Somewhere between Mamdani and Mikie, between the government shutdown and canceled flights, a week of normal life went by. I ate more than my share of leftover Halloween candy, got Eloise off to school, served my weekly stint on a grand jury, and called the tree guy about the storm-damaged oak in my backyard. God did not appear to me as in the Torah’s opening verse this week, when Abraham sat “in the heat of the day” outside his tent. But I talked to God a lot — not only because 5786 is about renewing my prayer life, but because there is a lot to discuss.
“Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” Abraham asks. That’s our question, too, these days. Aren’t there so many good, righteous people worth caring for? Whether it’s immigration raids or SNAP benefits, we share with Abraham that yearning — that the existence of righteous people might itself be reason enough to save the place. Rabbi Avital Hochstein, drawing on Onkelos and Rashi, teaches “in light of the presence of the righteous, [there is by Abraham] a call for God to tolerate, to bear, to accept or even absorb evil — to refuse to let the wickedness of others dictate God’s response.”
In other words, Abraham asks that we be judged by the merit of those who choose good and justice, not condemned for the worst among us. That feels vital now, not because I fear God’s wrath but because I worry about ours.
None of us — not our leaders, not even our enemies — are wholly righteous or wholly wicked. The Mishna says our lives are a balance of both, and our task is to keep tipping the scales toward good. That’s teshuvah: trying again and again, convinced that inside each of us is a spark of light longing to shine. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov warned against despair; he taught that our sense of darkness only blocks the light from breaking through. We must find the light within ourselves — even one small point — and let that holy spark light up the world around us. And we must find the light in one another, too.
Neither Mamdani nor Trump is pure evil or pure good. Whether you voted Republican or Democrat — and I love that we are a congregation of both parties — whether you love everything or nothing about what the administration is doing, Abraham’s argument is not only with God, but with us. Generalizing based on despair and seeing only the worst of a society is not right. It is not good to dismiss people, cities, or entire nations out of outrage.
Abraham, God’s chosen one, negotiates. If ten righteous people can be found, don’t destroy the city. God agrees. That’s how we get 10 for a prayer quorum in Jewish life: if we have 10 willing to pray — to hope, have faith, see the good – it’s worth saving the city. And because people aren’t wholly good or wholly bad — if we can find even a tiny percent of goodness in everyone, including those who cause us despair, we emulate God. We tip the world toward justice through patience, compassion, and the courage to keep seeing light in dark and complicated places.
Maybe that’s the real work of this moment: to refuse despair. To speak with God not only when we see angels at the tent door, but when the oak is split, the flights are canceled, outrage runs high, and mercy feels impossible. To keep looking for that tenth — in others, in ourselves — and believe we still have the power to save the world.