A Pillar of Salt - וַיֵּרָא Parashat Vayeira with TI Torah Study

Summary of Parashah by ReformJudaism.org

• Abraham welcomes three visitors, who announce that Sarah will soon have a son. (18:1-15)
• Abraham argues with God about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. (18:16-33)
• Lot's home is attacked by the people of Sodom. Lot and his two daughters escape as the cities are being destroyed. Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt. (19:1-29)
• Lot impregnates his daughters, and they bear children who become the founders of the nations Moab and Ammon. (19:30-38)
• Abimelech, king of Gerar, takes Sarah as his wife after Abraham claims that she is his sister. (20:1-18)
• Isaac is born, circumcised, and weaned. Hagar and her son, Ishmael, are sent away; an angel saves their lives. (21:1-21)
• God tests Abraham, instructing him to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah. (22:1-19)

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The Haftarah for this week: Second Kings, Chapter 4, verses 1-37

In the parashah Sara is promised a son, although, she says, her husband is old; in the haftarah, a Shunammite woman, whose husband is also advanced in years, is promised by the prophet Elisha that she will embrace a son.

Elisha was the chief disciple of his illustrious mentor, Elijah, and was active for about fifty years (850-800 BCE). While Elijah was an outsider, engaged in confrontation with corrupt power and religion, Elisha was a man whose counsel the rulers of Israel tended to seek. He had been a farmer before becoming a follower of Elijah, and his concern for ordinary folk never left him. He became the subject of folktales, and many miracles were ascribed to him.

The stories:

1. The tale of the oil jars that were miraculously refilled (1-7)

2. The tale of the Shunammite woman: the birth and death of her son, and his revival through the intercession of the Prophet (8-37)

Click HERE to read it!

The Story of Lot's Wife

Is she a warning or a monument? (From Rabbi Marci Bellows piece " The Lessons of Lot's Wife)

We all waver in a delicate dance between past nostalgia and future potential. We all know what it feels like to get stuck somewhere, to look back longingly when we should be moving forward, to be turned into a pillar of the past.

Perhaps we do so in regret, mired in wishes that events had turned out differently or that we had acted differently. Perhaps we miss someone: a loved one no longer with us, or a relationship long over or an estranged family member. Perhaps we relive a former moment of glory, enjoying the memory of the moment, but no longer reaching for new accomplishments or achievements.

Perhaps we are scared, knowing that we must take a risk or a leap forward, or make a change in our lives, yet not sure how to proceed.

Rather than remaining there eternally merely as punishment, I think that Lot’s Wife, whatever we call her, stands as a signpost at the crossroads. She shows us what happens to us when we become stagnant or inert. We freeze there forever, unless we are able to look forward to take those first important steps. When remembering Lot’s Wife, let us look ahead, squinting our eyes into the bright future, pulling away the cobwebs that form, taking those tentative, anxious steps that eventually lead us to a new chapter of our own stories.

Anna Akhmatova - 1889-1966

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,

over a black mountain, in his giant track,

while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:

"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,

the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,

at the empty windows set in the tall house

where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain

stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .

Her body flaked into transparent salt,

and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman?

Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern?

Yet in my heart I never will deny her,

who suffered death because she chose to turn.

Lot's Wife by Tani Arness

I needed to know the salt of myself.
I wanted clarity. I needed to know
why my husband was so quick
to give his daughters away —
to brag, soured sick with wine,
and tell men how creamy his daughters’ thighs —
I turned back to take another look at my life,

at myself, another woman, soft in my skin.
At dusk, I gathered the honey:
the bees gently brushing against my arms,
humming me a sweet song.

Still godlike-men came promising fire from heaven,
and so we ran.
I could not believe, then,
that events were unfolding as they should,
that all things would work together for good.

I am a woman, keeper of memory.
I wanted to know what happened to the children
who were playing just that morning outside my gate.
The little girl with chestnut eyes
had called loudly to me, waving me over to see
the grasshopper she’d scooped from the wildflowers.

I wanted to understand.
I wanted to ask my husband,
a man scared easily, by wind,
my husband, who believed nothing his fault:

Couldn’t you have held my hand as we rushed away from the burning city?
Couldn’t you have looked back to try and save me
as I disappeared from your grasp?
Was it so simple to let go,
eyes trained forward, ears pricked to the damnations of gods?

That is what dissolved me —
Not the burning sulfur,
not the looking back,
but the inability to see anything better in front of me.

I am the keeper of forgotten things.
I remember singing lullabies to the trees.
I had to turn
to discover the salt of this thing called living.
I had to turn and face his God and ask Him, “Can’t you see the good things?”

I am a woman who lived in a city sinning
and still sang down little bits of sweetness from the sky,
a woman who could not run from flames
without first gathering a handful of ash to remember us by.

Lot's Wife by Kirstine Bately

While Lot, the conscience of a nation,

struggles with the Lord,
she struggles with the housework.
The City of Sin is where
she raises the children.
Ba'al or Adonai--
Whoever is God--
the bread must still be made
and the doorsill swept.
The Lord may kill the children tomorrow,
but today they must be bathed and fed.
Well and good to condemn your neighbors' religion,
but weren't they there
when the baby was born,
and when the well collapsed?
While her husband communes with God,
she tucks the children into bed.
In the morning, when he tells her of God's decision to destroy the city]
she puts down the lamp she is cleaning
and calmly begins to pack.
In between bundling up the children
and deciding what will go,
she runs for a moment
to say goodbye to the herd,
gently patting each soft head
with tears in her eyes for the animals that will not understand.
She smiles blindly to the woman
who held her hand at childbed.
It is easy for eyes that have always turned to heaven
not to look back;
those who have been--by necessity--drawn to earth
cannot forget that life is lived from day to day.
Good, to a God, and good in human terms
are two different things.
On the breast of the hill, she chooses to be human,
and turns, in farewell--
and never regrets
the sacrifice.