Kabbalat Shabbat Kavannah | Rabbi Roly Matalon | November 7, 2025

Just a few words about Parashat Vayera

Parashat Vayera, as many of you know,

Gatzel sends angels

to Avraham and Sarah first to

heal Avraham from the brit milah to announce

to Sarah and Avrahamam that they are going to have a child,

and another angel that is going to announce the destruction

of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Series of seven I'm afraid the Torah tells us.

By Adonai.

Zakat. Sedum.

Bambara karaba.

Her totem of the moon.

Adonai said the outrage

of wisdom. And I'm all right.

So great.

And their sin so grave

that I decided to destroy them.

And the question is, what was the outrage

and the sin of so many more?

They appear to be places of corruption

and violence.

The Talmud

tells us that the people of Adam

did not operate outside the law.

They were not lawless.

Rather, they made laws

that kept foreigners out

and that overprivileged the wealthy

and took advantage of the poor.

That was their sin.

The Talmud tells us that the soil of tomorrow

was so rich and fertile that bread would just come out,

and when the farmers would take the produce

from the from the soil,

what would happen is that gold dust would fall out.

I mean, they were very, very rich.

And the people of Sodom said, since we live in a land

from which bread comes and has the dust of gold,

we have everything that we need.

Why do we need travelers

as they come only to divest us of our property?

Come, let us call

cause the proper treatment of travelers to be forgotten from our land.

It is said that in stone,

people build fences around their gardens

to keep even the birds

from eating from their trees.

So this is some form of radical

and extreme selfishness.

When a poor person would come to storm

each and every person who would give them a coin,

but before that, they would write their own

name on the coin and then give them the coin,

and they would not give them or sell them bread or food

so that they could not spend the money

and they would die of hunger.

And when they would die,

each and every person who gave the coin

would come and take their coin back.

Such was the depravity of the people of Sodom.

According to the Talmud. Now, in a world,

there's a section

that talks about the different traits in people.

There are people who say

mine what?

What is mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.

What is

this is the trait of ignorant people.

Mine is yours

and yours is yours

is the trait of pious people.

Yours is mine and mine is mine

is evil people.

Mine is mine and yours is yours.

Let me share. Says it's average people.

Most people are like that.

Mine is mine and yours is yours.

But then there's some who say,

this is the truth of the people of wisdom.

People who say mine is mine and yours is yours is the trait of people of stone.

Why is it so?

It's so, according to the commentators of my Mary, who lived in the 13th century,

says that it's a

concept that says

that this one benefits

and this one doesn't suffer any loss

if one benefits and the other stuff doesn't suffer any loss.

There are some people who refuse to help others,

even though when doing so presents no no disadvantage to them.

There are people like that

who say, in spite of the fact

that I will suffer no disadvantage whatsoever, you cannot have

what is mine.

That's the trait of the people of wisdom.

Then, in that.

This person benefits

in spite of the fact that the other doesn't suffer any loss.

So. This morning

I walked out of my apartment a little before nine,

and as I walked here on 87th Street towards the subway,

I saw there was a line of people outside of Saint Ignatius

and Ignatius Church.

And then I walked around the block

and there were people standing

outside of his fear, saying,

standing in line before 9:00 in the morning,

there were elderly people, women, men, children, people with disabilities

all standing in line, some of them with their carts waiting for food,

waiting for food.

Because, as everybody knows,

their benefits were cut.

Food stamps. No more.

This is the news this afternoon.

The administration asked an appeals court

today to immediately halt a judge's ruling

that would require the government to fully fund food stamps.

The ruling said that this month's

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

benefits for roughly 42 million Americans

must be funded by the end of the day,

even as the administration pressed its legal case.

The Agriculture Department told states that it was preparing to make funds

available to deliver the full benefit.

Now the government

is appealing the decision of the court.

That would require the government to fund

food stamps for people.

What is mine is mine.

What is yours is yours

is a measure of the people of wisdom.

Even though people would benefit

when nobody would be at a disadvantage.

The ruling is can't have the food depriving

people of 42 million Americans men, women, elderly

children, disadvantaged people, disabled people, veterans.

The cruelty that we've come to

today is equal

to the sin of the people of Sodom.

Here in the wealthiest country

in the world, in the United States of America,

that people are deprived of food.

The government is saying to the judge,

we're going to appeal this decision to give people food. So

we live

in a society where

mine is mine and yours is yours,

where there is a and us and is them.

And that's not the Jewish way.

The Jewish way is not ever to see.

And us and to them.

But are we?

Because that's the deepest concept,

the deepest teaching of the Jewish tradition

is a nation with more heart.

Everything is part of the one.

There is no us and there is no them.

There is only one.

And when we see ourselves and we can see

our community as one communist

social community as one community, as one.

There is no mine is mine, and yours is yours.

There's no people who are deprived of food or whatever

they need in order to live and to thrive.

And this is precisely the point of the pew

that we're going to sing now for our home to prepare us

for. Smith's right

built Calvary.

My little matter, which is in this booklet.

On page 2 to 2.

Everything comes from the one.

Everything is one.

We're all part of the one.

There is no us.

There is no them. There's only one.