In the first lecture of the 25th year, the ancient sinful city of Sodom is doomed, slated for destruction. But what about teshuvah, repentance? Even Abraham argues to save Sodom because of the righteous but for some reason he doesn’t try to awaken repentance. Why? As the Midrash illuminates, Sodom was the cosmic capital of crime, bad toward its inhabitants but worse to strangers. Still, was everyone guilty? Is there in Judaism a notion of collective guilt and punishment? And if so, why should Lot and his family, also inhabitants of Sodom, escape it? On one level, the main participants in the Sodomite drama all appear faulted. Lot is ready to give away his daughters; Lot’s wife plays a role in endangering the angelic guests; the angels are impatient and stingy with miracles; Abraham disappears from the scene and gives in to God. Yet from another vantage point the participants appear in a positive light: Abraham’s intervention shows the error in the notion of collective guilt. And Lot’s wife looked back at the doomed out of maternal love and compassion. The daughters who seduced Lot thought of humankind’s future. And even Lot, who seems so compromised, ends up saving a city: something that Abraham couldn’t do. If Sodom symbolizes hate and indifference to victims, Lot’s wife teaches the lesson that at times “one must look backwards, lest one run the risk of turning into a statue. Of salt, of stone? No. Of ice.”