Our Parsha brings us, among many stories, a narrative of rescue and refuge of Lot and his family from the doomed city of Sodom.  Already fulfilled of their mission to visit Abraham in order to foretell the birth of a son to him and Sarah, two angels arrive to the residence of Abraham's relative to advise him of his chance to get out of town before it is too late.

Lot is not easily disturbed.  In fact, he is unshakeable.  The heavenly messengers must get physical, as the text records:

As dawn broke, the angels urged Lot on, saying, “Up, take your wife and your two remaining daughters, lest you be swept away because of the iniquity of the city.”  Still he delayed.  So the men seized his hand and the hand of his wife and two daughters – in the Lord's mercy on him – and brought him outside the city. (Genesis 19:15-16)

The printed version of the Hebrew text illuminates the above phrase of “Still he delayed “ with the cantillation  of Shalshelet. It is one of the rarest of all the tropim, occurring just four times in the entire Torah. Words accented with the shalshelet mark only occur at the beginning of the verse.

The Hebrew word shalshelet translates into English as “chain.” The symbolism of the Shalshelet is that the subject of the story is wrestling with his inner demons and is undergoing some hesitation in his actions. It is rendered musically by a long and elaborate string of notes, giving a strong emphasis to the word on which it occurs.

Rashi dismisses any notion that Lot was having a moral crisis, by commenting, simply, that Lot tarried in order to save his possessions; he knew that he had to get out of Dodge, so to speak, he was just pre-occupied with figuring out how to haul his precious wealth with him.  And it took an act of sheer mercy – or maybe better translated as grace – by God to yank him away from his vicissitude.

Hesitation is not always quite so fatal, but it can be costly, as the following anecdote conveys:

In early 1874 an inventor named Elisha Gray transmitted a few musical notes over a telegraph wire. He thought to himself, "If I can send music, perhaps I could send the human voice." The New York Times reported predictions of a "talking telegraph" and the public began to grow eager for it.

Just one year later Gray believed he had the answer. Tin-can like voice chambers connected by a wire in a liquid that could turn vibrations into signals is what came into his mind. But inexplicably, he did not put his idea on paper for two months. After finally making a sketch, he waited four more days before he went to the patent office.

When he arrived, Mr. Gray was told that just two hours earlier a school teacher had come through that same door with his own sketch and had already applied for the patent. His name was Alexander graham bell. When you compared the sketches, the voice chambers, the wire, and the liquid everything was identical. The reason we know the name Alexander graham bell and until today, never heard the name Elisha gray is simply because one man seized the opportunity when he could. The other one waited until it was too late.

Let us resolve this Shabbat not to wait for angels to seize us from our fog of hesitation … Opportunities for achievement, for safety, for escape must be recognized with our God-given intelligence, not to be ignored.  As the shalshelet is a rarity among musical notes, so must our avoidance of responsibility through over-thinking be reduced, if not removed.