I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached by people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, all asking me the same thing: “Rabbi, I’d like to be a Sodomite, but I just don’t know how to start.”
Believe me, I understand. It’s easy to get confused about Sodomy. The way some people describe it, you’d think that Sodomy involved exhausting physical contortions and esoteric sexual disciplines.
Not so! In fact, the biblical story of Sodom actually has almost nothing to do with body parts!
In the book of Genesis, the motivating factor for the residents of Sodom is not lust, but rage. What are the Sodomites so mad about? Well it turns out that a guy named Lot — nephew of Abraham, the first Hebrew man — has immigrated to the town of Sodom. The Sodomites don’t take kindly to immigrants to begin with, but Lot goes even farther: He offers hospitality to other immigrants.
It is this act — helping others in need — that’s the final straw for the Sodomites, the thing that brings the entire town of Sodom to Lot’s door, a murderous mob of venom and fury.
When you hear that somebody is helping the poor and vulnerable, somewhere in your town, do you too begin to feel the acrid and angry bile of resentment rising in your gut?
If you answered “yes,” then I have good news: You’re well on your way to being a Sodomite!
But anger is just a starting place. Here are five simple steps to becoming the best Sodomite you can be:
1. Be blessed with a lot of money. The Talmud, the Jewish people’s encyclopedic storehouse of lore and law, explains where Sodom’s corruption came from. In a section of the Talmud called Sanhedrin, the rabbinic sages explain that Sodom was so blessed by God that bread literally “came out of the earth,” the stones of Sodom were made of sapphire and its dust was made of gold. If you really want to be a good Sodomite, it helps to be in the top 1 percent.
2. Develop a paranoiac fear of parting with that money. Despite having tons of money, the Sodomites irrationally obsessed over losing it. The sage Rabbi Nathaniel explained that, in order to prevent immigrants and the poor from taking any of their wealth, “they even fenced in all the trees above their fruit so that it could not be taken — not even by a bird of heaven.” No doubt the people of Sodom would today live in guarded and gated communities, raging against any tax money that might somehow, tragically, end up in the hands of the poor.
3. Despite having plenty, refuse to help the needy in any way. Having lots of money is a good start, but to achieve Sodomite status you’ll have to go farther. “This was the sin of your sister Sodom,” explains the Biblical prophet Ezekiel. “She and her daughters had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” So sure, of course you’ll want to refuse to help the poor in your town. But don’t stop there! Make sure you refuse to provide the poor with any of the basic elements of subsistence, like proper wages, healthy food, safe housing and health care. That’s the genius of Sodom at work.
4. Prohibit immigration, and torture any immigrants who make it to your town. Sure, you’ve made the poor of your own city really miserable. But don’t let down your guard — there are people from other places to brutalize. The Talmud explains that any immigrant who somehow made it to the gates of Sodom was mercilessly tormented. The Sodomites “had beds upon which immigrants slept — if the visitor was too long for the bed, they shortened him by lopping off his feet; if too short for the bed, they stretched him out on a rack.” A really good Sodomite would hound and harass immigrants and refugees, condemning them to torturous detention camps. Do you think you have what it takes?
5. Brutalize everyone else, just for good measure. As fun as it is, abusing immigrants and the poor sometimes just leaves you hungering for more. To remedy this problem, the Talmud explains that Sodom set up a high court populated by corrupt and perverse judges. Their rulings encouraged everyone to be awful to everyone. If a man assaulted another man’s wife, the court “would say to the husband, ‘Give [your wife] to him, so she may become pregnant!’” If a person stabbed his neighbor, “they would say to the victim, ‘Pay him a fee for bloodletting!’” For Sodomy to fully take root, you’ll want to reinforce the message that violence, especially against women and the poor, is expected and praised. To ensure that violence fills the land, consider flooding your land with deadly weapons, like firearms.
Sounds daunting, right? So many boxes to check. And yet I think you’ll find that, with a little hard work, Sodomy isn’t nearly as difficult to achieve as you might have first thought.
In truth, plenty of people, just like you and me, are right now doing their part to create a Sodomite society of cruelty to immigrants, indifference to suffering and a borderline orgiastic celebration of greed.
In fact, you might even say it almost feels like we’re living in Sodom right now.
That’s an incredibly childish way to look at the story and as with most lefty Jews you ignore reality and Jewish tradition. If were to follow your logic than everyone among the seven billion people on the planet should be able to come to the us and set up their tent in a public park and be an American. Given how the rest of the world us it would be about a week before hundreds of millions would find themselves living in the states and you just committed yourself to taking care of them. As a matter of fact why don’t you invite a bunch of them to live in your home as you seem to believe that a duty to hospitality is absolute.
Actual Jewish tradition holds that all people are expected to set up courts of Justice and operate under rule of law. Immigration laws fall under that category. Goyish countries especially have only the right but the obligation to establish immigration laws and enforce them fairly. Not Jewish laws but their own. And guess what? They have.
Every country on the planet limits immigration and deports those that enter illegally. It’s international custom.
In the time and region in which sodom existed regional custom was that the town square was open for travelers to use. So the messengers were adhering to regional custom and the sodomites weren’t. And comparing the us arresting and deporting illegal immigrants to seeking them out and raping them as the sodomites were trying to do is again childish. I wonder if the sodomites simply had the policy of posting no trespassing signs on their town and escorting unwelcome guests out all the bru ha ha could have been avoided?
But should the us or the american public start raping illegal immigrants as general practice I’d have to agree with your point. That would be abusive and merit divine punishment on par with that visited on sodom.
I understand your confusion as you belong to a sect that uses Torah and tradition as nothing more than a jumping off point for your personal political agenda. I guess today it’s making grown ups look callous. But a little study and rational thought might make up for that.
Well said. And let me encourage you to keep hammering these silly J journalists. For as long as they continue to allow comments anyway, which I think won’t be for long.
Your big issue here is that conservatives are driven by malice and not reason. You are, in essence, preaching to the choir as a result. Of course, anyone with half a brain can see that there is a big difference between gays and people threatening to assault your visitors and that not all foreigners are bad but a half a brain is half too much for the average conservative who operate entirely out of their amygdala rather than the forebrain.