What responsibility does an individual have for the faults of a whole group? In the first part of Bereshit, the book of Genesis, there are at least two stories that touch on this question directly. One is the story of the Flood, the Mabul in Hebrew, and the other is the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah, S’dom v’Amora. Both of these stories are about a places with a pervasive culture of evil.
The Torah describes and portrays S’dom and Amora in a few places as beautiful, ungenerous, and violent. And also spiritually corrupt, which I take to mean that somehow their ideas and practices justify those other evils and perpetuate them. God presents Avraham with the idea that places like this have no hope and should be destroyed. (I will add here that theologically I don’t believe that this is actually how God operates – I treat this as a metaphor or a thought experiment.)
Avraham argues with God that there might be a group of people within the cities who are tzaddikim, which either means they are innocent of the corruption of their place, or that they are actually people of integrity.
Eventually Avraham and God seem to agree on two possibilities. If there are ten people who are tzaddikim, the cities should not be destroyed at all, and if there are fewer, the cities are doomed but those individuals should be able to leave or extricated.
It turns out that is not a group of ten tzaddikim. There is one family who seem to stand relatively apart, the household of Avraham’s nephew Lot, and maybe it’s only Lot himself. They aren’t admirable, particularly, but they are not the worst of the worst, not what we think of when we think of the pervasive evils of S’dom. They are rescued when the cities are destroyed.
Let me suggest a couple possible lessons from the story of S’dom and Amora, knowing that in later teachings in this series I will have other things to add from the Torah and the Talmudic tradition about this question of individual responsibility within a group guilty of terrible things.
One lesson is that an individual is obligated to leave a group that cannot be swayed away from its vileness, if it’s just one or two against everyone. If you stay past a certain point, then you are responsible even if you’re not one of the ringleaders or you don’t agree. Your presence starts to contribute in all kinds of ways anyway – each time you are silent it strengthens the others, for instance.
It's hard to leave — Lot and his family hesitate, even when the divine messengers who want to pull them out explain that staying means they will not survive the coming fire and brimstone. But that’s the only way they have a chance to remain innocent and not complicit.
Another lesson comes from the counterfactual that Avraham and God articulate, the idea of ten tzaddikim. Jewish tradition links this with the minyan, a quorum of ten adults for communal prayer. Here in the Torah, it’s a group of ten who stand for the idea of a moral community, not just some individuals who are morally courageous.
Such a group creates an enclave where alternative ideas can be shared openly and fleshed out and lived on a small scale, which can show itself as an alternative to the culture of the larger group. Even a minority can stand up together and try to lead the majority in teshuvah, in reflection and a way back, as long as the small group shares a life together and strengthens each other. A single person or family like Noach or Lot can’t do this, nor can just a few people, and they can’t be expected to take responsibility for that.
Even though there was no such small group in S’dom and Amora, the tradition sees Avraham teaching that there could be and if there are ten people then if they don’t leave, they ought to be a deliberate counterculture. It is at least the first half of the Margaret Mead idea: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Changing the world, in the context of something as extreme as S’dom, does not mean changing things completely. But when you are part of such a minyan, you now have the possibility of staying productively, and working on one important thing where the larger group has veered off.
S'dom and Amora, and the Flood, represent the extreme versions of a thought experiment about an evil society and the role of one tzaddik. I’ll come back in other installments with more specifics from the Talmud, about for instance how long a group like this ought to keep at it when the possibilities are better than they were for Lot and for Noach.
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