Our Gemara from 17b to 18a discussed how certain actions are viewed, from their inception or from their end point?  For example, if an animal stomps upon a vessel, and the vessel does not break, but then from that force, rolls and breaks. If we follow the initial stomp, it would be the damage of “foot”, requiring full payment.  But if we follow the end, where the vessel broke by banging into another object, this is comparable to the damage of “tzeroros” (ricocheting pebbles), and only is liable for half damages.

Whether we attribute something to its beginning or end, has implications in other areas. The Gemara Niddah (70b) records a question that the Wise Men of Alexandria asked the sages. The verse (Bereishis 19:26) tells us:

 וַתַּבֵּ֥ט אִשְׁתּ֖וֹ מֵאַחֲרָ֑יו וַתְּהִ֖י נְצִ֥יב מֶֽלַח 

Lot’s wife looked back, and she thereupon turned into a pillar of salt. 

The Wise Men of Alexandria asked, does Lot’s wife's corpse have ritual impurity applied to her dead body, or since she turned into a pillar of salt, there is no longer anything left that represents the prior dead matter?  The Gemara considered the question foolish, presumably because once she was fully transformed to salt, she was simply salt. Just as, presumably, the dirt we touch and even the dust we breathe, may once have been part of decaying corpses.

Pardes Yosef (Toldos) asks why were the sages scoffing at their question? In other areas in halakha we debate whether the original point affects the end point? For example, Rashi (Avodah Zarah 47a, “Ibur”) rules that something that has a status of a forbidden worshiped object does not lose its forbidden status even if undergoing a physical change. Pardes Yosef answers that the situation with Lot's wife is not subject to this debate about beginning status or end because she never became a corpse. That is, she was miraculously transformed to salt while she was still alive, so there was no ritual impurity and that is why it was a foolish question.

Regarding her particular fate, Rashi says it was measure for measure, as she used salt as a ruse to snitch on her husband who was harboring guests (a capital crime in Sodom). She asked neighbors if she could borrow salt for “her guests”, which was a passive aggressive move, revealing Lot’s activity. Ha’amek Davar (ibid) asks, if this is so, why does the verse make it dependent on her looking back? Even if she didn’t look back she deserved the same punishment! He answers (at least how I interpret his answer) that true she may have deserved this punishment, but one does not always receive their punishment. The destroying angels were activated and present at that time, so her delaying and looking back got her caught up in the destruction, and then her particular punishment was suited to her sinful behavior. We might imagine she looked back on the destruction and was smugly self-righteous, which then caused her to be judged more harshly. As Bereishis Rabbah (45:5) says, if you summon judgment on others, you summon it upon yourself. 

When we see others suffering, one of the uglier human traits is to deny how this signals our own vulnerability, and even culpability. This leads one to make self-righteous rationalizations why we wouldn’t deserve that. Even when hearing about a person who has cancer or was in an accident, there is an inner compulsion to avoid facing the implications of our own fragility by telling ourselves, “She didn’t eat healthy, or he drove recklessly.” Even if those explanations might have some truth, we don’t want to make the mistake of Lot’s wife. The failure to pause and self-reflect ironically may arouse more heavenly judgment than facing our shortcomings. Rus Rabbah (2:8) says that when a peer dies, the entire group should be concerned. 

Of course, taken to the extreme, a person could have dysfunctional anxiety and survivor’s guilt. But a moral life offers protections against neurotic fears by directing normal human impulses and feelings into productive and meaningful responses to tragedies instead of avoidance. There is no need to wallow in helplessness nor deny the realities. Rather, when tragedy strikes close to home we can ask, “Why was I spared and what can I do to make life meaningful?”

Freud remarked on the protective quality of religion and moral accountability in quelling excess anxiety and neurosis:

"It tallies well that devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis [i.e., religion according to Freud,] spares them the task of constructing a personal one."  (S.E., The Future of an Illusion, 21:44.)

Freud made these remarks with no fondness for religion, yet his words proved prophetic. We have come to witness the emergence of a world culture that does not believe in God yet burdens everyone with all kinds of restrictions and rules: pronouns, woke-ism, excessive and irrational COVID precautions and naive forms of environmental activism. By all means save the environment and fight for human rights, but also don’t kill fetuses because of a “right to choose”). The ugliest example of this smug misplaced piety has been from liberal Ivy League students and professors who are protective of women’s rights and displaced Palestinians yet they ignore the atrocities committed by Hamas and declare them to be the heroes and “freedom fighters”. (Because we know Hamas will surely establish a country which will welcome LGBTQ persons and champion women’s rights, if only the big, bad Israelis would leave them in peace.) This distorted thinking comes from deep neurotic anxiety and guilt. Without religion to properly guide those impulses they create a grotesque and fake morality in order to rationalize, insulate and deny their deepest fears about their basic unworthiness and fragility that all humans share.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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