Shabbat shalom, everyone.

V’ahavta l’reicha camocha.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

This is.. NOT in this week’s Torah portion.

And yet, we’re about to talk about it anyway.

We’re going to talk about it, because while V’ahavta l’reicha camocha isn’t said outright in parashat Vayera, what IS in this week’s Torah portion is a whole series of examples and lessons of how we should– or should NOT– relate to our neighbors, to those who exist in the world around us and are not in our immediate family. 

And I can’t help but feel, in the midst of the many public and private disputes in our state, in our country, in our world, in our spiritual and ancestral homeland of Israel, that this Shabbos is an excellent time to do a deep-dive on how our ancestors related to their neighbors– what worked, what didn’t– and what their example might teach today.

I’ve divided my thoughts into five lessons. 

At the beginning of parashat Vayera, (which we actually read last year), we see Abraham and Sarah famously inviting in three Anashim, three men who we find out are actually angels. 

Upon seeing the men approach, Abraham says:

“Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves.”

This is Lesson One from parashat Vayera about how to love our neighbors as ourselves: the lesson is that it’s a good thing to default to welcoming people we don’t know. 

This feels like a traditional interpretation of “love your neighbor as yourself”, the kind of example we would give to our kids in religious school– you need food, so you should give other people food; you need to rest, so you should help them rest. You want to be respected, so you should respect your neighbors too. Sounds good.   

However, it’s important to note, here, that the strangers, these new neighbors who are welcomed by Abraham come in peace. They are not attempting, at any point, to hurt Abraham or Sarah. They are polite, and then they go on their merry way. 

In other words, these are neighbors whom it is relatively easy to love as ourselves. Fulfilling the mitzvah of V’ahavta l’reicha camocha is straightforward when there is no conflict or complication.

But, as we know from just being human, most interactions with other humans are more complicated than the ones in this story.

So while it is important to learn from Abraham’s default mode of welcoming others into his home, it’s also important for us to remember that this isn’t the final word on V’ahavta l’reicha camocha.

With that in mind, let’s move to Lesson Two. The second example in parashat Vayera of how to love your neighbor as yourself is found in the famous back and forth between Abraham and God, which we also read last year, where Abraham challenges God not to condemn Sodom and Gomorrah out of hand, urging God to search for innocents in the city, and not to assume that there is no merit to be found there. 

Without even knowing the specifics of his neighbors’ lives or personalities, Abraham’s instinctive reaction to hearing about God’s plans to destroy the cities leads him to push back on the plans, and to search for the potential for good in others. Abraham says:

“Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”

In other words: Lesson Two reminds us that all of our neighbors have inherent worth, as humans, period. Human dignity persists even when we disagree, and even when harm has been done. 

This one can be a difficult one to stomach. Even if we don’t go as far as the Middle East, where attempting to remember the inherent worth of those who have harmed us can be a true challenge even on a good day, right here in America we also know how difficult it can be to defend the rights and dignity of others who have a reputation for doing harm, or even if they have harmed us directly. 

As Americans, the values of freedom of speech and press and assembly push us and challenge us constantly to ask where the limits are of who and which content is defensible. 

It can be very painful to see a meme on social media or drive past a protest where slogans are being chanted that feel like poison, and hurt us personally– even if we know that that speech is legally protected. We may even feel the urge to yell or write something cruel in return, because of the pain we feel at being attacked. 

This is in contrast to Abraham, who is defending the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah at a distance, talking about the actions of neighbors who cannot directly impact his life in that moment, which is an important reminder: 

It’s much easier to talk about the theoretical merit of others when they are not actively harming you or those you love. This is one of the challenges of living in community, because we don’t always have direct experience with those we are making decisions about.

And it takes a great deal of bravery to take the high road and remember the human worth of the person in front of you when they are actively saying or doing something you think is awful.

And so again, similar to defaulting to welcome in Lesson One, Lesson Two’s reminder of the inherent worth of all humans can pose a very real challenge when applied to the real world.

Which brings us to our third Lesson in loving our neighbors as ourselves from parashat Vayera. 

After Abraham’s argument with God, Lot, Abraham’s brother, welcomes the angels into his home in Sodom saying:

“Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house to spend the night, and bathe your feet; then you may be on your way early.”

And at first glance, it looks like we are going to see another shining example of conduct from one of our ancestors, another classic story of V’ahavta l’reicha camocha.

However, that night, a mob of townspeople violently attempt to breach Lot’s home and harm his guests. Needless to say, Lot does not invite in these neighbors of his, who are so intent on doing harm. Unlike the angels, these men do NOT come in peace. That moment of danger brings us to Lesson Three: the painful reality that when our neighbors are trying to hurt us, we have every right not to throw open our doors, but instead to prioritize protecting ourselves.   

Which touches on the question at the heart of so much of what we disagree about in public discourse nowadays: Which situations are dire enough to call for abandoning all welcome of our neighbors? Where is that line?

This is at the center of our debate on immigration in this country. This is at the center of the debate about security for our own synagogue.

And in another devastatingly clear example, there’s the fact that Hamas is, technically, one of Israel’s neighbors. However, when Hamas breached the borders and attacked Israel, it would have been ridiculous to welcome them or to search for merit.   

That’s because there are actions neighbors can take which violate or negate the expectation of hospitality. There are moments in life where loving our neighbors, at least temporarily, takes the back seat, and loving and protecting ourselves has to take priority– the trick is not letting go completely of our desire to love our neighbors as we navigate those moments of danger.

And that is anything but easy.

Which brings us to Lesson 4.

Lesson four comes immediately after the mob attacks Lot’s home. It’s one of the most troubling moments in this week’s parasha. That’s because, in Lot’s desire to calm the frenzy, he makes a horrific choice. Thinking he should prioritize protecting the angels first and foremost, he offers his own two daughters to the mob to be assaulted instead. And that is a horrible, horrible misjudgement. 

Because Lesson Four reminds us that we can never forget that V’ahavta l’reicha camocha, loving our neighbor as ourself, always has two parts: loving our neighbors, AND loving ourselves. Both are necessary. We cannot love our neighbors at the expense of ourselves and our own families. If loving our neighbors means actively harming ourselves and those we love, we are not actually fulfilling this mitzvah.

I think that this lesson, even more than the others, gets at the heart of why it is so difficult to live in community, to be in societies and nations and international relationships, with each other. 

This lesson reminds us of the risk that comes with being vulnerable and welcoming our neighbors in, and reminds us that we have an obligation to ourselves and to each other that doesn’t get to be overlooked in the name of universal welcome.

To put it in other words: the big tent model is a wonderful thing, but every tent needs boundaries. And it’s worthwhile to wrestle with what those boundaries are, and which risks we are willing to take as communities, states, and nations. 

And as we know from the outcomes of pretty much every election, different members of any community inevitably have different ideas of how much risk is worth taking in the name of being welcoming, and how much risk is too much.

Which brings us to our fifth and final lesson.

After the troubling scene with the mob at Lot’s door, God utterly destroys the cities and all who dwell in them. Lot and his family escape, though his wife looks back and is turned to salt, and ultimately Lot and his daughters live in a cave. Our Torah portion recounts that Lot’s daughters then intentionally get him drunk and sleep with him in order to become pregnant and perpetuate humankind, saying

“there is nobody else on earth to consort with us.”

And this, then, is Lesson Five: It is impossible to love your neighbor as yourself if all of your neighbors have been destroyed.  

Perhaps part of the point of this commandment, to love our neighbors as ourselves, is that it IS difficult, and it is challenging, and we’re not allowed to take the easy way out.

In order to fulfill the mitzvah of loving our neighbors as ourselves, we need neighbors. So, the answer to disagreements cannot be to annihilate or just remove those we disagree with. To do so leaves us in an impossible, and as we see in our Torah portion, a very unhealthy, position. 

There are frequent examples of people in our world today wanting to destroy or remove troublesome neighbors– whether we are talking about the Middle East, and those who advocate extreme violence and ethnic cleansing; whether we are talking about those who want to remove entire ethnic groups or political groups from this country; but the urge to remove those who disagree with us also impacts us closer to home, even right here in this community.

It’s a normal human urge to wish that our problems, or the people we see as embodying those problems, would just disappear. But that mentality gets in the way of building healthy pluralistic community. 

We here at TBE are a community of people with a whole bunch of opinions. We have deeply held, personal, thoroughly thought-out conclusions that sometimes differ from each others’. 

Which is why it is so important for us all to hear and internalize this final lesson from parashat Vayera.

Because: If what we are hoping for, deep down inside, is that the people who disagree with us will just disappear– then we are actually hoping to exempt ourselves from the mitzvah of V’ahatva l’reicha camocha. 

It wouldn’t need to be a commandment if it was easy.

Loving your neighbor as yourself, as clearly demonstrated in this week’s Torah portion, is sometimes easy, and sometimes messy. But it can only happen if we actually interact with our neighbors. 

Sometimes, loving your neighbor as yourself is easy and fun, and looks like chatting at a friendly kiddush lunch, or singing in harmony at Kabbalat Shabbat. There is love in curiosity and fun. 

 Sometimes, it’s making a coffee date with someone just to hear each other– not because you agree, but specifically because you don’t. There’s love in hearing each other.

Sometimes, loving your neighbor as yourself looks like sitting on a committee with an intentional variety of opinions and making space for deep divisions to be shared respectfully.

 Sometimes, it’s making a compromise, and choosing to stay in a community that you know doesn’t necessarily check every box of what you want, as long as that community is worth it.

Sometimes, loving your neighbor means consciously reminding ourselves that just because we disagree does not mean that we are each other’s enemies.

What I hope for, for this community and for our state and for our country and for Israel, what I dream of, is that we can come to a place where loving our neighbors is the most important thing: more important to us than any specific talking point or slogan or word or symbol. 

And where the compromises which are a requirement of being in relationship feel like a win instead of a loss. 

I hope for a community where, as we learned this week in parashat Vayera, we welcome each other, we remember each others’ inherent worth while we disagree, we defend each other like family, and we refuse to wish that our issues– or even worse, our neighbors– would just disappear when the going gets tough. 

V’ahavta l’reicha camocha– love your neighbor as yourself.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Shabbat shalom. 

Sermon given October 31, 2026.