In this week’s Torah reading of Vayera, Abraham forcefully expresses his objections to God’s plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Their extended negotiation is, by the standards of the Hebrew Bible, a lengthy piece of dialogue. Through a close reading of the passage, Sruli Fruchter tries to uncover some of its significance. He also notes the interpretive problem that stems from Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook’s comment, echoed by other important sages, that “it is necessary that prayer be clean of any idea of changing will and affecting response in God’s law.”

What Rabbi Kook writes . . . unequivocally contradicts the story of Sodom. Abraham prayed for Sodom. He explicitly sought to change God’s will. He hoped to change God’s decree. Kook’s words apparently attribute his actions to the “destruction of the order of man’s perfection.” For Kook, to suggest that one can “better” God by proposing new suggestions or demanding new realities is tantamount to heresy, for it essentially depends on denying God’s omniscience: if one’s argument and plea is “new information” to God, then He cannot be all-knowing, and if God already knows one’s forthcoming words, then God already accounted for them. The first case denies God, and the second case denies prayer.

Prayer, then, as Samson Raphael Hirsch, Kook, and others write elsewhere, is an exercise of self-transformation, the realization of God’s highest ideals within the praying human.

While the face of Sodom’s trial appears a parry of equals, of God and human, its reality conveys a truth of human prayer. To face injustice and open the siddur is to yearn for God’s ideals of righteousness, compassion, and justice. Abraham’s grappling with God—his outrage over collective punishment, his indignation at divine wrongdoing, his recusal to humility, and his concession to reality—can be likened to the inner currents of one’s mind during prayer.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.