DRASH – HASHAVUA

Rabbi Allison RH Conyer

Senior Rabbi, Temple Beth Israel, Melbourne

Challenges, Choices, and Paralysis:
How does the story of Lot and His Family Resemble the Choices Facing Israel Today

This Tuesday, 27 October, Israelis voted in their first national election since October 7th 2023 – with or against the first government to hold a full 4-year term in decades. The issues confronting the country that have been raised in these elections reach far beyond party politics. Similar to the challenges and choices facing Lot in this week’s parsha, Vaera, Israel is facing challenges and choices around safety and sacrifice, responsibility and compromise, memory and hope.

In the middle of Parshat Vaera, we read about Lot’s encounter with two strangers who he welcomed into his home, honouring the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, welcoming guests. Yet, when an angry crowd from Sodom surrounded his home and demanded that he surrendered his guests, Lot found himself caught between protecting his guests and protecting his own family. His response to offer his daughters in lieu of his guests is deeply troubling, exposing the moral compromises that can emerge when fear and violence cloud one’s judgement and overwhelm human dignity.

When Lot’s visitors, later to be revealed as Divine messengers, commanded Lot and his family to leave or be destroyed along with the wicked inhabitants of the city, Lot’s sons-in-law refused to believe the warnings. There was division inside his home within his own family, even as danger approached. The command to flee became a test of whether they could imagine a future beyond the familiar, even when the familiar had become dangerous.

Israel’s elections have presented similar painful dilemmas. How does a nation protect its people amid continuing threats from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, while navigating pressure from allies and an increasingly critical international community? How can it maintain the capacity to defend itself without becoming trapped in an endless cycle of war? What is the cost of prolonged mobilisation – human, psychological and financial – and how much more can reservists, families and the wider economy bear?

These questions sit alongside deep internal divisions. The demand that Haredim share the burden of military service with the rest of the Israeli citizens challenges the relationship between religious and civic responsibility. Disagreement over the cost of living, judicial reform, the future of the West Bank and Gaza, increased settler violence, organised crime, discrimination of Arab-Israeli citizens, non-Orthodox Jews and women, international relations, and Israel’s democratic character reveals competing visions for the future of Israeli society. Underneath these disputes lies a fundamental question: whose safety, sacrifice and future are counted?

Above all, the election has been haunted by October 7th 2023. The demand for an independent inquiry into the failures that enabled the massacre is not simply about assigning blame. It is about rebuilding trust. How can Israelis confidently move forward if the failures of the past remain unexamined? Accountability is not an obstacle to national security; it is one of the conditions for restoring it.

When Lot’s wife looked back, she became a pillar of salt. Her fate warns us about the danger of becoming immobilised by the past. But remembering is not the same as looking back. A society that refuses to confront its failures risks carrying them into its future. We cannot learn from what we will not acknowledge.

The challenge is to remember without becoming paralysed, to protect without abandoning our humanity, and to move forward without sacrificing accountability. The question is not whether Israel must choose between security and compassion, or between memory and hope. It is whether it can build a future that holds them together.

Who is to be sacrificed? Who is to be saved? These are not only questions for Israel’s leaders, but for every citizen who enters the voting booth. The measure of leadership is not simply whom it promises to protect, but whether it recognises the dignity, responsibility and future of all who must live with its decisions. We pray that the new government will be able to hold memory and accountability as it moves our precious, sacred Jewish homeland into a better, stronger, safer and peaceful future for all.