What can the Bible say to us after Election Day?

(RNS) – It was right at this time in 1938. It was the day after Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” when the Nazis swept through Germany and Austria, destroying Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues.

A group of men sat in a prison cell – including a young rabbinical student, Emil Fackenheim, who was destined to become one of modern Judaism’s most important thinkers.

One of the older men came up to him and said to him, “You! Fackenheim! You are a student of Judaism! Tell us: what does Judaism have to say to us at this moment?”

Right now, in the wake of the news that has left so many of us shocked, we are asking ourselves the same question. What can Judaism – and more precisely the Bible and its commentaries – tell us in this moment of existential dread?

I turn to this week’s Torah portion – the story of Abram and Sarai, the first Jews, who would become Abraham and Sarah – to read about their migration, along with their extended family, from Haran to the land of Israel.

Almost immediately after their arrival in the land of Israel, a rift occurs in the family – the first division in Jewish history. Abram separates from his cousin Lot. Abram settles in the south; Lot settled in the “plain of the Jordan – this was before the Eternal had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah – all the way to Zoar, like the garden of the Eternal, like the land of Egypt.”

There you have it: Lot sought comfort and prosperity and he settled in Sodom.

What was so bad about Sodom and Gomorrah? Centuries of Biblical interpretation, and perhaps some misinterpretations, have taught us that the sins were of a sexual nature – perhaps homosexual gang rape.

But that is not how the early commentators imagined the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.

How did the prophet Ezekiel see it?

Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and undisturbed rest; yet she did not support the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49)

The ancient sages agreed. They expanded on Ezekiel’s interpretation and created their own stories about Sodom’s moral failings. (Many of these can be found in abbreviated form in the classic anthology of rabbinic lore: ‘The Book of Legends.”)

The wise men taught that the people of Sodom were selfish. They have passed laws that make it illegal to give charity to anyone. One legend says that when a beggar wandered into Sodom, the people would write their names on their coins and each of them would give him a coin. But no one wanted to sell him bread. When he died of hunger, everyone came and went through his pockets and took their coins.

The sages taught that the people of Sodom created laws that demeaned women. There were four judges in Sodom, each named for their actions: Shakrai (“liar”), Shakrurai (“common liar”), Zayfai (“forger”), and Matzlei Dina (“perverter of justice”). They ruled that if someone beats another’s wife and causes her to miscarry, the woman’s husband must give her to the attacker so that he can impregnate her again.

The wise men taught that the people of Sodom perverted righteousness. Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, happened to visit that city and they wounded him. He went to court to demand compensation. The judge told him: “You shouldn’t demand damages! Instead, you should pay the man who injured you. When he cut you, he was practicing the medical art of bloodletting!’

The sages taught that the people of Sodom believed in radical, stifling conformity. When people stayed in the city’s inns, they were forced to lie in beds of a certain length. If the guests were taller than the bed, the innkeeper cut them to fit the bed, and if the guests were shorter than the bed, the innkeeper stretched them. (This is a Jewish version of the Greek legend of the Procrustean bed).

The wise men taught that the people of Sodom were sadistic. A young woman secretly fed the poor. The authorities determined that the girl should be covered with honey. They placed her on top of the walls of the city and left her there until the bees came to sting her and she died. The book of Genesis says that the cries of Sodom went up to God. Which one cries? the wise men ask. They were the cries of that poor young woman, covered in honey, attacked by deadly bees. Her cries went up to God, and for that reason God realized that Sodom’s sins had simply gone on too long.

The sages taught that the people of Sodom were radically individualistic. In Pirkei Avot, the ethics of the ancient sages, we find:

There are four types of characters in humans:

The one who says, “Mine is yours and yours is mine” is an illiterate person. The one who says, “Mine is yours and yours is yours” is a pious person. The one who says, “Mine is mine, and yours is mine” is a bad person. The one who says: “Mine is mine, and yours is yours”: this is a common type; and some say this is the kind of person that lived in Sodom.

In other words: “Leave me alone. I got mine, and you got yours, and that’s all that really matters. Let’s retreat into our own bubbles.” This morning I hear a lot of people saying something similar to this: “I personally won’t be affected by this.”

That’s exactly the wrong way to think about this. We are all threads in one huge tallit, and if you pull one thread, everything unravels.

Each of these legends is about social and political trends that could emerge in America under Trump’s presidency. Much of it is already happening.

Will God rain fire and brimstone on America because of its shortcomings?

No. What I’m saying is this: the ancient sages knew what happens to societies that are in decline. They knew you wouldn’t need fire and brimstone from heaven; the consuming fires would come from within the social structure itself.

I always loved this story told by the late Elie Wiesel. A righteous man came to Sodom and begged the people to change their ways. Nobody listened.

Finally he sat in the middle of the city and just screamed.

Someone asked him, “Do you think this will change anyone?”

“No,” said the righteous man. “But at least by shouting I know they won’t change me.”

Why did I always ‘love this story’? Because shouting lonely in the town square is a self-indulgent luxury that we now find difficult to afford. It’s not enough to simply shout so you feel better, so society won’t change you. We will need the kind of shouting that takes the form of serious resistance against a regime that has every potential to invade fascist ideas and actions, and that has promised to be authoritarian.

I close with the memory of Lot’s wife, who, in the aftermath of the destruction of Sodom, turned for one last look and was turned into a pillar of salt.

Are we now? Do we look back on what our lives were, risking our collective transformation into pillars of salt?

Or is that the new government looking back on an imagined, idealized past (the 1950s? the 1930s?) while turning the entire nation into a pillar of salt?

The late David Bowie sang: “This isn’t America.”

But that’s what it is. America has become a place where a majority of voters fully agreed with the fascist tendencies, misogyny, racism and politics of cruelty.

What are we – people of faith who are committed to democratic values ​​– going to do about it?