Avot322

1:
Our present mishnah is the second in a series of seven whose common characteristic is that they are based on the number four. In this mishnah we are told that there are four attitudes that characterize people. These attitudes are all connected to the way one person relates to another person's property. Does the person recognize that there is such a thing as private ownership? Does a person respect the rights and privileges of private ownership?

2:
The first characterization is that of a person who understands that his property belongs to him and another's property belongs to that other. In other words, such a person understands the meaning of private property and ownership. And our mishnah teaches that such a characterization may be considered to be 'normal' or usual.

3:
However, our mishnah adds that the characteristic may also be viewed in a different manner. One might understand that when he says "What's mine is mine" he means that he will not share any of the property that he owns with anyone else. Such an attitude, of course, precludes not only the possibility of giving charity but also the possibility of simple good neighbourliness. If Re'uven refuses to lend Sarah a hammer, let's say, simply because "it's mine and I don't give away my things" he is being a bad neighbour. Indeed, our mishnah calls it the characteristic of Sodom.

4:
Western – Christian – thought has always assumed that the great sin of the people of Sodom, for which it was destroyed, was some form of homosexual wrongdoing. This thought was based on the understanding that the story told of the angels that came to save Lot in Genesis was referring to homosexual behaviour:

It is possible to give the verb "to know" in this context a sexual meaning, and that is probably why the concept of sodomy etc came to be used in western parlance.

5:
However, Jewish tradition has a different understanding of the sin of Sodom. This understanding comes from a comment of the prophet Ezekiel. The prophet castigates Israel for being worse than the people of Sodom. Having said that, he defines the sins of the people of Sodom:

Thus, in the Jewish tradition the sin of Sodom is miserliness: "What's mine is mine" – and you are not going to have any of it, so make do with what is yours because "what is yours is yours" – and what is mine is not yours and will not be.

6:
The sages so deprecated the "characteristic of Sodom" that they gave the courts the right to force a Jew, against his will, to share his property with others when such a sharing will bring benefit to someone else and cause himself no loss or harm.

To be continued.