I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK to you briefly about a man who was a "nobody." In Yiddish we would call him a gornisht. The individual I have in mind had great yichus, for he was the nephew of Avraham, the founder of our people. But what good is a high pedigree when the person himself is a nix -- a good for nothing, a gornisht!
You must have guessed by now that the man I am talking about is Lot. Now why do I call him a gornisht? Because, I believe that he had the characteristics of a nobody.
Lot was a "hanger-on." A verse in the sidrah of this week speaks of him as a "me-too" sort of fellow, who leaned heavily on his uncle. "And Avraham went out of Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot also..." (13:1). The two Hebrew words ve'lot imo, sum up the man. Lot was a nochshlepper, a man who initiated nothing, gave nothing and leaned upon Avraham. In short he gave gornisht and took everything that he could lay his hands on.
When I was a young boy I loved the story of Sinbad the Sailor. One incident in that series of humorous tales lingers in my memory. Sinbad once found himself in a deep gorge which was surrounded by huge cliffs. No matter how hard he tried Sinbad couldn't climb out of that cave. One day he managed to tie himself to the leg of a very large bird that visited the gorge. When the bird began to fly, it carried Sinbad also. Slowly, however, the dead weight of the sailor began to have its telling effect on the bird. It had to either get rid of the "hanger-on" or give up the idea of flying.
In a sense, Lot was the biblical Sinbad, for he tied his dead spiritual weight unto his illustrious uncle and proved himself an even greater impediment to Avraham's striving for G-d than the legendary sailor was to the flight of the huge bird.
In commenting on the verse, "And the Lord said unto Avraham after Lot was separated from him," Rashi states, kol zman sheharasha imo haya hadibur porosh mimenu, "All the time that the wicked (Lot) was with him (Avraham), the word of G-d departed front him (Avraham)" (Gen 13:14).
Another defect in the character of Lot was that he refused to be taught. Think of it! Avraham was the teacher and guide of an entire generation but had little influence on the nephew whom he vied to raise as a son. An illustration of that failure is Lot's choice of neighbors and friends. When strife arose between the herdsmen of Avraham and Lot, Avraham offered his nephew the choice of the...
