[Avodah] The Delet Hakodesh and Lot

[Arie Folger]

RCBKaufman wrote:
> 1) the door of Lot?s house is mentioned 3 (THREExxx) times. That in itself
> is unusual, but the second time, when Lot is between the mob of thousands
> and the door, the mob is pushing soo hard that the Torah tells us that
they
> were about to break down the door. Anyone have an obvious question?
> Before they even get to the door, they would have had to completely crush
> Lot to death, but the Torah is more concerned to tell us about the poor
> door that almost broke. What?s up with that?

The Torah is pretty explicit. The door is closed, Lot is outside, and they
begin abusing him, perhaps violently so. The angels then suddenly open the
door, obviously fighting off anyone who's right there, pull Lot back and
close the door again. Once the door would break, everyone would be
condemned to violent death. And then the angels perform teh miracle of
hitting the people outside with "sanverim".

> 2) Lot offers his daughters to be gang raped and killed by an unimaginable
> number of brutal animals rather than hand over his guests, whom he just
> met, to the same fate.

I forgot who it was, but famous enlightenment thinkers struggled with the
question of whether one is morally obligated to family more than to
strangers, and the argument was made that ideally justice and virtue should
be so blind that it doesn't matter if one is close or not. Lot considers
justice and sees that he owes the strangers protection because they sought
protection under his roof (or rather because Lot insisted that they do).
His daughters, as citizens of Sedom, would not have that additional claim
against Lot, unless one posits, as you do and to which Torah would agree,
but which isn't the only or most obvious enlightened position, that being a
parents obligates you to your children (and them to you).

The opposite claim is that parenthood is accidental and thus does not give
rise to any special moral claims. Obviously, we reject this argument (kibud
av va'em being a case in point), but the argument should suffice not to
make into a rasha someone who calmly considers competing moral arguments,
seeking to do the right thing.
-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Yours sincerely,

Arie Folger,
Visit my blog at http://rabbifolger.net/
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