Shoftim, Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9, Parshat Hashavua for Shabbat, August 19, 2023
Israel is currently riven by great political division. The current government is trying to reform the judicial system and change the power relationship between the judiciary and the legislative/executive branch of the government. This has triggered massive protests, bringing 500,000 protesters into the streets for seven consecutive months. While conflict has exacerbated some of the basic divisions in Israeli society and both sides seem unable to compromise; ironically, many Israelis feel that some judicial reform is justified. It isn’t the issue, but rather how it is being carried out that has triggered the political conflict, with the government trying to unilaterally pass these reforms and the opposition questioning their motives.
It did not have to be this way. In this week’s Torah portion we read, “Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 16:20) Many of our Sages commenting on this verse (Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Ramban) although they lived in different times and places agree that the repetition of the word justice means that a society must pursue justice, justly. The ends do not justify the means; the means are the ends. If an idea is right or a cause righteous, our sages believed that you must persuade others to follow you. Perhaps if the current government had heeded this wisdom the current crisis could have been avoided.
Ki Teitzei, Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19, Parshat Hashavua for Shabbat, August 26, 2023
August 25, 2023 by Dean Kertesz • Drashot
At the most fundamental level, Jewish religion is not interested in the world to come, but in the world we inhabit now. The fundamental moral question of Jewish religion is how do we create a society that reflects God’s will for humanity? How we interact with each other each day is the concern of Judaism; morality is meaningless if we do not practice it in our lives.
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitze, takes the command of last week, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” (Deuteronomy 16:20) and shows us how we pursue justice each day. It may seem like a jumble of unrelated laws covering lost property (which must be returned to the owner or held in trust for them), the treatment of women taken prisoner in war (the Hebrew captor must marry them or set them free), wives that are not loved by their husbands (cannot be mistreated and must be divorced and financially compensated), respect for parents, or the obligation to build a guard rail around a roof, shoo a mother bird away from the nest before taking her eggs for food, or leaving some of the harvest for the needy and having honest weights and measures. What all these different laws have in common is legal prohibition against maximizing one’s own interest in favor of treating the more vulnerable members of society fairly. The moral principle underlying this vision is, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that your God יהוה redeemed you from there;” (Deuteronomy 24:18). Commenting on this verse, Ramban (14th C. Spain) wrote, “Scripture mentioned the slave for this reason, namely, that you do not pervert the justice due him.” In other words, how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us is the measure of society’s morality. This is one reason that throughout history, autocrats and dictators have identified Jews as their enemy. Authoritarians justify the rule of the strong through force. The Jewish people stand on the side of the weak and the vulnerable.