Shoftim

Before there were all the electronic distractions on which we (myself, included) spend so much time, there was the Torah. For the rabbis, blessedly free from screens, the Torah was their place for exploring ideas and engaging their imagination. As such, they developed countless tools and tricks to interpret the Torah. For our purposes this week, I would highlight the rabbinic approach in which any two verses in sequence have an important reason to be next to each other, even if they seem completely unrelated.

In our Torah portion this week, Shoftim, we find an inspiring call to action for our work in tikkun olam, repairing the world:

צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ

Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and establish in the land that Adonai your God is giving you.

-Deuteronomy 16:20

Justice! A goal so nice, the Torah said it twice. Within the context of the Torah portion, justice refers to the creation and maintenance of a functioning justice system. The next verse helps us to expand that meaning for a greater purpose. In verse 21, we read: “You shall not set up an asherah (a sacred post or tree) or any kind of post…or erect a stone pillar; for such Adonai your God detests.” Deuteronomy is insistent that we avoid idolatry, the worship of things over God, but, right next to a strong call for justice, it suggests a connection beetween idolatry and injustice.

The Torah, here and there, describes God’s jealousy as a reason to avoid idolatry, but we know God is bigger than that. The sin is not in wounding God’s ego, but against all of our fellow human beings. We learn in the first chapter of the Torah that each human being is made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God and thus we need no idols because in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel:

You are the image of God. But the only medium in which you can shape that image is that of your entire life. To take anything less than a full, living, breathing human being and try to create God’s image out of it-that diminishes the divine and is considered idolatry.

The sin of idolatry, then, is that it undercuts our recognition that every single person is God’s image on earth. To set anything ahead of that is a sin against our fellow human beings. National and religious divisions, economics, politics and all of the ideologies that give us cover to diminish the humanity of others fall away in the face of this profound truth delivered by our Torah after it has only just begun.

To pursue justice, to build the world where all of us can thrive, we need only begin to dignify the humanity of the other, just as we hope they will recognize the humanity in ourselves. The world may be complex and our divisions may seem insurmountable, but when we sit across the table from someone and see the divine image in their face, we can let ourselves be guided by what we all share, even as we honor the profound differences between us. We are all made in God’s image, no exceptions.

L’Shalom,

Rabbi Michael Weiss