In this week’s parasha, Vayera, both Abraham and his nephew Lot are visited by angels. In both cases, the angels are served meals which include bread. Abraham served his guests some sort of cakes. Lot, however, served his angelic guests matza, the unleavened bread we traditionally eat at Passover. Lot seems to be a less good version of Abraham, so it makes sense that he would serve his guests cheaper food. However, the great 11th century French commentator Rashi explains Lot’s serving of matzah in a different vein: it was Passover. That is, Lot served his guests matzah because it was the appropriate food for the time of year.
However, Rashi’s comments are strange in at least two ways. First, why is Lot celebrating a holiday which commemorates the Israelite exodus from Egypt several hundred years later?! Further, the Israelites are distant cousins of Lot’s offspring. If anyone should be celebrating Passover, it is Abraham. Indeed, some midrashim explain that the angels visited Abraham on the eve of Passover. Abraham had to ask Sarah to make cakes for the angelic guests because they were busy with Passover preparations (which I assume means they were out of other bread). But Rashi makes no such comment regarding Abraham. The only person he associates with Passover in our story is Lot in his serving of matzah.
The contemporary Israeli Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun points out several literary parallels between Lot’s escape from Sodom and the Israelite escape from Egypt. Matzah, in his view, is merely a flag for the careful reader to pay attention to the similarities. Both stories begin with hiding in houses. In Lot’s case, the angels pull him inside his own house to protect him from the Sodomites. In Egypt, the Israelites lock themselves inside with blood on their doorposts to protect them from the plague of the first-born. New nations emerge from both stories. For Lot, it is the nations of Amon and Moab, which begin with a horrific sexual encounter created between Lot’s daughters and their father. (I hope to compare this to the Levite experience in Egypt when we get to parashat Sh’mot). The Exodus from Egypt, of course, results in the creation of the Israelite people, from whom we inherit our traditions. So the escape from Sodom did not necessarily occur during our Passover. Instead, when Rashi says it was Passover, he means that it was Lot’s Passover: the time for him to escape and begin a new nation.
I noticed a few other parallels not included by Rabbi Bin Nun. Both of these stories end away from civilization: for the Israelites in the desert, for Lot in the mountains. In both stories, the people involved must move forward at all cost -- even into the sea, rather than look back and become a pillar of salt, as happens with Lot’s wife.
By teaching us that Lot served matzah because it was Passover, Rashi points us towards the literary parallels. His comment illuminates for us the similarities between the national creation stories and the lessons conveyed about the creation of separate identity and peoplehood. If the Torah’s paradigm is taken seriously, the creation of a nation begins in an oppressive environment where all food must be baked quickly. It means having to hide inside, away from the outside environment, and an eventual escape to a frontier where a new people can begin to (re)build. Both stories also teach us that nation-building involves an attempt to include outsiders who might want to join the project. In Lot’s case, the angels urge him to collect anyone else who might be with him in the city (Genesis 19:12). Everyone refuses him, but the sentiment is still there. In the Israelite case, a mixed-multitude (Exodus 12:38) joins the Israelites in leaving Egypt.
This gives us a reason why the Israelite nation does not emerge directly from Abraham and instead needed to spend time in Egypt. While Lot hideS in his house before emerging from Sodom, Abraham sits outside his tent waiting for visitors, to whom he serves a banquet in the open air, away from the tent. Abraham is an accomplished person with little to fear in his world. Even his greatest fear, having Sarah stolen by a man in power, results in his enrichment and adding new allies. Lot’s life, like the Israelites in Egypt, is one that must happen in hiding until a final, miraculous moment of emergence into the wilderness -- and the creation of a new people. The Torah teaches us that new nations usually do not emerge from positions of comfort, but instead from positions of subjugation. And for those lucky enough to be part of an exodus (but unlucky enough to need one), the Torah reminds us that such an endeavor involves including others who might also be committed to the project. Like Lot, however, sometimes we may find no one else willing to join us. We build the nation anyway. And above all, it reminds us to charge forward -- not looking back, like Lot’s wife, but plunging into the sea and the future, like the Israelites under Moses. שבת שלום.
Shabbat Shalom שבת שלום