Vayra: escape

Vayera: escape

The parsha is a series of rescues.  Avraham tries to rescue the five towns  ( Sodom, Amorah, Admah, Tzevoim, Tzoar) from the wrath of Gd.  With the aid of Lot's whining and pleading, they ( at least temporarily) save one (Tzoar).  The angel's save Lot and his daughters from the murderous lust of the Sodomites. The bloodline of the Philistines is saved from extinction  by the prayer of Abraham.  An angel saves the outcast Hagar and her son Ishmael from death by dehydration.  Isaac is rescued from being a human sacrifice by a timely heavenly voice.

The parsha reveals two personalities: Gd and Avraham. What Gd does is unfathomable. Avraham heeds Gd to an unfathomable extent. 

We learn that Gd's decisions are open to some negotiation. Avraham haggles down the price of sparing a city to 10 righteous people! Presumably, the cities slated for destruction do not meet that cutoff.  Perhaps Tzoar had nine  and Lot's migration  made the necessary minyan. When I read of this negotiation and this criterion, I wonder about Warsaw and Krakow.  Was there no minyan pure enough to save those communities?  Were they all fakers? Presumably, the precedent does not apply. 

Avram's plea for Sodom contrasts with failure to plead for Isaac when he is instructed to make him into a burnt offering.  Avraham had pleaded for Ishmael when Sarah asked that he be banished, but he acceded to Gd's instruction to heed Sarah.  For Isaac, his father did not even put up a fight.  Perhaps, by now, he had lost the sense that he understands the way the world worked. The sequence of events called normal, cause and effect, are an illusion, transcended by the word of Gd. Arguing would not help. The future would just happen

I am the product of rescue. So are you.