Parsha_Push Parshat Vayera

When one’s child (especially the first one) gets engaged, one might feel their parenting being tested. Not just because of the shift to a new phase, or due to the child leaving home. It can happen due to a new element entering one’s home – an “outsider” becoming part of the family, bringing with him or her an example of different family relations, different parenting, and a separate way of doing things. Some may call this kind of experience ‘bringing a mirror into the house.’
The encounter with someone different from us yet simultaneously close to us causes us to self-examine through that comparative lens. This self-examination often happens in daily life through other family members who behave differently from us and challenge our priorities. And it happens especially when someone new enters our circle and challenges our conventions.
And like in many cases of self-examination, at times some people will take the opportunity to improve, while at other times they will choose to reject or distance the foreign element that makes them feel bad about themselves.
This year, I understand anew the words of Sodom to Lot: “This one came to dwell and he would judge?!” Rashi understood that on that day they appointed Lot as their judge. Other commentators understand the accusation against Lot through his words of rebuke, as if he is judging them: “Please, my brothers, do not do evil.”
But perhaps, Lot came to a city that already had its conventions, where people had convinced themselves they were right in preserving their resources, protecting themselves from invaders, and other justifications for their behavior. Lot comes and presents them with a different model which unsettles them. He holds up a mirror in front of them that rebukes and judges. Even without saying anything, just the request to leave the guests alone, the very act of hospitality, causes the townspeople to feel they are being judged.
The people of Sodom didn’t learn that a mirror can examine you and at the same time advance you. They didn’t understand that it can even strengthen you in the moral and ethical world you’ve examined and then chosen. Instead of improving and advancing, they decided to break the mirror, and in doing so, they sealed their fate.