This week, we famously inherit Avraham’s holy chutzpah in arguing with God to save the righteous people of S’dom and Amorrah. Outraged that God considers just wiping out the cities, he pleads with God: If there are 50 righteous people within the city, please save them! Avraham sees it as his mission to save innocent people and he teaches us one model of what it means to be righteous - advocating for others.
In this context, we also learn a different element - just as important - of what it means to be righteous. When Avraham pleads if there are righteous people ‘within the city,’ the Hasidic rebbi Rav Simcha Bunim picks up on these words. ‘Within the city/בְּתוֹךְ הָעִיר,’ he teaches, means that it wouldn’t be enough to find the people on the benches of the [imagined] Beit Midrash (the study hall). That is not righteousness defined. You have to find people embedded within the city, mixed in with the rest of the people, engaging with the real world, and even so, working to remain righteous. Only then will God save the city on their behalf.
Here, righteousness is described as an inner process that one must cultivate as they move about the world, spreading it to others. It is a state of being that flows from us when we engage with others, some who are like us and some who are not. Rav Simcha Bunim teaches that it’s not enough to think about righteous ideas and learn them, studying their concepts and principles. We also must work in the everyday world to make them come to life.
So many of us think about the way the world can be better, but it’s much harder to go out into the world and work for it to be better. This week, I am participating in a national initiative called Rabbis Against Gun Violence Shabbat, and I will be speaking tomorrow about the issue (and I hope you'll join us Tuesday evening for a program, as well). As I go into Shabbat, I am thinking about what it means to be a person “within the city.” I pray that I have, and that you have, too, the fortitude to not just think about the ways the world can be better, but to engage in the world, “within the city” so that we all inhabit a more peaceful, more just world.
