Living in the COVID-19 World ... and Beyond #7: A Drash

Preamble: This blog is different than others.   My great-niece Ellie was bas-mitzvah’ed (bar- or bas-mitzvah is the service within the Jewish tradition when a 13-year-old becomes an adult) on November 7th, 2020.   I was asked to deliver the drash at services the night before.  Drash means: “to probe, to seek, to inquire, or to interpret.”  My prescribed goal was to prepare a brief discussion for the congregation that probes or interprets just one point from the Torah (Jewish bible) portion that was being read that weekend.  The Torah portion that weekend was Vayera which, among other things, describes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  For those who do not remember, and wish to understand the Torah portion in full, here is a link to a  description in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vayeira.   The drash I wrote and delivered stands alone as long as you remember that G-d destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because people there had sinned.  Below is my drash:

Sodom and Gomorrah.   The story was seared in my memory as a young person.   Do evil and you will be destroyed.  Do good and you will be saved.   Do evil and you will be destroyed.   Do good and you will be saved but those who do evil will be destroyed.

Why does anyone do evil?   What causes people to do evil?

Are some people born evil?  Or do hard or oppressive things happen to people and that is what develops evil behaviors in people?

What happened to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah that caused them to act out in such wicked ways?

Could one create a backstory for Sodom and Gomorrah, like they do in the Star Wars movies, that could explain how the people of those towns became so damaged that they would then behave in such wicked ways?   

Maybe the men of Sodom and Gomorrah had been tortured brutally over years by unknown assailants?  

I don’t know.   But if one could create such a backstory, what would be the appropriate correction?  Would it still be to destroy them, or would it be to help them recover their innate humanness and goodness?

 In spite of all the things that I see people do that seem wrong or evil, I prefer to believe in the goodness of people.  

 This is a particularly challenging time to hold this belief.  With the climate crisis risking the destruction of all living things, with all of the polarization and bitterness in the political sphere, with seemingly endless wars proliferating across the globe, and with increasingly visible acts of racist violence being perpetrated.   

As hard as it might be to believe, the other option – that some people are just evil – is unbearable to me.

What do you think?   Can you consider the possibility that each one of us and each one of them is inherently a fine human being and that the only explanation for their evil behavior is that they have unfortunately been so damaged that they have lost their way?   And if you consider that, would you destroy Sodom and Gomorrah or try another solution?