Justice

When I went home last week, I attended services with my parents. The rabbi gave a sermon that was, unfortunately, all about Sotormayor (unfortunate, because I thought there were plenty of perfectly good topics in that week's Torah portion. Alas, he never mentioned any of them). The rabbi, like many liberals, glorified and praised the partiality and so-called "empathy" that will be generated by her racial background. Bizarre characteristic to be trumpeted up for a future judge....

In odd moments  I can't help but try to keep untwisting the maze of illogical steps that make up this liberal argument. What came to mind (especially since I'm now reading another book by Kass) was this passage that Dr. Leon Kass wrote. It is from his commentary on Genesis and it's his take on Abraham's dialogue with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. Kass views this section as part of Abraham's education - as overseen by God - in regards to communal, political justice. A few excerpts that I hope are enough to convey the general drift: 

"These aspects...[of the Sodom and Gomorrah story] constitute a particularly difficult and painful lesson for Abraham about the different between personal and political justice, a lesson any political founder needs to learn...Although he has shown himself to be personally righteous, Abraham, because he is to be a political founder, needs also some instruction in political justice - that is, justice regarding whole communities....

Abraham's leap to questioning the punishment of wholesale destruction may be motivated by something nearer and dearer...God had announced his interest in the wickedness of two cities, Sodom and Gomorroah, but Abraham in his questioning speaks only of one city although he does not name it. God, reading Abraham's mind, will in His net response speak only about Sodom, and by name. As a result, we learn that Abraham's concern for the fate of Sodom is not disinterested; for Sodom is still the home of his nephew Lot. The commentators who hear in Abraham's pleas only a concern for total strangers have forgotten the place and importance of Lot to Abraham....Because it would be ignoble and unjust to engage in special pleading, Abraham cannot make his argument in personal terms; he must make it in terms applicable both to his own and to the strangers alike....If one is to care for the justice of a nation, one must not only be willing to moderate the love of one's family and the love of personal justice...Abraham comes to see that one must come to care about the righteousness or wickedness of the world, and not only about one's own kin and one's own goodness and its rewards....

Read the whole thing. Or at least that whole chapter.