צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ
Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you. (Deut. 16.20)
On this Shabbat Shoftim I have a hiddush to share with you. In Torah study, a hiddush – חידוש – is a new thing learned. This week I learned that the word shotrim is generally very sloppily (mis)translated.
Our parashah begins with this verse:
שֹׁפְטִ֣ים וְשֹֽׁטְרִ֗ים תִּֽתֶּן־לְךָ֙ בְּכׇל־שְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֨ר ה’ אֱלֹ-יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ לִשְׁבָטֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁפְט֥וּ אֶת־הָעָ֖ם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶֽדֶק
You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that your G!d ‘ה is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. (Deut. 16.18)
The Hebrew words for “magistrates and officials” are shoftim and shotrim. In modern Hebrew these words are used in Israel to denote judges and police; i.e., law makers and law enforcers. But the Hebrew root sh.t.r more likely meant administrators, or even scribes (the word shtar, from this root, means “document”).
The term shotrim is not used to describe police in the Exodus story: rather, it is the name of the foremen who stood between their fellow Israelites and the oppression of Pharaoh. In Exodus 5.14 we see them beaten by the Egyptians when the Israelites failed to make their quota of bricks. They defended their people to the extent of becoming angry with Moshe for making the people’s misery worse, as they saw it.
The shotrim are not law enforcers. They are the people who bridge between law (an ideal) and society (real people). Any of us can find ourselves in this place, carrying knowledge like a scribe and caring about seeing justice done. All it takes is a willingness to take a stand between people and injustice.
That’s “all”, and that’s a lot these days. We are often caught, in the Jewish community and beyond, between a sense of what we believe to be morally correct, and what is done in our name. We walk a fine line between personal beliefs and communal convictions, for good reason. As our parashah goes on to state in our Triennial cycle reading,
לֹֽא־יָקוּם֩ עֵ֨ד אֶחָ֜ד בְּאִ֗ישׁ לְכׇל־עָוֺן֙ וּלְכׇל־חַטָּ֔את בְּכׇל־חֵ֖טְא אֲשֶׁ֣ר יֶֽחֱטָ֑א עַל־פִּ֣י ׀ שְׁנֵ֣י עֵדִ֗ים א֛וֹ עַל־פִּ֥י שְׁלֹשָֽׁה־עֵדִ֖ים יָק֥וּם דָּבָֽר׃
A single witness may not validate against a person any guilt or blame for any offense that may be committed; a case can be valid only on the testimony of two witnesses or more. (Deut. 19.15)
This is incredibly significant. We are being told that none of us is capable of reaching a sound judgement alone. Jewish law reflects this: the halakha is meant to protect us against the consequences of each other’s rashness. One may not even turn oneself in! There must be at least two witnesses before the legal system can be appropriately brought to bear. In other words, there is no just judgement without community coherence.
The opposite situation, of knowing how to balance one’s own sense of justice against the sense of the communal norm, is hinted at in the preceding verse of our parashah:
לֹ֤א תַסִּיג֙ גְּב֣וּל רֵֽעֲךָ֔ אֲשֶׁ֥ר גָּבְל֖וּ רִאשֹׁנִ֑ים בְּנַחֲלָֽתְךָ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּנְחַ֔ל בָּאָ֕רֶץ אֲשֶׁר֙ ה’ אֱלֹ-יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ לְרִשְׁתָּֽהּ׃
You shall not move your countryman’s landmarks, set up by previous generations, in the property that will be allotted to you in the land that HaShem your G!d is giving you to possess. (Deut. 19.14)
Each of us is meant to live in peace on our own homeland, next to our neighbors on theirs. Therefore, we are able to deduce that the ethical horrors propagated by the Netanyahu government at present, in which Palestinians who have lived in their homes throughout the West Bank are now attacked and beaten, have their homes and water supplies destroyed and their olives trees uprooted, cannot be understood as in any way within the bounds of justifiable Jewish acts. Torah clearly indicates that the only way to flourish in the land is for everyone’s boundaries to be respected. Most Israelis agree, if the size of the regular protests throughout Israel is taken as seriously as it should be.
What to do, then, when too much of the U.S. Jewish community cannot seem to apply basic Jewish ethics to the Jewish state? Many of us feel caught between belonging and conscience.
This is understandable. Many young people who have given up on the organized Jewish community have done so because they felt alone in their sense that something was desperately wrong, ethically, in the holy land. When those of us who are older feel the same way, might it not push us toward a restructuring of our community, away from one in which we condemn each other, in favor of one in which we aspire to the ethical ideal of our tradition?
The ideal Jewish community does not march in lockstep agreement; it makes room for unease, for dissonance, and for the mutual respect of makhloket, the kind of Jewish ethical disagreement which assumes that there is good will and good sense on both sides.
The ideal Jewish community does not allow fear to overcome compassion as the basis for decision-making and action. While Jews have every historical reason to excuse our communal behavior on the basis of epigenetic trauma, we are called upon in our Torah to care for the stranger because we can – and must – empathize.
The ideal Jewish community sees its capacity for good and nourishes it. We are the people of whom HaShem promises “all the peoples of the earth shall bless themselves by you” (Genesis 12.3). As Peter Beinart muses in Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: “Perhaps this is what it means for the Jewish people to bless humanity in our time. It means liberating ourselves from supremacy so, as partners with Palestinians, we can help liberate the world.”
Perhaps this beautiful messianic vision is possible. But there is a narrow, and very long, bridge to walk between here and there. Yet this is what our parashat hashavua urges us:
צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־ה’ אֱלֹ-יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ׃
Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that ‘ה your G!d is giving you. (Deut. 16.20)
How will we balance as we walk the narrow bridge between personal passion and communal connection? Only by respecting them both as equally valuable, yet neither of them as sufficient unto itself. We dare not rely only on our own personal judgements, for we are not fully informed, nor capable of righteous judgement as individuals. Nor may we cede the judgement to our community and attempt in that way to evade responsibility for the ethics of our people.
We know it in our hearts: Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “all Jews are guarantors for each other.” What the State of Israel does, its current leadership purports to do in our name. In this month of Elul, as we are encouraged to consider our actions and their effects, may we respond with the primacy of compassion and kindness in our hearts toward all, even each other, even ourselves, as we seek a better way forward.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 