In telling the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—part of this Sabbath’s Torah reading—the biblical text goes into much detail, but is remarkably vague about what sins provoked God’s wrath. While sodomy is the transgression most associated with this tale in the Western imagination, the rabbinic tradition tends to focus on other misdeeds. Helen Plotkin points to a midrash that depicts God being moved to action after a young Sodomite woman is killed by her fellow townspeople for surreptitiously giving flour to an impoverished friend:

This midrash paints a terrible picture: a young woman burned to death as punishment for an act of compassion. And her burning was not the work of hooligans. [The midrash] uses legal terminology—“judgment” and “case”—implying that the people of Sodom took the compassionate girl to court for sneaking food to a starving neighbor. She was tried and convicted under the law of the land. In Sodom, feeding a hungry person was a criminal act that carried the death penalty. The act that forced God’s interference was a legal one.

[A]other version of this midrash . . . takes the issue a step further. . . . According to this version, it is not the cry of the girl herself that turns God’s head. Now it is the judgment in her case that cries out.

For most people, the abuse of an abstract concept is not as emotionally compelling as the abuse of a little girl. But the idea that her treatment reflected the ethical stance of her society is truly horrifying. It suggests that in a society whose communal values are corrupt, it eventually becomes impossible for individuals to live ethical lives. Ethics and morality are not only attributes of individual people. Ethics exist or do not exist in a community. Whether individual people are good or bad, it is the collective values of the community that make ethical life possible.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.