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Parashat Shoftim
8/25/12
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

Shabbat Shalom everyone – I hope you had a good two weeks with your lay leaders!

This week’s Torah portion is called “Shoftim,” which means “judges,” and the main focus of the parasha is justice. In Deuteronomy 16: 20 we have the famous verse, “justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” According to our Etz Hayyim commentary, “The term ‘pursue’ carries strong connotations of effort, eagerness. This implies more than merely respecting or following justice”; we must actively pursue it.

Most of the parasha consists of legal material, laying out procedures and policies regarding the justice system the Israelites are to implement in the land. We receive instructions regarding placing judges and magistrates in all of our settlements and making sure that they judge justly. The parasha includes laws regarding witnesses, including false witnesses, outlawing bribes, and enforcing verdicts. We also have laws concerning the cities of refuge and how to deal with a corpse of a murder victim that is found in the open with no evidence of who the murderer was.

I recommend reading Elliot Dorff’s excellent essay at the back of our Etz Hayyim commentary entitled “Justice.” There, he lays out the Biblical and then later Rabbinic approach to the concept of justice. We see in Torah a message that in order for us to achieve the justice that God demands, we need to have just procedures in place, and the outcomes of the court and justice systems must be just, moral and good.

But justice goes beyond even procedure and substance. There is also a concept, introduced in Deuteronomy 6:18, that we are required to do “what is right and good in the sight of the Lord.” This has been interpreted by the rabbis as the basis for asserting that we are at times obliged to act “beyond the letter of the law.”

According to Torah, justice is “a divine imperative,” in Dorff’s words. God is the ultimate judge, and we are meant to imitate God. Justice is a foundation stone of holiness itself. The laws of justice are even seen as evidence of God’s love for Israel, and pursuing justice can be a way for humans to come closer to the Divine.

As we study together tomorrow, I look forward to exploring the Torah’s concept of justice, from the procedural to the more philosophical.