This week’s portion, Vayera, holds a key that reaches all the way back to the Garden. Rabbi David Fohrman shows it by asking the simple question: where else do we hear these words?
The Parallels Between Eden and Sodom
In Eden, Hashem drives Adam out. Cherubim stand east of the Garden with a flaming sword that turns every which way (mitapechet) to guard the Path of the Tree of Life. A hand stretches forth to take what is forbidden. Someone is sent from a Garden. Angels appear. Divine fire falls. Something is overturned. Then comes the eighth element: lishmor et derech etz hachayim—to guard the Path of the Tree of Life.
Every one of those elements reappears in the destruction of Sodom. Angels stretch out a hand to seize Lot and pull him back from the mob. Lot is sent out of the city. The plain itself had been called a Garden, like the Garden of Hashem. Divine fire rains down.
The word for the overturning is haphechah—the same root as the turning sword. And just before the destruction, Hashem explains why He speaks with Abraham at all: so that he will command his children and his household after him veshamru derech Hashem la’asot tzedakah u’mishpat—to keep the Path of Hashem, to do righteousness and justice.
When a Society Writes Cruelty into Law
The dark Path that begins when a hand reaches for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ends, if left unchecked, in a society that writes cruelty into law. Sodom was not merely sinful; it was organized. Young and old, from every corner of the city, gathered at Lot’s door as a civic duty. Hospitality was a crime. Taking was the system. The Garden and its people both had to go.
We know this world. We see the places where the rules protect the takers, where “what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours” is treated as fairness, where honor and power matter more than the stranger at the gate, and where anyone who still speaks of the ways of the nations or the plain meaning of the Torah is treated as the one who broke the code. The cities that institutionalize the opposite of kindness are not new. They are Sodom rewritten in modern letters.
Hashem Remembers the Quiet Kindness
Yet the same portion that shows us the end of the dark Path also shows us the other Path still standing. Abraham sits at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day, looking for the one who wants to leave the world he is living in and find Hashem. He and Sarah made souls by the hundreds as they walked haderekh. The children of Abraham are still doing it. Every davar Torah, every quiet truth spoken, is another soul reminded of a connection that was never fully broken.
Hashem keeps the ledger of the small things. Lot is remembered in the Midrash and by Rashi on Genesis 19:29 not for any dramatic rescue he performed in Sodom, but for a silence years earlier in Egypt. When Abraham said Sarah was his sister, Lot knew the truth and did not speak it. That one restraint—unseen by almost everyone, unrecorded except in Heaven—was the kindness Hashem recalled measure for measure when the fire fell. Rabbi Chaim Richman has taught this for years: look for the good in people. Most of the world would have written Lot off. Hashem did not.
Seeing the Good That Is Already There
This is the difference that matters. When a system declares that every person who does not confess a particular name is already condemned, it becomes nearly impossible to see the good that is already there. The Jewish Path has always been the opposite.
Every human being is already connected to Hashem. Some have wandered far into the Garden that looks like Eden but is actually Sodom. They still carry the quiet capacity for restraint, loyalty, and the unrecognized chesed that Lot once showed. Our work is not to declare them lost. It is to stand at the open door, as Abraham did, and keep the Path clear.
Rabbi Warren Goldstein puts the same truth in the language of Avot and Tehillim: the world is built on kindness. There are givers and receivers. When a person lives only for honor, the world turns upside down. When the focus is on Hashem, who gives only, the person becomes a giver.
That is how one stands alone when good is called evil, and evil is called good. Abraham saw that the world was made tov me’od—very good—and he spent his life teaching that truth to people who had lost the connection. The Torah is that truth. There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is destruction. Acknowledge Hashem in all your ways, and He will direct the Path.
Walking the Path Today
The cherubim still guard the way. The Path they guard is not a gravel road or a yellow brick trail. It is the living balance of tzedek and mishpat—the justice that refuses to tolerate the taker, and the righteousness that reaches for the one who is down even when the rules do not require it.
Abraham began the conversation with Hashem about those two values. We continue it every time we study, every time we keep the door open, every time we refuse to see only the failure and instead remember the one quiet act that Hashem has never forgotten.
In this hour, the children of Abraham are still making souls. The Garden that was lost can be walked toward again. The Path of the Tree of Life is still open. Hashem is watching the small kindnesses. He is looking for the Lot in every person who still has one act of restraint, one moment of loyalty, one refusal to join the mob left in them. That is enough to begin the return.
Hazan Gavriel ben David
Key Takeaways
- The portion Vayera highlights parallels between the Garden of Eden and Sodom, illustrating moral decline and the significance of kindness.
- Sodom represents a society that writes cruelty into its law, in contrast to the quiet kindness exemplified by Abraham and Lot.
- Hashem remembers small acts of kindness, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the good in others despite their actions.
- The Jewish Path encourages seeing the inherent connection every person has to Hashem, fostering kindness and compassion.
- Walking towards the Path to the Tree of Life involves balancing justice and righteousness, while remembering the significance of every small act of kindness.