Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 16 Cheshvan, 5784
Parsha Va-Yera’: (Genesis 18:1-22:24) 
Third Portion: Genesis 19:1 – 19:20

So as we work on our internal love for ourselves, and we try to move from 10% to 11% (instead of trying to close the gap from 90% to ZERO) we come into this story of destruction. We begin our descent into seeing a culture completely enslaved, and Lot and his wife stuck in the middle of this.

I am reminded immediately of Noah – who facing similar circumstances trusted Hashem and built an ark. That became a prison. That he waited for Hashem to call him out of.  And we are almost back to where we were when Hashem destroyed the entire earth with a flood.  Let’s dig in:

1And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom, and Lot saw and arose toward them, and he prostrated himself on his face to the ground.

2And he said, “Behold now my lords, please turn to your servant’s house and stay overnight and wash your feet, and you shall arise early and go on your way.” And they said, “No, but we will stay overnight in the street.”

3And he urged them strongly, and they turned in to him, and came into his house, and he made them a feast, and he baked unleavened cakes, and they ate.

The first thing I notice is Lot’s desire to entertain angels here, and the angels’ initial desire NOT to be entertained by Lot. Lot convinced the angels to spend the night with him.

It is interesting the passage “they turned in to him” in verse 3 there isn’t it? Like the Angels almost went INSIDE Lot. The turned within him.

He brought the Angels within his house, or his body. He took the external spiritual things happening around him and brought them within.

How often do we internalize the spiritual messages around us? We entertain angels, but do we take them in?

There is a difference between bringing guests into our house and being hospitable – and then internalizing this.  Freedom is taking the spiritual lessons of what is happening – EVEN IN times where it’s a complete hurricane.  Let’s keep reading:

4When they had not yet retired, and the people of the city, the people of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, the entire populace from every end [of the city].

5And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, and let us be intimate with them.”

6And Lot came out to them to the entrance, and he shut the door behind him.

7And he said, “My brethren, please do not do evil.

So – Lot had angels with him. And instead of asking them for support and guidance? He took it upon himself to try and fix the problem.

And I am reflecting – how often do we put aside our spiritual experience and knowledge to try and fix someone ELSE’S problem?  And; how much Hubris is it for Lot to try and “Fix” the Angel’s problem?  Why not ask the Angels what to do?

How often do WE do this? Try and fix our friends problem? Take it on as our own? Instead of asking them “How can I support you? You are an Angel – you have your best answers”  That is spiritual freedom and liberation. And Lot gets himself deeper here:

8Behold now I have two daughters who were not intimate with a man. I will bring them out to you, and do to them as you see fit; only to these men do nothing, because they have come under the shadow of my roof.”

9But they said, “Back away.” And they said, “This one came to sojourn, and he is judging! Now, we will deal even worse with you than with them.” And they pressed hard upon the man Lot, and they drew near to break the door.

10And the men stretched forth their hands, and they brought Lot to them to the house, and they shut the door.

The Angels did let this go on too long though it would seem.  They saw what Lot was doing – and supported him.  Then turned their attention to those trying to enter the house:

11And the men who were at the entrance of the house they struck with blindness, both small and great, and they toiled in vain to find the entrance.

12And the men said to Lot, “Whom else do you have here? A son-in-law, your sons, and your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, take out of the place.

13For we are destroying this place, because their cry has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”

When destruction sets in – how often do we try and fight? The Angels encouraged Lot to take his family and step away. Sometimes we know and see we have the power of the Universe behind us; and still? We are told to flee.

A good friend taught me; “Lessons need to be learned.” There is freedom in this.  Sometimes we need to go through life in order to learn important lessons for our spiritual growth and liberation.  It’s a contraction to cause an expansion.  Let’s keep finish out the portion:

14So Lot went forth and spoke to his sons-in-law, the suitors of his daughters, and he said, “Arise, go forth from this place, for the Lord is destroying the city,” but he seemed like a comedian in the eyes of his sons-in-law.

15And as the dawn rose, the angels pressed Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you perish because of the iniquity of the city.”

16But he tarried, and the men took hold of his hand and his wife’s hand, and the hand of his two daughters, out of the Lord’s pity for him, and they took him out and placed him outside the city.

17And it came to pass, when they took them outside, that he said, “Flee for your life, do not look behind you, and do not stand in the entire plain. Flee to the mountain, lest you perish.”

18And Lot said to them, “Please, do not, O Lord.

19Behold now, Your servant has found favor in Your eyes, and You have increased Your kindness, which You have done with me, to sustain my soul. But I cannot flee to the mountain, lest the evil overtake me, and I die.

20Behold now, this city is near to flee there, and it is small. Let me please flee there. Is it not small? And my soul will survive.”

You know what’s funny? Lot arguing with the Angels trying to save him and his family. Instead of LISTENING to the Angels, he delayed. The Angels STILL had pity and brought him out of Sodom. How did Lot sleep that night?

Think about it; Lot was about to be attacked, the Angels caused the people to go blind.  The Angels told Lot to leave, he slept. Lot tried to save his future son in laws, they laughed at him.  So the Angels took Lot’s hand with his wife and daughters and placed them outside the city. They say “run to the mountain.”  And instead of trusting he argues.

Let’s close with this.  All of the learning so far has been around spiritual freedom and liberation.

Let’s add something new to our learning:

• The Path of Ascension begins with curiosity and not judgement
• If someone’s curiosity causes doubt and defensiveness, be curious about our own doubt and defensiveness and NOT their motives for curiosity.
• The tree of life is within us. Choose life within with curiosity and not judgment
• Learn to balance the comfort of stumbling, with the challenge of pushing ourselves towards spiritual growth.
• Let go of a stable life. Freedom is accepting “what is” as a blessing. We can’t control what happens. We can only navigate it with bitterness or flow.
• Freedom requires balance – emotions vs intellect, humility vs confidence, thinking as an individual while staying meaningfully connected to others.
• Freedom comes from expansion and not contraction – but contraction is important to the process of expansion
• To live free, we must circumcise the foreskin of past trauma and feel the pain of healing so that our higher selves can appear to us, and we can co-create miraculous NEW life for us and others.
• To be free, we must understand what love requires vs the world around us. 10%.  Just start there. Freedom is seeing the 10% and moving to 11%. Not being trapped by the daunting 90% we feel guilt and shame about.  The 90% is slavery. The 10% is freedom.

Today, I think the lesson is this:

To be free, we must receive the world around us and respond accordingly. Arguing with circumstance and direction is a fruitless endeavor that leads to being imprisoned. The major fundamental question is whether we BELIEVE Hashem and the Universe created by Hashem is working in our favor?  Freedom comes from believing Hashem has rigged the universe in all of our favor and has our back.  Resisting and arguing with the universe leads us to prison. Slavery. Because we don’t control the Universe. We don’t control what is happening around us.

Receive the Universe. Don’t Resist it.  Listen to Your Soul. This is the path to freedom and liberation.

Those are my thoughts – what are yours?

Here are my thoughts from the past two years:

Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 14 Cheshvan, 5783

Tonight is the full moon! It is when the energy of the moon in this cycle is the brightest! The intentions we set during the new moon 15 days ago are at their highest peak.

Today’s portion is interesting. Especially given the thoughts I had a year ago.

I am now imagining the scene playing out in the portion inside my brain. It’s nighttime. My mind is going in a million directions. And I hear a clear voice inside my head telling me how awful I am, and I need to be destroyed. And another voice telling me not to worry we got this.

My brain, going a mile a minute was hosting an entire cavalcade of thoughts as guests – what if I do THIS good deed, will it make up for THAT bad one? Who did I upset today? Those kind of things.

We all have thoughts inside our head. And we are conscious of those thoughts.

As I reflect – I ask myself; who am I? Am I those thoughts? Am I the conscience that is aware of the thoughts? Am I the observer of all of this going on?

What we allow inside the house, and what we keep outside the house is important (in my opinion) for our own mental health.

Is this a deeper truth of the Torah? Would love your thoughts!

Torah thoughts; Heshvan 13, 5782

Todays portion of Va-Yera is the foundation of the destruction of Sodom and Gamorah. As I approach the passage I can internally recognize there are a lot of feelings connected around this story. Growing up, I know the story was used to instill fear in me; Hashem is waiting up in the heavens to reign down fire upon me for being wicked. I had a lot of anxieties reading this as a kid.

I bring this up only to share the lens in which I am approaching the text. I am aware of my biases here. But I am still compelled to dig in and want to learn!

The portion begins with two angels coming into Sodom. The ancient writings hint that one of the angels came to destroy, and one of them came to save Lot.

The writings also share that Lot was always looking for guests so he saw the angels arrived; he went up to greet them and prostrated himself and then Invited them to stay with him. Lot was concerned for the angels safety being out in public because Lot knew his neighbors.

The angels told Lot no at first, but then when Lot urged them strongly they changed their mind.

Ok. So first question here; why? Why did they say no at first but were willing to be swayed by Lot to change course? Not sure I have an answer. I’m curious as to what others think about why.

There is thought that this was occurring during Passover time; because Lot made a feast and baked unleavened bread.

Full stop. How could they have celebrated Passover if the Exodus hasn’t happened yet? Why was Lot making unleavened bread? Meir Rubashkin or Gershon Klein I’m looking at you for help here. I’m sure there is a story here; or an explanation; but that would be something if they were celebrating Passover.

Maybe it wasn’t Passover and Lot just decided to bake unleavened bread….for some reason.

So many questions.

Ok; we do know that Lot and the Angels discussed the wickedness of the people of the city.

Then, like a horror movie, the house is surrounded by the people of Sodom wanting Lot to send the guests out so they could do some bad things to the angels. This shows just how wicked the city had become.

Then; um. How do I put this? Basically Lot pimps out his two daughters as a sacrifice. he tells the crowd they can do what they want to his own DAUGHTERS.

Ugh. I have six daughters. I cannot imagine a situation where that would happen.

Lot almost makes it worse because he says “don’t do anything to these men, because they have come under the shelter of my roof.” Um. So have your DAUGHTERS!!!!

But here’s what I notice. First, we are talking about supernatural beings here. Lot had to have known; when he met them he prostrated himself. Second; I don’t see here where Lot consulted with the Angels on how to proceed here. If I put myself in Lot’s shoes, I would think to ask the angels if they had any wisdom for me.

The people weren’t having it though; they turned on Lot – because Lot wasn’t native born in Sodom. They went to break down the door.

By the way, I can already feel my childhood anxiety rising up inside of me as I read this.

The angels turn to Lot, and miraculously bring him into the house and strike the men at the entrance to the house with blindness so they could not find the entrance. Again, like a horror movie, they tell Lot to get everyone out of the house because everything is going to be destroyed.

Lot goes to speak to his sons-in-law who are the fiancés of his daughters. They basically think he’s being a comedian. Rabbi Samuel Bornstein of Sochaczew in the 19th century writes the sons in law “too, were struck with blindness – a spiritual blindness that made them unable to connect the miracle they had witnessed to their own predicament.”

FULL STOP.

In todays world; how often do we feel this in our bones? People who seem so spiritually blind they are unable to connect to the miracles around them?

And then again, Lot offered up his daughters (who I assume were these men’s fiancés) to the crowd; I wonder if they knew that and that caused them to reject Lot outright?

How do we pull from this into our lives? How often to we feel desperate and out of desperation make irrational and irresponsible decisions? I think one of the takeaways here (for me at least) is about the foundation of relationship, and how important that is. Trust needs to be established if people are going to listen.

Lot had factual information. He knew the truth; and yet his sons in law were saying “FAKE NEWS!” The evidence was all around, but the people were too far gone. The relationships were already fractured.

As I contrast this with Noah; you could argue this is a very similar story. Noah knew the destruction was coming and didn’t really engage with people to try and keep them safe. He kept to himself. Lot took a different approach – he was trying to bring people along with him and they laughed at him. Most likely what would have happened to Noah had he tried to convince people to get on his ark.

So here are two responses to coming destruction – Noah and Lot. And the responses of the people around them were similar. Lot met more resistance because he seemed to be trying harder than Noah was to bring people along.

I’m going to keep this in the back of my mind as I continue to read the Torah. In thinking ahead…

Wait.

I just connected Passover to this (I think). When it comes to impending destruction, Moses really was the first Jew who was able to get people to follow him so people would avoid destruction. Could that be why? Noah wasn’t able to bring anyone but his closest family. Lot brought his wife (but who wouldn’t fully follow). Joseph did help his family avoid the famine in Egypt; and Joseph helped the Egyptians, but Moses was the first to really lead the Jews away from destruction and towards the promised land. Maybe that is why the angels were eating unleavened bread with Lot.

Ok. To close out the portion, we see again just how much Lot also doesn’t get it.

Instead of fleeing and seeing how desperate the situation was, Lot was delayed because went for his money (according to the Talmudic writings).

Hashem STILL had pity on Lot and basically the angels took his hand, his wife’s hand and the hands of his two daughters and took them outside the city.

The angels tell Lot to flee up to the mountains for his life and don’t look back on the destruction that is coming. They tell Lot to go to the mountain (where Abraham was).

And then Lot tries to negotiate (shaking my head). “You saved my life; which was great! But….”

Lot didn’t want to go to the mountain – the Talmud says because he knew compared to Abraham he would be considered evil, and would die there. He was still afraid.

Let’s back up. Lot KNEW he was with angels. They saved him not once (bringing him inside the house), bur twice (bringing him outside the city). He thinks following their directions and going up to the mountains would cause him to die? Come on, Lot!

He wanted to go to a smaller city. He asked to move to that small city and his argument? “doesn’t it only have a few sins?”

And that is where the passage leads off.

Whew. I wonder what is going to happen; surely the angels know better than Lot.

My takeaways from the passage;

1. Hospitality is important
2. Trust in relationship (with others and with Hashem) is important

What are your takeaways?