The Isolationists of Sodom and Gomorrah

By Tzvi Freeman

Sodom and Gomorrah have come to represent the epitome of evil. After all, G‑d destroyed them with fire and brimstone. But, perhaps surprisingly, the Mishnah does not associate Sodom principally with idolatry, murder, sexual impropriety, thievery or even corrupt business practices.

Rather, the Mishnah attributes “a Sodomite attitude” to someone who says, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours.”1 Or, as the classic commentator, Rabbi Obadiah Bartenura (16th century), reads that, “I don’t want to give you anything, and I would appreciate it if you don’t give me anything.”2

Okay, so he’s not the kind of guy you want on your baseball team, but is he really the core of evil? He hasn’t ripped anyone off. He hasn’t lied to anyone. In fact, he’s brutally honest. He tells you his approach to life and sticks to it. He’s not running a corrupt business. He doesn’t want to engage in any commerce at all. He desires total independence and isolation.

He says, “We won’t hurt one another and we won’t help one another. Let me be and I’ll let you be.”3

It would seem from the Mishnah that the most nefarious business you could be in is no business at all. But why?

The Slippery Slope of Sodom

The obvious place to look for clues is in the history of the people of Sodom as told by the Torah and its sages.

How do we see this isolationist attitude among the people of Sodom? Well, they weren’t hospitable. Not only did they not take in guests, they couldn’t even allow others to have guests stay in their home. That’s the central point of the story with Lot, Abraham’s nephew who lived in Sodom. When Lot had some guests over to his home, the people of Sodom staged a protest outside his door and threatened to harm the guests and their host.4

How did Sodom get this way? The Talmud explains that as well:5

Sodom, Gomorrah along with three other cities formed a large settlement at the terminus of the Jordan River. It’s a deep valley and before these cities were overturned the Jordan branched out into a delta, watering the earth well and sprouting rich, lush greenery. The earth was rich in nutrients, as well as precious minerals. All in all, a virtual garden of Eden.

So the people who settled there decided, “We don’t need to trade with anyone. We have everything we need right here. And we don’t want them coming here, either. Why should we share this with anyone else?”

Next thing, they constructed a bridge at the gateway to their land and charged a toll to enter—even if you would choose to swim across. They established laws prejudiced against visitors and found every way they could to discourage any passerby.

Things only got worse from there, until there was no friendship and no comradery even amongst one another. Eventually, the people’s treatment of merchants, transients, the homeless, the downtrodden, and the needy became heartless and viciously cruel.

And so the prophet Yechezkel (Ezekiel) describes the sin of Sodom as “arrogance,” saying “She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquillity; yet she did not support the poor and the needy.”6

Certainly there were many detestable sins in Sodom and her daughter cities. But it all began with a need not to need anyone.

Sodomite Isolationism

A pinch of Lurianic Kabbalah could help us here. When the world was created, as Genesis says,7 it was at first “tohu.” Tohu is generally translated as “chaos.” Rabbi Isaac Luria, however, describes tohu as a state of isolated ideals. In other words, a world where each ideal form is isolated from all others.8

Before this world was created, G‑d first created a world of Tohu—a world of absolutes. Absolute benevolence, absolute justice, absolute light and absolute darkness. G‑d was not pleased with that world. But that was okay, because it rapidly erupted on its own. In Lurianic terms, “the light was too great for containment.” We moderns might say that when the parts of the whole work independently of one another, they generate far more energy than the whole can contain.

In Rabbi Luria’s narrative, that eruption left fragments of Tohu that fell to become our world. And now, we are left with the job of harmonizing and repairing the shattered pieces of that world to create the ultimate world as it was originally conceived.

If this world was a tohu world through and through, it would be a place where no two things can work together. A world where the weather is either hot or cold but never warm, where people are either super-friendly or hostile but never just chill, where either I run things or you run things but we can’t cooperate, where I don’t need you and you don’t need me and so no one has any business with the other.

But it’s not. It has redeeming qualities that allow for its tikun–it’s repair. Perhaps the most vital of those redeeming qualities is the one we keep trying to rid ourselves of. It’s the fact that we all need one another. And that we’re all better off needing one another.

Here are some illuminating words from a more recent Kabbalist and Chassidic master, Rabbi Sholom Dovber of Lubavitch, writing in 1914:9

The souls of the people of Sodom originated from the realm of Tohu. That explains why they were isolationists—neither wishing to benefit anyone nor to receive from one anyone. In this way, their land was isolated from all other lands and they managed their own resources so that they didn’t need to receive any goods from any foreign land. Even amongst themselves, each one was isolated and independent.

But when G‑d made the earth, He did so with wisdom, so that all the world functions in a way of _tikun—_the diametric opposite of Sodom’s isolationism. The world is made so that each region must receive its needs from some other region. Indeed, that is what trade is all about—that each land both receives from others and gives to others.

This is the meaning of the verse, "And He established His agudah upon the earth."10 An agudah is a collaboration of individuals, such as a collective, in which everyone works together and no one is complete without the other. This is how G‑d created the world to operate.

But Sodom did not operate that way. No one would accept anything from anyone else. They said, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours.”

[1.] Mishnah Avot 5:10.
[2.] Ad loc.
[3.] Another classic example discussed in the Talmud, Baba Kama 20b:
Joe owns a large tract of land that is not in use and that he doesn’t wish to lease, and discovers that some homeless individual is camping out on it. So he tells him to get off. We say to him, “The other guy gains and you lose nothing, so what’s your problem?” And Joe answers, “It’s my property. I want him out.”
The Talmud calls this a Sodomite attitude and even discusses whether the homeless camper can ask the court to prevent Joe from throwing him out—because the Torah says, “You must do that which is good and upright.” (Deuteronomy 6:18.)
The final judgement is that we can’t legally compel Joe in this case, since that would be limiting the statutes of property ownership. But there are cases in which property ownership is not diminished and no significant inconvenience is caused. In such instances, the court can indeed compel or restrain someone with a stubborn Sodomite attitude.
[4.]
Genesis 19:4–9.
[5.] Talmud Sanhedrin 109a.
[6.]
Ezekiel 16:49.
[7.]
Genesis 1:2.
[8.] Etz Chaim 8:1. See also Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Likutei Torah II:37c ff. and III:87a ff.
[9.] Maamar Anochi 5674.