According to recent reports, roughly two hundred Hamas terrorists remain in their tunnels of terror beneath IDF-controlled areas of Gaza. They cannot retreat to Hamas-run territory without surfacing and facing capture. American officials have urged Israel to allow them safe passage to Rafah or amnesty if they lay down their arms.
The situation is complex, to put it mildly. But what caught my attention was the remarkable timing – and how it lines up with the portion of the Torah we read this Shabbat. This week’s Torah portion, Vayera, 18:1 to 22:24, we encounter another moment in which the fate of the wicked and the moral burden of the righteous stand side by side.
The Bible tells us:
That verse records the first human being daring to argue with God. Abraham doesnāt beg for mercy blindly; he demands moral clarity. He wants to know whether justice, in its purest form, must always mean destruction.
When Abraham challenges God, he is not defending Sodomās sins. He is defending the idea that goodness might still exist even among the corrupt, even among a handful of people and that moral potential is reason enough to hesitate before destroying.
And yet, the fire fell. Sodom burned; only Lot and his daughters survived. Not even ten righteous people could be found in that city. Abrahamās plea failed: or so it appears.
When God begins speaking about Sodom, the Bible adds a new layer to Abraham’s character: for the first time, God refers to Abraham not as an individual but as the founder of a nation. āShall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation?ā (Genesis 18:17ā18).
As Rabbi Yaakov Beasley notes, until this point Abrahamās story was about personal faith; now God is shaping him into a political and spiritual leader who must teach justice to the world.
In their exchange, God gently shifts Abrahamās focus. Abraham begins by appealing for the innocent – for individual fairness. But God responds by speaking about the city. The question is not only whether a few righteous people deserve to live, but whether their presence can influence the horribly corrupt society around them. Justice for a community is not the sum of personal virtue; it is the capacity of the righteous to shape the moral fabric of the whole. One good man cannot save a nation. A just community can.
Israelās current dilemma sits on that same boundary. The two hundred Hamas gunmen are not victims. They are men who invaded homes, murdered families, burned children alive, and dragged hostages into darkness. They have an ideology that is set on destroying Israel, destroying democracy, and destroying Western Values. To eliminate them would be justice. Yet even Israelās hesitation before doing so is itself a mark of righteousness. It shows that the Jewish people still ask Abrahamās question before they act.
Ultimately, though, Abraham learned that a single good man cannot redeem a city so corrupt; only a community shaped by shared values can truly save itself. The task of the Jewish people has never been to perfect the world through force, but to build societies where justice and compassion are taught, practiced, and passed down. That work begins in our homes, in how we speak, how we lead, and how we teach the next generation to balance strength with conscience.
