By Talia Rodwin

This week’s parasha, Vayera, is chock full of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. In this parasha, God promises Sarah a son at her old age, God burns the city of Sodom and turns Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, Lot’s daughters have sex with him because they think they are the only people left in the world (#wincest), Isaac is born, God creates a well for Hagar and Ishmael as they wander in the desert, and God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac which he almost does but then he stops himself at the last minute. Phew. A lot.

I would like to focus on Lot’s wife. An unnamed character in an arguably unimportant part of the story (Isaac almost dies! Incest! WOAH!), I think she provides a lot of insight into human character and is worth considering.

When God commands that no one look back on the burning city of Sodom, this is a command to leave the world of sinfulness behind and escape, unhesitatingly, to something new. It is a request for bravery and holiness and the rejection of sinful pleasure. It is a request to forget past, home, roots, comfort, and begin life anew.

Lot’s wife, when she looks back at her burning home, is punished for her disobedience. This haunting transformation scene makes me wonder what is so wrong with looking back? Doesn’t she do the natural thing? Wouldn’t we all be inclined to look back at everything we had known for one last time?

This portion presents us with the balance of looking back – at our history and regrets – versus looking forward to life anew. As much as I would like to live without regret, fully focused on the future, I think it can be dangerous to forget our past too much. Who we are is rooted in what we have come from, and without these roots we don’t have a direction in which to travel.

As a movement, we must consistently grapple with this balance. How do we balance the historical roots of Habonim Dror with our visions for how we can improve? Do long-held values (Labor Zionism? Is this still relevant?) alienate us from becoming something progressive now? These are the questions that we ask ourselves when we balance the past and the future. We can’t live only in the past yet we can’t leave too much behind.

It’s a shame about Lot’s wife. Luckily for us, there won’t be a pillar of salt impeding us from achieving this balance. We will only have ourselves acting in opposition, unless we have the courage to move our feet forward and occasionally cast our eyes back, dancing between progress and history to achieve thoughtful momentum forward.