The Morning Scroll
The Morning Scroll
Parashat Shoftim, September 1st
"Justice, justice, you shall pursue."
What could those cryptic words mean? To find out, Rabbi Deena goes straight to the source: the most boring man no longer alive.
Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss. See our upcoming Shabbat services and programs here, and follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates. Check out Shabbat Replay on Contact Chai for more from Rabbi Deena.
Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Shoftim, which means judges, in which we learn about appointing them and other rules for an organized society. We’ll start with a brief recap:
The Israelites are commanded to appoint judges who must be fair, and we learn a bunch of laws like what to do to people who worship idols, which animals can be offered as sacrifices, and the rules of the Sanhedrin, a sort of supreme court. Moses tells the Israelites to coronate a king once they enter the land, but the king cannot have too many horses, wives or gold. Instead, he should write himself two Torah scrolls, one of which should be with him at all times. The Kohanim, as priests, don’t get a land inheritance in the land of Israel, because “god is their inheritance”, but they do get all sorts of gifts and meat, as well as crops and wool from tithes. The priestly families are divided into shifts, each serving at a specific time. We go back to laws, such as prohibitions on divination, fortune telling and other witchy things. We don’t need these things, the Torah says, because we have God, who will transmit messages to the people via prophets, who we have to obey or there are punishments. We then get a recap of the laws of the cities of refuge for people who accidentally kill someone, and laws about capital crimes trials, in which we need to have at least two witnesses to convict. We also learn certain laws of battle, such as exemptions for anyone newly engaged, or who recently built a house, or just anyone feeling particularly fearful. Before going to battle, the Israelites are commanded to offer peace- if the other city rejects, the Israelites are commanded to kill them all. BUT, the Torah says, don’t cut down any fruit trees, who aren’t like people. We close the parsha with a description of what to do with an unsolved murder.
On brand for the book of Devarim, we once again get one of the Torah’s most quoted lines in this parsha: “tzedek tzedek tirdof”, justice, justice you shall pursue. The line has the hallmarks of a Torah classic: it reminds us of one of our highest values, that the pursuit of justice is a core Jewish, while also leaving us scratching our heads over it a little bit. The question, here, is why the word tzedek, meaning justice, is doubled. Whenever the Torah does this, and it does on occasion double a word, the commentators have a party trying to figure out what the Torah is trying to call our attention to. On this verse, one of my favorite explanations comes from the commentator Ibn Ezra, a Spanish commentator who lived about a thousand years ago, and who usually focuses on grammar and syntax in his commentaries. Here, he throws out three possibilities, all of which I love. First, he says that the doubling of the word tzedek is meant to teach us that we must pursue justice whether it is in our own interest or not. Or, he says, it might be that we should pursue justice for all of our lives. Or maybe, it’s just for emphasis.
To which I say, why not all three? We cannot pretend we are in favor of justice only when it is in our own favor, that would just be self interest. Justice sometimes requires sacrifice, especially from those in power or with relative privilege, and we should continue to work and advocate for it no matter what might be in it, or not, for us. Similarly, justice should not be the concern of only one age demographic. For all of our lives, we should be with the world we are building and with the world we will leave behind. And finally, yes. This line matters. It gets quoted often, sure, but for good reason: so much of the Torah teaches us to be concerned with the state of our world, and to be committed to bettering it because we know what it’s like to live under injustice.
This week, I want to offer a blessing to the ancient Israelites who stood up for justice even when they had to go against their community, or their own interests to do so. If it was easy, the Torah wouldn’t need to tell us to do it, but it never hurts to be lauded for doing the right thing. And to any of you who are engaged in building a more just world, however you do that, may you be blessed to find meaning in what you do, and may that blessing help fuel you to keep pursuing justice for the rest of your life.