לוט בן הרן

Lot son of Haran is Abraham's nephew, the man who walked with the righteous one but whose heart was drawn to Sodom. He grew up in Abraham's house after his father's death, traveled with him from Haran, and absorbed from him the trait of hospitality. But when the shepherds quarreled, Lot chose the 'plain of the Jordan,' wealthy Sodom, 'and Lot journeyed from the east' (Genesis 13:11), distancing himself from closeness to the truth.

In Sodom, the city of cruelty that forbade kindness, Lot preserved one thing from Abraham's house: he brought the angels into his home and endangered himself to protect his guests. By the merit of that spark of kindness he was saved from the overturning, when the angels brought him and his daughters out of the city before it was destroyed.

But his wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, and Lot himself, after the rescue, failed in the affair of his daughters in the cave. The Torah does not whitewash: Lot is the man who had a spark but did not stand in its fullness. And yet, from his offspring came Ruth the Moabite, and from Ruth, King David and the Messiah.

What do we learn from him? That a person can preserve a spark of good even in a corrupt place, and that this very spark may save him. Lot teaches that the choice of environment, 'and Lot chose for himself,' shapes destiny, and that even from a complex and incomplete figure there can come, by providence, the root of the kingdom of the house of David.