Each of us has something in our rear-view mirror. From a very young age, we become conscious of loss, perhaps in the form of a misplaced stuffed animal or a tooth lost down a drain, and we do not hesitate to open our mouths and wail our distress to the four corners of the earth. If we are lucky enough to move forward through life, the losses will continue to pile up. At times, that weight can feel unbearable, such as when we reach a yahrzeit and find the floor falling out from underneath us once again or find ourselves talking to people whose physical ears are no longer here to listen. In our moments of greater enlightenment, however, we may find the past adding sweetness to the present, infusing our days with gratitude, and propelling us into the uncertainties of the future with courage and anticipation. Our relationship to loss shapes our every waking moment, for better or for worse.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayeira, is a roller coaster of emotions, including Sarah’s incredulous laughter at learning that she will be an elderly mother, Abraham’s desperate pleas to save Sodom and Gomorrah, Hagar’s despair at her certainty that her son Ishmael will die in the wilderness, and Isaac’s implied terror when his father placed him on an altar and raised his knife. In the midst of all of this mayhem and drama, Genesis 19 offers us two distinct portraits in loss: he who runs ahead and she who looks behind.
The he in question is Abraham’s nephew, Lot, rescued by two divine emissaries from the brimstone and fire that rained down on Sodom. Only his wife and two daughters made it out with him, as the divine emissaries seized their hands and pulled them from the city right before destruction fell. Fleeing on foot toward the city of Zoar, Lot resisted the urge to look behind him, as he was commanded, but his wife could not stop herself, and she was promptly transformed into a pillar of salt.
What happens to Lot from there is hardly a rosy picture. While he may have gotten out with his life, his future contains cave-dwelling and unintentional incest, so the Torah is far from painting his as a model for us to follow.
But what of his wife? Consumed by regret or sorrow at the destruction left behind her, she ignored the emissaries’ warning and found herself reduced to salt, the stuff of tears. One might think that a pillar of salt would be destined to blow away without a trace, but there is a salt formation on Mount Sodom, near the Dead Sea, popular with the tourist set. It bears both the heartache and the anonymity of Lot’s wife. While her name has been lost to history, her sorrow is remembered in the very mineral into which she was encapsulated.
I feel for Lot’s wife. Moving forward into the unknown without so much as a glance behind is unfathomable to me. I am writing this piece in a room filled with portraits of people I have loved and lost, along with artifacts saved from their collections, carrying their memories into the day-to-day of 2022. I am determined to give some piece of them to my children, to keep them alive in my stories, my formal dishes, my photo frames. I may not be a pillar of salt, but I am at times a puddle of tears, and rather than fear those tears, I strive to draw from the stories of both Lot and his wife, moving on into the days ahead because I must, and cradling my memories in the faith that they, like salt, will add flavor to the future, whatever she may bring.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rebecca Abbate
