Rabbi David Fohrman: Hey, this is Rabbi David Fohrman. I am here with Ari Levison, and welcome to Into the Verse. Ari, you were going to talk to me about something you found in Parshat Vayera…?

Ari Levisohn: Parshat Vayera. Alright, so Rabbi Fohrman, one of your favorite games to play when we're looking at the parsha is, you know, we first look for — where have you heard this before? — find some parallels between stories. And then you like to play this game called Cast of Characters.

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh, I love Cast of Characters.

How Does Cast of Characters Work?

Ari: So how does that work?

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, whenever you find a set of intertextual parallels, you find that the language in a certain story kind of matches up to the language of another story, and you're convinced that it's not a coincidence.

The first stage is, you have to be convinced that it's not a coincidence. You need to see enough corner pieces of the puzzle, enough edge pieces, enough middle pieces to be pretty confident that there is a picture to be seen, but you don't quite know what it means. You're trying to make sense of what the picture is even though, kind of, the jigsaw pieces are matching up and it really doesn't seem coincidental. It really does seem that Story A is echoing Story B in some kind of way.

One of the ways you can get to the meaning of what's going on is playing this little game I call Cast of Characters, which is asking yourself, “What are the characters in Story 1, who are the characters in Story 2, and how do they match up to each other?” Which character in Story 2 is a character in Story 1, you know, playing, so to speak. So, that's what I mean by Cast of Characters. And that, my experience has been, that often is a good tip off towards what the constellation of connections between the two stories might actually mean.

Ari: Right. And something that you've pointed out before is that it rarely works as neatly and cleanly as you would like it to.

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh, it never works as cleanly as you'd like, but I think that's by design. In other words, what the Torah…the Torah will do all sorts of psychedelic things with Cast of Characters. Characters will match up in the strangest of ways. You never would have expected that this character would be playing, you know, some other role in a previous story.

Similarly, sometimes characters come together. Sometimes two characters are playing aspects of a single character in one story, sort of, breaking apart that character and putting one half of them, or another half of them. Similarly, sometimes you've got characters that will shift, that will begin playing one character, but then shift to another.

In my experience, this kind of stuff is also not happenstance. There's deep meaning that emerges from these kind of strange twists in the characters, and it sounds like you may have found some of that, so I'm eager to hear it.

Ari: Yeah, yeah, it's exactly…it's one of those psychedelic Cast of Character surprise twists that I found today and really got me excited, and I want to talk about.

Rabbi Fohrman: And just as a disclaimer here, Ari has not vetted any of this with me before, so I am completely…I'll be completely surprised by what he has to share with me. And Ari, I have no idea whether I can make any sense of it in the moment, but I'll definitely give it the old college try.

Parshat Vayera’s Parallel Stories

Ari: Yeah, alright. Time for the parallels itself. There's two stories, really back to back chapters in this week's parsha, where the parallels are…they're almost like screaming at you; they're jumping out.

Rabbi Fohrman: So before we get to the parallels, let's just introduce ourselves. You're talking about Genesis 18 and 19.

This is the story of Abraham entertaining the guests that come to his home, seemingly angels, and he feeds them well. They reveal at the very end of the story that Sarah's going to have a child. Sarah laughs; she's not really sure whether this is going to happen. There's some dialogue about why Sarah's laughing. Abraham escorts the guests away. That's Story Number One, in chapter 18.

Story Number Two then talks about what's going on in Sodom, right? Story Number Two is going to talk about the journey of two of these angels into Sodom, how they come to encounter Lot there, how Lot takes care of them, invites them into his house, how a mob assembles at the door seeking to molest them, how Lot will defend them against the mob but at the expense of giving his own daughters, seemingly, to be raped by the mob.

So Lot's choices here are, what we might say, “checkered,” if we would call it that, if we would speak charitably about the moral complexion of Lot's choices here. He, on the one hand, defends his guests, but he does so at the expense of his own daughters. Seemingly, by the way, doing it in a way which is odd or definitely makes you raise an eyebrow. He says to the mob: Please don't molest these guests, כִּי־עַל־כֵּן בָּאוּ בְּצֵל קֹרָתִי — because for this they've sought refuge beneath the roof beams of my house (Genesis 19:8); leading the reader to think, “One second, if anybody is seeking refuge under the beams of your house, wouldn't it be your own daughters before these guests?” But Lot seems oblivious to that.

But be that as it may, that's your really quickie summary of chapter 18, chapter 19.

Exploring the Parallels

Ari: Right, okay, so immediately when we begin reading the second chapter of these two chapters, chapter 19, you know, the lights start going off in our head, like, “Wait a minute, we've heard this before. Angels coming and visiting someone, that person inviting them in….”

Rabbi Fohrman: So one second, let's actually take a look at the verses themselves. When you talk about angels coming to visit someone, what do you mean?

So what happens is that these two angels, they come to the city: וַיָּבֹאוּ שְׁנֵי הַמַּלְאָכִים סְדֹמָה (Genesis 19:1). And Ari, you're suggesting that that reminds us of angels coming to Abraham. Angels came to Abraham, angels now come to Sodom, right? But it's not just that: לוֹט יֹשֵׁב בְּשַׁעַר־סְדֹם, I hear about where Lot is. 

Ari: He's sitting in a doorway.

Rabbi Fohrman: He’s sitting in a doorway. Well, he wasn't the only one who was sitting in the doorway. You go to the beginning of chapter 18: וַיֵּרָא אֵלָיו יְהֹוָה בְּאֵלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא וְהוּא יֹשֵׁב פֶּתַח־הָאֹהֶל כְּחֹם הַיּוֹם — Abraham was sitting also in the gateway, the gateway of his tent. And we know when this took place: כְּחֹם הַיּוֹם — It was in the hottest part of the day. And we hear now about the שְׁנֵי הַמַּלְאָכִים coming to Sodom. Again, we hear about the time of day: בָּעֶרֶב.

So, so far, a remarkable confluence. It sounds like the approach of the angels to Sodom really is echoing the approach of the angels to Abraham. Not every detail is the same, but the structure of the details is the same. I hear about two angels coming, I hear the time of day, I hear where the person's sitting, right?

And in both cases, I then hear about how the person goes and greets the angels. In the case of Abraham: וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא — He sees, וְהִנֵּה שְׁלֹשָׁה אֲנָשִׁים נִצָּבִים עָלָיו וַיַּרְא וַיָּרׇץ לִקְרָאתָם — he goes, and he runs out to greet them; he bows before them.

And with Lot, וַיָּקׇם לִקְרָאתָם — He doesn't quite run to them, but he does get up to greet them.

Ari: Right, that same word, לִקְרָאתָם.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, same word, לִקְרָאתָם, and וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ אַפַּיִם אָרְצָה. He bows just as Abraham. So you've got seven or eight parallels, more or less, in order.

Ari: And it keeps going in the next verse.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, go ahead.

Ari: Yeah, so it says: וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֶּה נָּא־אֲדֹנַי סוּרוּ נָא אֶל־בֵּית עַבְדְּכֶם — He tells them, “Turn towards the house of your servant.” וְלִינוּ — And come and rest and spend the night.” And then next thing: וְרַחֲצוּ רַגְלֵיכֶם — And wash your feet, right. Not just “wash your feet,” but also “come and stay, eat.” And he feeds them food.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep, all this has parallels in the Abraham story where we hear: אִם־נָא מָצָאתִי חֵן בְּעֵינֶיךָ אַל־נָא תַעֲבֹר מֵעַל עַבְדֶּךָ — Please don't leave, יֻקַּח־נָא מְעַט־מַיִם — take a little bit of water, וְרַחֲצוּ רַגְלֵיכֶם, the same language for the washing of the feet — Stay here while I feed you.

And it really seems like chapter 19 is evoking what Abraham did for the angels when they came to his tent. Somehow Lot is doing a version of the same thing.

A Strange Twist in the Story

Ari: Right, exactly, and at this point, you know, if we're gonna set up the Cast of Characters, it should be pretty straightforward. Right, so we have the angels who are playing the angels. They're coming, they're the guests. And we have the host, who in the first story is Avraham and the second story is Lot.

Rabbi Fohrman: Pretty straightforward. But things, alas, are rarely straightforward when you play Cast of Characters. So where's the twist, Ari? 

Ari: Okay, so — and first of all, I'll just give some credit to this, to our colleague Evan Weiner, who is the one who pointed out this twist.

Okay, so all of a sudden in verse four, before the angels even get a chance to lie down and spend the night. וְאַנְשֵׁי הָעִיר אַנְשֵׁי סְדֹם נָסַבּוּ עַל־הַבַּיִת מִנַּעַר וְעַד־זָקֵן כׇּל־הָעָם מִקָּצֶה —  So the people of the city of Sodom, they come and they surround the house, from young to old, כׇּל־הָעָם, the entire nation. וַיִּקְרְאוּ אֶל־לוֹט וַיֹּאמְרוּ לוֹ — And they called to Lot and they said to him, אַיֵּה הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר־בָּאוּ אֵלֶיךָ הַלָּיְלָה — Where are these men who came to you?

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, so where Ari is going here is that the language that the mob is using, when the mob speaks to Lot…the mob comes, they gather around, they are going to break into the house, and they say to Lot, “Where are these people who came in the middle of the night that you hosted?” הוֹצִיאֵם אֵלֵינוּ וְנֵדְעָה אֹתָם — Send them out to us, and we will molest them, “we'll know them,” seemingly a euphemism for molesting them.

But the problem is is that language, אַיֵּה הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר־בָּאוּ אֵלֶיךָ הַלָּיְלָה, especially that word אַיֵּה, right, for “where,” which I don't want to say is an unusual word for “where.” The more standard word for the “where” is eifo. The אַיֵּה, as I argued in The Beast that Crouches At The Door, my first book, אַיֵּה seems to be a different nuance then eifo. Eifo is a genuine request for location. אַיֵּה really means “Where have they gone?”

אַיֵּה הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר־בָּאוּ אֵלֶיךָ הַלָּיְלָה — Where, where did they go? Those guys, we're after those guys. How come we don't see them? Where are those men that came to you in the night?

So the problem is that that language echoes something else in chapter 18, which is a real head scratcher.

What happens is the angels come and they say to Abraham, back in chapter 18: אַיֵּה שָׂרָה אִשְׁתֶּךָ — Where is Sarah your wife? And Abraham says, הִנֵּה בָאֹהֶל — Here she is, she's in the tent.

But the point is, is that in both stories you have this unusual word for “where,” אַיֵּה, right? And the problem is is that the people who say the אַיֵּה, who ask the question אַיֵּה, don't seem to match up to each other.

So the issue is that back in chapter 18, there were good guys asking אַיֵּה. Those were the angels, the angels were asking Abraham, “Where is Sarah?” because they wanted to bless her. They wanted to bless her seemingly with this child. And they say, אַיֵּה שָׂרָה אִשְׁתֶּךָ — Where is Sarah? And Abraham says, “Oh, she's back in the tent.”

Now, similarly, in this case, there's another question, אַיֵּה, and the answer basically also is, “They're back there.” Although he doesn't say that, Lot, but presumably that's the answer. The people are being sheltered by Lot and so they're back, they're back inside. But the problem is is that if you play Cast of Characters, the people asking this question, “Where are the men who came to you last night?” to Lot in chapter 19 are bad guys. Very much bad guys. They're the mob.

So Ari's question mark is, “One second. First I had angels playing angels. The angels in chapter 19 were playing the angels in chapter 18. But then all of a sudden, the mob in chapter 19 starts to play the angels in chapter 18. Because the angels, as the story progresses in chapter 18, start to ask, ‘Where is Sarah?’”

But now, the moment they're asking “Where is Sarah?” that is mob-like, right, in chapter 19. Because there's a mob that says, “Where are these men who came to you last night?”

Ari: Right. And if the mob is now playing the angels, and the angels are now the subject of the question אַיֵּה, then who are the angels playing?

Rabbi Fohrman: That's an interesting question because, yes, the angels are now gone to the object of the question אַיֵּה. So who are the angels now? The answer is the angels are playing Sarah.

Ari: The angels are playing Sarah.

Rabbi Forhman: Which is strange because the angels back in 18 had blessed Sarah, but now the angels are playing a kind of Sarah, the one about whom the question אַיֵּה is being asked while they're being sheltered in the house, and it all seems pretty confusing, because you've got angels playing Sarah, you've got mob playing angels. It seems like a case of musical chairs in Cast of Characters.

Ari: Yes, it's like music…everyone's shifting, shifting over. But before we get ahead of ourselves, you know, if that's true that they are playing Sarah, we would expect to see a little bit more where they continue to play this role. And I think if you just look at the next verse, in verse six: וַיֵּצֵא אֲלֵהֶם לוֹט — So Lot goes out to the mob, הַפֶּתְחָה — He goes out the door, וְהַדֶּלֶת סָגַר אַחֲרָיו — and the door closes behind him.

Now, that language of הַפֶּתְחָה and אַחֲרָיו is also familiar, because when Sarah, in the previous chapter, she was hanging out in the tent, and what does it say in verse 10?

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep, it says that Sarah שֹׁמַעַת פֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל וְהוּא אַחֲרָיו — Sarah was listening to all of this, eavesdropping on this conversation with the angels and her husband, פֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל — at the doorway of the tent, וְהוּא אַחֲרָיו.

וְהוּא אַחֲרָיו means what here, Ari? Who is אַחֲרָיו?

Ari: Yeah, so the mefarshim, the commentators have different ways of understanding this. Either the door was behind the angels or behind Abraham. But the point here is that Sarah's on one side of the door and Abraham and the angels are on the other side of the door.

And if we go back to chapter 19 now, right, there's, you know, everyone's — the scene is divided, right? It's like if you have…on a stage, right? You'll put this prop to divide everyone on set, and there are the people who are behind the door, and there are the people who are in front of the door, right?

The people who are in front of the door now are Lot and the mob, and now who's behind the door? Who's inside?

Rabbi Fohrman: The angels, and again the angels are playing Sarah.

Ari: Again, the angels are playing Sarah. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay. So Ari, it does seem rather confounding. We seem to have the character in chapter 18 of these angels and Sarah seem to undergo some kind of weird transformation as the story replays itself in chapter 19.

Becoming Part of the Family

And plus, of course, we're focusing on the technicalities on how these characters match up, but, you know, all of this is in service of understanding what in the world is going on. Why should it be that this story in chapter 19 is echoing so closely chapter 18? What larger message does the author, does God want us to understand by crafting chapter 19 out of the stuff of chapter 18?

Ari: Right, and so the first thing I want to do is just think about, like, what would that mean for the angels to be replacing Sarah? And I think if you just kind of go in the beginning of this story, remember the fact that originally the angels didn't want to come in. They didn't want to come inside, and Lot actually insists that they come inside, and eventually they give in. They come inside, and then they're inside his house. And all of a sudden, they come into his house, and now it's like they're playing the role of Sarah. They're playing the role of the family that's inside.

Rabbi Fohrman: Actually, it is kind of interesting. You know, getting back to the point I raised to you earlier, this seems to confirm the question I raised to you, or just the remarkable fact that Lot is treating the angels as if they're family members, right?

Ari: Mm-hmm, right.

Rabbi Fohrman: That language he said: כִּי־עַל־כֵּן בָּאוּ בְּצֵל קֹרָתִי — What are you doing to molest my guests? They're seeking refuge beneath…like, they're seeking refuge beneath the beams of my house. That's what you would say about your daughters. So, strangely, he's treating the angels, this extended family, as if they're not extended family, as if they really are family. And hence, these intertextual parallels that you're pointing out, that treat the angels as if they're Sarah sort of makes sense, at least from Lot's eyes.

Lot is dealing with the angels as if they're just another daughter, another person, another female to be protected. Because, if you think about what Abraham is doing, why did Abraham have Sarah inside? Answer is, it's like, you don't know who these guests are. I mean, like, Abraham doesn't know they're angels. For all Abraham knows, they're hijackers, you know?

So you're not going to have your wife out. Like, his — what he's doing is basically trying to assess the situation and take and accept the risk on his own while he leaves his wife back in the house in the more protected area, and she's eavesdropping. So you really see that Abraham is dealing with his wife protectively in marked contrast to Lot who's not doing that for his daughters, but is doing that for the guests and treating them as if they are family, as if they are the “Sarah” of the other story.

Lot’s Expensive Kindness

Ari: Right. Exactly. And, you know, that alone, if she was just — all we knew was that Lot was treating the angels like he was their…like they were part of his family. Seems like that is not such a bad thing. I mean, it's certainly very, like, friendly of him, very nice and gracious of him to be doing that.

Rabbi Fohrman: But the problem, of course, is at what expense?

Ari: At what expense? Because there is another character in the story, which is Lot's actual family, the daughters and what actually happens to them. So if we keep reading in verse 7, right…remember, the mob comes. They want to do all sorts of terrible things to the angels. And Lot responds.

Rabbi Fohrman: הִנֵּה־נָא לִי שְׁתֵּי בָנוֹת —I've got these two daughters, אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדְעוּ אִישׁ — They've never been intimate with a man. אוֹצִיאָה־נָּא אֶתְהֶן אֲלֵיכֶם — I'll give them to you, וַעֲשׂוּ לָהֶן כַּטּוֹב בְּעֵינֵיכֶם — and you do as good in your eyes.

Ari: Now that language of הִנֵּה…לִי…בָנוֹת — Behold, I have these daughters…

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, הִנֵּה־בֵן לְשָׂרָה אִשְׁתֶּךָ (Genesis 18:10).

Ari: הִנֵּה־בֵן לְשָׂרָה אִשְׁתֶּךָ, right. Originally the angels in the, in chapter 18, the angels came to Abraham and said, “Behold, Sarah will have a son.” Lot says, “Behold, I have these two daughters.”

Rabbi Fohrman: So the “Behold” about children: In the original story in 18, right, הִנֵּה־בֵן לְשָׂרָה אִשְׁתֶּךָ, there's an announcement by the angels that Sarah is going to have a child, and here, there's an announcement by Lot…almost as if in this one moment, Lot is playing “angel,” but a very naughty angel indeed. הִנֵּה, saying about the children, “I have these children who haven't known any man,” אוֹצִיאָה־נָּא אֶתְהֶן אֲלֵיכֶם — I will send them out to you. So what's interesting is, “Send them out.”

Ari: “I will send them out.” The angels come and promise her, “You were going to have this child which you didn't have before.” Lot has this child and says, “I'm going to now give them up. I'm going to relinquish these two daughters.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. In chapter 18, there was something also going out from Sarah, but in going out, she would…the child would be born and would be recognized and accepted as family, right? Whereas here, the “going out” has exactly the opposite effect. It's taking daughters and essentially disowning them.

Ari: And as you said before, it's musical chairs.

Rabbi Fohrman: The angels are becoming like Sarah at the very moment that the daughters are becoming the inverse of Sarah's children, right?

Ari: Right, right.

Rabbi Forhman: They're coming out of this nurturing place, a home, and just like there's going to be children coming out of Sarah, right, but instead of Sarah doing what's natural, which is laying claim to the children and saying, “This is mine,” what Lot is doing is exactly the opposite, saying, “Those that should be mine, I have nothing to do with.”

Ari: Exactly, exactly. And this goes from…yeah.

Rabbi Fohrman: So what you're suggesting in a way, if I get this right, is that the jarring change in the Cast of Characters is sort of meant to highlight Lot doing something really weird.

What Lot's doing is taking people who are family and shaking things up and saying, “Okay, you're not family anymore. You guys, you are family.” So you, who used to have a simple, like, “Who were the angels?” Obviously, they're like angels. The angels in chapter 19 connect to the angels in chapter 18. But, yeah, that would be true if you weren't Lot.

But Lot just did something to change that, right? His actions of throwing them to the mob have essentially changed the role of the angels. The angels now have to be seen as family, and because the angels are seen as family, Lot is like, “Well, I don't have room in my house for everybody,” right? “My daughters…gonna get them out of here.”

And rather than there being this joyous birth of Sarah, right, there is this disgusting throwing of the angels to a mob, right?

Concentric Circles of Self

So where do you want to go with all this? Is your takeaway from all this is that the shift in parallels highlights the corruption of Lot. That on the one hand, he's doing what Abraham did in the beginning.

Ari: And if you read about the end in mine, it's like, wow, this Lot guy, he's so welcoming. He does everything that Avraham does, he's such a ba’al chesed, he's inviting in these guests.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes, on the face of it, all of this is wonderful and sugar and spice and everything nice, the way he takes care of these guests, but he is replacing the role of children in his family, which is terrible. So, you know, it's the great balance around the Shabbos table.

Ari: Exactly.

Rabbi Fohrman: You pay attention to your kids. We have the most guests that we could possibly have, and who are your kids to you? They just don't count because, you know, you don't get very many kudos from the neighbors by having your kids over for Shabbos, but those are the people you really need to be playing with, taking care of. Those are the ones who are really seeking the shelter, and the love, and the nurturing, and the connection with you, even more than the guests, who you can be nice to, but you always have to understand that you're nice to them as guests. They're sort of extended family. There are concentric circles of family, and you've got to get the concentric circles of family right and not invert them. Otherwise, your kindness turns into a disaster.

Ari: That is, by the way, this is something that I've seen and learned a lot from you, Rabbi Fohrman. The number of times where, you know, we've had a recording schedule, something we're supposed to do, whatever, and you told me like, “Ari, I am really sorry, but my family needs me for X, Y, or Z. They're my priority, they come first.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, that happens a lot, so I admit to that.

Ari: But kudos to you, because they are your first responsibility.

Rabbi Fohrman: So with that, Ari, I'm going to go home to my family.

Ari: But before, just before we do though, because as you pointed out, right, this isn't just one story with Lot, because it's a parallel between these two stories.

And we do have to ask, you know, why is the Torah not just telling us about Lot here, but drawing our attention also back to the Abraham story? And I just have maybe one idea here. Just a possibility. This is something I noticed years ago. In the end of chapter 17, Abraham gets this new name called Avraham. He goes from Avram to Avraham, and he's called Avraham because he's going to be an av hamon goyim, a father of many nations. I.e., like, it's this idea that this quality of universalism to him. And then in the next chapter, he starts being that universal guy, and he's inviting guests, and we see him being this welcoming to all.

And you would think that it would be a perfect time to really use his new name. Except, there's this weird thing where it starts…it doesn't say his name, it says: וַיֵּרָא אֵלָיו יְקוָה — God appeared to him, בְּאֵלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא וְהוּא יֹשֵׁב — and he was sitting. And then it just keeps going on, וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא…וַיָּרׇץ…וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ.

Rabbi Forhman: You never get the name.

Ari: You never get the name. And for the first five verses here,  it refers to Abraham no less than eleven times as “He.” Just “He…he…he…he…he,” and we know it's talking about Abraham, but like you didn't even think he would throw his name there. It's his brand new shiny name. It's all about him being universal, about him loving everybody, and yet it doesn't use that.

It doesn't use that until verse 6. And, Rabbi Fohrman, look at verse 6, when he finally is called Avraham…

Rabbi Fohrman: וַיְמַהֵר אַבְרָהָם הָאֹהֱלָה אֶל־שָׂרָה. Oh, fascinating. So what Ari is going to argue here is that it's verse 6 that makes Abraham, Abraham, which is why we hear his name. Beautiful, Ari. Right, Abraham becomes Abraham, not just “him,” when? When he's not taking care of the guests. When he goes back to the woman he's actually protecting, אֶל־שָׂרָה. That's the beginning of verse 6: וַיְמַהֵר אַבְרָהָם הָאֹהֱלָה אֶל־שָׂרָה — And Abraham runs into the tent, אֶל־שָׂרָה — to Sarah. As if to say, that act of relating to Sarah and not just guests, right, is what makes Abraham worthy of his name. That's really cool, Ari. I really love that. That's a beautiful idea.

Ari: Yeah, and Abraham really did have those concentric circles, right? And they, as you said, it's like these concentric circles. And to the extent that which he is av hamon goyim, the extent to which he is this universal guy and loves everybody and is welcoming to everybody, it starts within his own home, and everything, all his hospitality, is an extension of that. It's an extension of that home and broadening that circle.

Rabbi Fohrman: It reminds me, and I think this is a point which I might have made in the Lest It Come to Scandal series, that when you think about love, love really works by radiating out in concentric circles.

You've got to love your family before you love guests. If you don't, you really don't have any love to give to your guests. It has to start in the family. That's the incubator for love. The best you can do is, like, take the love of the family and shine it outwards a little bit, and let others become like extended family.

But if there's nothing, really, within the family, there's no protectiveness, there's no taking care of, then everything else is just performative. In other words, what Lot is doing is mimicking Abraham. You can mimic Abraham, you can mimic the outer actions of him, anyone can do that, but the inner love that would be driving those actions, which is the reason why Abraham did it. He wasn't mimicking anyone, right? That isn't necessarily there in Lot. He's just copying actions. In order for it to be there, he would have to have that protectiveness within the family that could then express itself outside the family as a secondary kind of thing.

And you know, the point I made, I think, when I discussed this is that v’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha suggests the same thing; this famous idea that you should love your neighbor as yourself. Why don't you just say you should love your neighbors a lot, a lot, a lot? Because you can't do that without loving yourself. Love of self actually is the most concentric circle.

Ari: Right, the innermost circle.

Rabbi Fohrman: You have to actually…in order to do chesed, boys and girls, you actually have to love yourself. I mean, it sounds crazy, right? Like, “No! I don't want to be selfish. I can't be self-serving. I live for everybody else.” If you do that, it's just a farce. You're really just mimicking. You're doing what you think is the right thing to do, but not out of real love. Love has to come from, “No, I actually take care of myself. I actually love myself. There's something really precious here with me that needs to be guarded and nurtured, and I take some time to rest. I take some time to enjoy life. I take some time to have some downtime. I take some time to eat. I enjoy. I take care of myself.”

And then, having a sense of knowing what love of self actually feels like, I can take that and project it outwards to family.

I can say, oh, well, I know what it means to take care of someone. I can now take care of you. I can bring you into this mix too. This really is a beautiful idea, and then you can bring others into it. And further, you can ultimately bring the whole world into it.

And this is, you know, Rav Shimon Shkop, in his introduction to Sha’arei Yosher, a fascinating philosophical work on Talmud, the philosophy of Talmud, really, his introduction to the Sha’arei Yosher is a meditation on this idea. It's only if you take that sense of self, and then you enlarge it and say, “My sense of self includes my family; my sense of self includes my friends; my sense of self includes others,” then the same energy that fuels love of self is actually fueling taking care of others and taking care of others, because I'm seeing these larger, larger concentric circles of self in these relationships. That I'm saying, “I love you like a brother; I love you, right, I love you as an extension of what I've learned, of what it takes to love me.” That was Rav Shimon's idea, but I think you see those powerful themes echoing here. So I really do need to actually go and take care of all this.

Ari: It's actually quite late here as we're recording together.

Rabbi Fohrman: But this is beautiful. And, Evan, thank you so much for this really sharp realization about the switch of Cast of Characters. Guys, this should be an object lesson to you out there in Aleph Beta land, that if you find intertextual parallels, this kind of overlapping language between stories, do play Cast of Characters. You can really see how powerful it is as a tool of methodology to be able to take you into the understanding of what's going on and why the Torah is overlaying these characters.

I'm teaching a methodology course these days. This is the kind of thing that's on my mind. So, I thank you, Ari, for talking about this.

Ari: Thank you, and with that, let's get home to our families.

Rabbi Fohrman: Sounds good. Okay, thank you, Ari.

Credits

This episode was recorded by Ari Levisohn, together with Rabbi David Fohrman.

This episode was produced by Evan Weiner.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our production manager is Adina Blaustein.

Our senior editor is Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.