CHOCHMAS NASHIM: SHOFTIM: G-D’S MESSENGERS
By: Suri Davis
Wouldn’t it be nice, if we were ill, to be able to walk into G-d’s clinic and say, heal me. Wouldn’t it be awesome if as children, we woke up to G-d’s voice, and he fed us our breakfast and sent us off to school. Wouldn’t it be lovely, when we had a dispute with someone, if we could walk into G-d’s court, and ask Him to resolve the dispute. Can we imagine this scenario. But do we know that this is the case anyway.
We have doctors, parents and judges that are human, but represent G-d’s face on Earth. We have to believe that the doctor, parents and judges we have represent G-d on Earth, and that our interactions with them, is all determined by G-d.
Why does this Parshah/torah portion focus on judges and justice. Why don’t we read that there should be rabbis in every town, why judges. Let’s look at where we are now in the Jewish calendar. A month ago, we read Lamentations/Eichah, which describes the destruction of our holy temple in Jerusalem. In one very famous verse, Jeremiah cries out: “About this [the destruction] my heart is sick, about this, my eyes are dimmed [from tears], about Mt. Zion that is desolate, foxes overrun it.”
One day as I learned this verse, I wondered why the verse discusses foxes, and not any other animal, like dogs, camels, donkeys etc. I thought of the Perek Shira, holy book which describes how each of G-d’s creations, praises Him. This is what the fox says: “ Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness and his upper stories without justice, who works his fellow without payment, and does not give him his wages.” (Jeremiah 22:13).
This is the perfect transitional bridge between the destruction of the temple, which was caused because of baseless hatred among the Jews, and Rosh Hashanah, which is approaching. We are approaching our day of Judgment, standing before G-d, asking Him to judge our merits, have mercy on us, forgive us and to provide for us.
The fox overruns the remnants of the holy temple to remind us that justice was perverted, people treated each other with disrespect, judges took bribes from those who lacked merit, they forgot that they were emissaries of G-d. Judges and courts are so very core to every town, because they represent G-d on Earth. In the event that we forget that at every moment G-d is watching us, the court is there to secure honesty between Jews and ensure peace in society amongst its members. A reminder of what goes around, comes around. We are entering into our own day of Judgment. We want G-d to see our forthright interactions in business and our personal lives.
Justice is so very fundamental, it is one of the seven Noahide laws which every person on Earth, Jewish or not, should abide, they are fundamental to community and core to ethics.
Every day we pray in our Amidah, Hashiva Shofteinu K’varishona/Return our judges to the days of old, when they were bribe free and wiser. I emphasize this paragraph more on the days I go to court. True, the judges now, are not on the same caliber as in the days of the holy temple, nevertheless we acknowledge that we trust in G-d, and that the outcome, in this day and age, is still always determined by G-d and by His will.
For those who do not go to shul to hear the shofar blowing during the month of Elul, and even those who do, look at the prayers which are said between the morning blessings and the reciting of the sacrifices, which discuss Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, his replacing Isaac with the sacrifice of a ram, and what it means to us as Jews millennia later to enjoy the merit of Abraham and his sacrifice when we blow the shofar every day of the month of Elul. Enjoy the intention by reading about it daily in the morning service. We ask G-d to permit us to utilize Abraham’s merit for what we pray.
Daven intentionally. May your prayers be fulfilled only for the revealed good.
Good Shabbos. Good Chodesh.
-Suri