine is mine, means that my own moral standing and my own virtue are determined by me and by me alone. Shelka shelkha, your virtues are in your hands alone. This is a condemned perspective. We do not have full autonomy to determine our virtues and vices without the crucial influence of those around us.
Parashat Vayera is framed by two depictions of attempted hospitality. Avraham and his household successfully host the angelic guests, and Lot is unable to host his angelic guests. The Torah is presenting two contexts in which two fundamentally good men try to act in a good and hospitable way. Avraham has the freedom and autonomy and the resources to act with moral agency. He has the support of a family and a household who are well trained for this moment; they have become a well-oiled hosting machine. They know precisely what to do and spring into motion when guests arrive. This is not their first rodeo. They embrace the chance to welcome guests and they have the resources on hand to serve their guests and provide them comfort and safety.
Lot has the right instincts but the context that he willingly entered when he decided to settle in Sedom prevents him from doing what is right. He is in the wrong place surrounded by the wrong people. His household has not assimilated Lot’s decency. When he made the decision to settle in Sedom he gave away his moral agency. He wants to do the right thing when his guests are in danger but he isn’t able to protect them because in Sedom no guest is safe and no person is permitted to provide hospitality and protection to strangers.
Personal virtues and sentiments that push us to act with decency are insufficient when they are undermined by the culture of our neighbors and cruel laws of our communities.
Just yesterday on the Hebrew calendar, and in just a few days on the English calendar, November 9th – 10th, mark 80 years from Kristalnacht when synagogues and Jewish institutions across Germany were targeted by a concerted campaign of vandalism, violence and intimidation that marked a turning point in the Nazi persecution of their Jewish subjects. I’ve mentioned before how my Great-Uncle Felix, my grandfather’s younger brother, was a teenager in those years and on Kristalnacht was living in a dormitory on a religious hachsharah in Frankfurt where German Jewish teenagers studied Torah alongside agriculture in preparation for aliyah. I am traveling to Jerusalem tonight by way of Frankfurt and I am going to be completing the journey from Frankfurt to Jerusalem that those boys intended to make but never did.
My Uncle Felix awoke on the night of November 9th to discover that his hachsharah was on fire. In the midst of the panic and fear, he had the presence of mind to make his way to the beit midrash and to rescue the Torah scroll there. He wrapped it in a blanket and hid it someplace safe.
Several days later he was able to show the rescued Torah scroll to the leader of the hachsharah. That man, in recognition of his heroism on behalf of the Torah, bestowed the title “haver” on my Great Uncle, a form of Jewish knighthood that existed in some European Jewish communities. He then wrote to every yeshiva in England and told them that he had 80 boys in his hachsharah and each of them desperately needed student visas to get out of Germany. However, he concluded his letters, if they had space only for one, they should take Felix Wolkenfeld.
My uncle never spoke about this episode and the way that he escaped England because the story did not fill him with pride, it filled him with guilt. Two yeshivot in England sent him acceptance letters; there was a wasted, unfilled, spot.
Once he got to England, my uncle wasted no time in trying to rescue his mother, my great-grandmother, by arranging for a visa for her. As the mother of a legal resident she had a path towards a visa, but England, at the time, was concerned about immigrants become public charges who would need public assistance and drain resources needed for England’s native population. To sponsor his mother’s immigration, my Uncle Felix needed a signed affidavit with ten guarantors who would commit to supporting his mother with their own money so that she would never become a public charge.
Collecting this affidavit was an overwhelming challenge to a sixteen year old who spoke no English, but he persevered and, after some delay, was able to arrange for a visa for his mother to join him in England. Unfortunately, that delay proved fatal. The war broke out just before she was supposed to retrieve her visa from the British consulate. I am reluctant to blame England for any decisions made during the course of the war. To paraphrase Churchill, “never before have so many owed so much to so few.” They carried on the war against the Nazis, alone, following the fall of France for over a year until, “those who had been half-blind became half-ready.” But, the reluctance to admit a possible public charge to their country prevented my great grandmother from escaping Germany. And when a Jew evaluates history he pays attention to the victims and when a Jew evaluates policy, she pays attention to its victims.
I’ve spoken about my uncle before but am mentioning him again today because of the 80th anniversary of Kristalnacht and because our own country has a public-charge restriction on immigration. The guidelines were most recently updated in 1999 but they are in the process of being changed.
Last month, our own Department of Homeland Security proposed a rule change to our own country’s “Public Charge” guidelines that restrict the granting of green cards to individuals that the government considers likely to become public charges. Under the proposed rule changes, a slew of additional social services and financial supports would be considered eligible for public-charge exclusions from legal residence in this country. In addition, the financial threshold for being considered a public charge would be lowered significantly exposing thousands of immigrants and potential immigrants to permanent exclusion from this country.
This proposal has alarmed professionals at the Migration Policy Institute who have compared this proposed rule change to the infamous 1924 National Origins Quota Act that shut the doors to America to further immigration from Eastern Europe that could have saved millions of our Jewish brothers and sisters. Of more immediate concern to immigration activists is the risk, that has already been realized, that immigrants currently in the United States will opt out of the benefits that they are entitled to under law so as not to jeopardize their chances,or their children’s chances, of receiving a green card or citizenship. Working parents that depend on food-stamps to feed their native-born American citizen children are already forgoing that needed food and nutrition so that their status is not jeopardized by this proposal.
The very proposal itself estimates that thousands of legal immigrant families will opt out of Medicaid so as not to risk being labeled a public charge. The proposal continues to admit that the likely outcome of those choices will be increased use of hospital emergency rooms, the spread of untreated diseases across the country, and increased poverty.
I don’t know how this country should formulate its immigration policy. There are complicated issues that need to be evaluated by experts: how many immigrants does our economy need? What is the mix of skills we should look for in the immigrant pool? How can we ensure that immigrants integrate into the economy? I don’t have answers to these questions and the answers aren’t easy. But I remember that an outsized concern that immigrants could become public charges was fatal to members of my family. And I remember that when a Jew evaluates a policy, he or she must pay attention to its victims.
These proposed changes to our public charge laws are open for comment for another thirty days. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev would have said that they require no period of public comment. They aren’t new regulations at all. The residents of Sedom already implemented these policies.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 