“Statues of Salt”
Parashat Vayerah, B’nei Israel, 2015
Rabbi Darío Feiguin
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, for many of us, it was a historical milestone. I
remember thinking that what was petrified like a wall was our own World that
seemed disappointed in the great idealisms. It wasn’t wrong to have ideals and
fight for them. However, when idealism becomes blind, then it does not only
spread through the masses, but it also separates people, making them fall into
fanaticism and stereotypes. Today, it even becomes a source for murder.
Blind idealism turns us into just another brick in the wall, until the being explodes.
It cannot stand the breach between the dogmatic idealism and reality, and it
breaks the wall. Then we must retain a tiny bit of the past as a souvenir, like it
happened 25 years ago, even though we have to pay money for a lifeless piece
of rubble. I thought then that one day I would look back with nostalgia on the
Berlin wall of hollow idealism, and maybe all that would be left to bare testimony
of the unpredictable and incomprehensible census of Human History would be a
few stones.
I thought the Great Wall of China and so many others of stone and ideas that
divide people would fall like Jericho when Yehoshua’s shofarot sounded, that
they were nothing else but the deepest cries of being searching their condition,
like buds seeking the light of dawn every morning.
“It is the love for the past!” argue the apologists. But they lie.
No real love petrifies. All love, if it is real, liberates. It might generate anguish or
insecurity, but it never paralyzes.
It is not love of the past, which makes us build walls. It is the fear of the future, of
the Life we do not yet know, or possess, or can describe like a historian, a
sociologist or a philosopher. These are tales. Profound experiences are not
described. They are simply lived, felt, enjoyed, or suffered. All that can be told is
already past and, in a way, already dead.
It occurs to me that this is one of the great themes in this week’s Parashah: The
past that petrifies. The fear of the future that paralyzes.
In the Torah, we read tomorrow about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra,
the corrupt cities punished for their immoral conduct. In a dramatic paragraph,
the biblical poet describes how Abraham’s nephew, Lot, his wife and two
daughters escape. And there is something curious, rescued by artists from all
times: according to the story, G-d orders Lot and his family to not look back. But
Lot’s wife cannot resist the temptation; she turns and is transformed into a statue
of salt.
Scientists and anthropologists have argued many times that they have found the
statue of Lot’s wife. I, sincerely, do not think this is what we should be looking
for. We will not find the statue of Lot’s wife. Actually, I think it is a metaphor that
has to do not only with Lot’s wife but also with many of us. The Torah speaks
metaphorically about an existential problem that affects us all in every time and
every place.
Torah speaks to us about how many times we want to cling to the past. How
sometimes that past immobilizes us, turning us into something like a vegetative
statue. How often we fall into the pathology of turning back, like a covert instinct
to not want to live.
The relationship with the past should be like a coming and going to and from our
historical roots.
It should nurture our identity, without becoming false
chauvinisms or ghettoizations. It should strengthen our wisdom without it
implying we know everything. It should serve as a reference, and thereby as the
foundation for the life we build every day.
Unfortunately, many of us go back to the myth. Many of us intend to turn back,
when it is simply impossible. And that is why we are turned into statues of salt.
Let me suggest with the greatest respect this feeling I have had since I arrived in
Costa Rica five months ago: the irrational attraction to hold on to what is known
and not take the risk to change, as if living were tied to a myth of a past we
cannot escape from. This might be because of insecurity, fear, for comfort, to not
lose power. Everything becomes boring and repetitive if we do not dare to look
also ahead.
Our Judaism becomes irrelevant. Our relationships become obvious and part of
the routine. Our jobs become unbearable, especially at this time of the year.
Creativity is then non-existent. We do not create, we just copy, because like
Kohelet, we do not believe there can be anything new under the Sun.
The myth of the eternal return, like Mircea Eliade called it, is to go back to the
stage of dependency. The stage where we would be breastfed if we cried. The
stage where we still could not walk on our own. The myth of returning to the
fascism of the generals that set up order once and for all. The myth of the
charismatic leader that would save us from this premature spiritual death.
What I mean is that it is not possible to turn back, unless one has given up like
Lot’s wife and has turned into a living statue.
“Haolam hazeh gesher tzar meod, vehaikar lo lefajed klal”
Rabbi Najman of Bratzlav said this World is a narrow bridge and the fundamental
thing is to not be scared.
Although sometimes it is impossible to not be afraid, it is possible to overcome
fear, to live with it, to be encouraged to break down the walls that tie us to the
past and keep us from being who we are. It is possible, if we want to avoid
becoming statues of salt, to face our lives with courage, hope and faith.
Translated by Tamara Baum