10/30/2026
This week’s parsha includes one of the most misused stories in the Torah: S***m.
For generations, this story has been weaponized against LGBTQ+ people. But upon deeper look, what was actually wrong with S***m is much bigger and much uglier.
S***m is depicted as a place defined by violence, cruelty, arrogance, and a refusal to care for people in need. The prophet Yechezkel describes its sin as having an abundance while refusing to support the poor and vulnerable.
In short, the moral failure is not that its residents loved the “wrong” people. It’s that they stopped treating other people like human beings.
We have a choice when it comes to how we read stories in the Torah: they can be used to shame people, or they can be used to demand more of us.
We can read S***m as a warning against q***r people. Or we can read it as a warning against becoming the kind of community where vulnerable people are unsafe, strangers are unwelcome, and cruelty becomes normal.
Let’s choose the perspective that asks us to build safer, kinder, more courageous communities.
