Lessons From Our Humanity: Parashat Shoftim

Lessons From Our Humanity:  Parashat Shoftim

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

The Torah is an ancient document, going back nearly three thousand years. Actually, anthropologists tell us that that’s not a very long time.  As a species, human beings have been around for much longer, and many civilizations have risen and fallen before Judaism appeared. Evidence of these long-gone cultures includes archeological ruins, art works, even some literature.  Additionally, however, there also exist fragments of law codes that once formed the basis of these ancient societies.  Some of these precede Moses’s Law by one thousand years or more.  Hammurabi’s Code, the most famous of these ancient law books, isn’t even the oldest, and it goes back to about 1754 BCE, a full thousand years before the appearance of the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy.

So what is it about Deuteronomy that takes one’s breath away?  It isn’t merely its age, nor the complete and finished state in which it has come down to us.  Of course, it is one of the Five Books of Moses, it is The Torah, and as such, it is both holy and fundamental to modern western civilization.  But those who look deeper into its contents and complexities can find much more in this book than just theology.

First there is the language.  The Hebrew of Deuteronomy is different from the first four books of the Torah:  It’s at once more poetic, more intricate, more exalted.  Additionally, however, Deuteronomy stands apart because of its generally secular topics, as well as for the depth and breadth of the material that it covers.

Whereas Genesis and Exodus tell magnificent and moving stories; and whereas Leviticus and Numbers delve into religious ritual and sacrifice, Deuteronomy is mostly about civil law.  True, faith is also an important element in this book.  After all, it is part of The Bible, and we do find in it a repetition of “the watchword of our faith,” as the Sh’ma used to be described in some prayerbooks.  The V’ahavta is repeated here too, as are the Ten Commandments. 

Yet on the whole, Deuteronomy is less about God and more about us.  It focuses less on our relationship with the Almighty, and much more on how we human beings should relate to one another. 

The true greatness of Deuteronomy lies in its understanding of human nature and in its lofty aspirations to build a fair, just and compassionate society—despite our more basic tendencies to be selfish, self serving and self absorbed.  As such, this important book is less a religious tome and more of an instruction manual in how to be a better person and how to build a Great Society.

By nature, human beings are builders. Civilizations have always defined their greatest achievements by their magnificent structures:  The cities and pyramids, the great arks and walls, and the skyscraping towers that they raised.  The Jewish contribution to this aspect of our humanity has been there since we first appeared.  Even as slaves in Egypt, we were recognized for our extraordinary ability to build great and complex structures and systems.  Joseph was not only a dreamer and interpreter of dreams; he was an engineer, an economist and an architect.  Almost singlehandedly he created a socio-political system that lasted half a millennium. In fact, the decline and fall of the ancient Egyptian empire followed in close order the rebellion and the Exodus of the Hebrew slaves. Simply stated, without its builders, the empire collapsed. 

But it wasn’t only buildings and storehouses that we Jews built.

Nation building was one of the first things the Hebrews engaged in once they entered the Promised Land.  Beyond building homes and cities, among the tasks the Israelites undertook were writing down their history and creating complex educational and legal systems.  Within a couple hundred years of crossing the Jordan River, the Israelites began erecting the Temple in Jerusalem and along with that, a whole religious, cultural and social system that, with the exception of one short break, lasted a thousand years.

The Torah is the manuscript that emerged from this early part of our history.  Part story, part philosophy, part theology, it is by far greater than the sum of its parts.  It represents an entire ethical and moral system based on historical events. Its teaching has survived cataclysmic events and kept its people together over miles and millennia.

Deuteronomy, the fifth and last book of the Torah, is thus an enormous building block, a foundation stone upon which not only Judaism, but indeed all modern civilization stands.

Shoftim, this week’s Torah portion, comes from this book (Deuteronomy 16:18—21:9).  The word Shoftim means “judges” or “magistrates” and underlies the understanding that a stable society must be founded upon justice.  “Justice, justice shall you pursue” reads the second verse of this portion, immediately following the injunction to set up a bribe-free, honest and fair court system.  Step by step, as the portion unfolds, it lays the blueprint for a society in which law brings order to chaos, where justice replaces vengeance, and where compassion overrides indifference. 

In the political entity that Shoftim envisions, not even the king is above the law—a revolutionary concept in ancient days, when the king was the law.  It wasn’t the meek who would inherit the land, nor the strongest and mightiest in the land, but rather the just.  In this exalted vision, expansion of borders would not be the result of military conquest, but rather the extension and spreading wide of an ideal system of morality and righteousness.

It’s a quixotic vision of the world not as it is, but rather as it should be.

The world that Shoftim prophesies teaches that kindness and compassion, fairness and justice are the most secure and lasting building blocks of civilization. 

In a post-9/11 world, this is a lesson everyone should take to heart.  Terror can cause suffering, destruction and pain; but it cannot topple a system based on justice.  Honoring God is important, but not more so than treating one another with dignity and respect.

Survival does mean, of course, that at times we must resort to self-defense, with all the hellish consequences that this entails.  But our endurance as human beings depends just as much—if not more—on the laws of this week’s portion, laws that form the most basic and eternal lessons of our humanity.

Over the next few days, as we meditate on the changes that 9/11 brought to our lives; as we recall the grief, the disbelief, and the outrage we felt that Tuesday morning 15 years ago; as we think about what still needs to be done to bring peace and wholeness to our planet; let us first offer a moment of silence and prayer on behalf of those whose lives were cut in mid-breath.  Let us think of the pain their families will carry with them for as long as they live.

But then let us remember that no act of terror will shake us if we hold on to the fundamental teachings that our civilization stands on. The laws of justice and compassion, of inclusiveness and dignity are what make us better people—and ultimately a stronger society than our adversary. These are the lessons of Parashat Shoftim. These are the lessons of our humanity.

Kein y’hi ratzon, may this be God’s will.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman