"Judges and enforcers place at your gates" (Devarim 16:18). When a person feels that his heart is opening to something he should judge the worthiness of what draws him; he should police and watch the feeling that opens the will and desire of his heart. Because the heart is the gate and opening to the inner man and it should be kept for Hashem alone. And his heart should be open not according to every fancy that arouses him but he should look at his desires in a state of calm reflection so that he can begin to choose the desires that are for holiness. And as he does this, to the extent that he is true to his goal, he will find that his heart, for the first time, is really opening up. And this is connected to speaking out praises of Hashem like we do when we say Pesukei D'zimrah before praying. Because praise removes the barriers of the heart. And this is why these Tehillim are called Pesukei Dezimrah. Because zimrah, song or praise, is related to z'mirah which means pruning or cutting away the lesser. Our praises cut away the lesser desires of the heart and allow holy desire for Hashem to nurture without being sapped away by other concerns (Sefat Emet 68).
The section dealing with the appointment of judges comes first in the parashah showing that it has primacy over the choosing of a king. A person has to disclose even the hidden parts of his heart before the judge that Hashem raises up. But this seems to contradict the fact that a king is treated with greater deference than a chacham (wise man or judge). Thus, while the king is appointed by the Sanhedrin (the greatest assembly of judges in the nation), once the king has been appointed he is considered more important than the chacham and anyone that goes against him is to be dealt with as a rebel. We see this again in so far as even the "mundane" speech of a king is considered to be from Hashem, whereas a prophet's words only mandate our obedience if he speaks the language of prophesy, "Ko amar Hashem." Now Moshe was in the position of judge and Shlomo HaMelech was the king. Each wrote works that are comprehensive of how Hashem runs the world. Moshe wrote HaAzinu and Shlomo wrote Song of Songs. Nevertheless, Hashem placed the mitzvah of appointing judges before that of choosing a king. Know that in the future they will be equal (Mei Shiloach on the parashah).
Shoftim
Reb Shlomo Minyan HarNof
(R. Raphael, email: [email protected])
How's the execution going? Looking back, delay and killing the moment The shochet (ritual slaughterer) goes to kill the bull. As he draws the knife across the animal's neck he stops for the briefest instant to think about what he's doing making a sh'hiah. As a result of his hesitation the slaughter is invalidated. What could have been kosher food is now dead meat that defiles.
There is a time to prepare for a mitzvah and a time for doing. Before the mitzvah one learns and contemplates in order to develop the clearest intention. This is like drawing the bow before shooting the arrow. We try to aim from the depth; to find the truest sincerity. This is called kavanah, literally, aiming. But at some decisive point we leave all of this behind and go to yet a higher level altogether which unites physical reality with the spiritual. This is when we act, when we actually do the mitzvah. At that point, to think, to pause in the doing, may cause us actually to err. Therefore the temptation to look at what we are doing has to be overcome. We need to leave behind the watcher and do.
Thus the parashah begins, "Shoftim and shotrim," judges and police. Because at the beginning of a person's spiritual path he judges and evaluates before deciding. This is the aspect of being a shofet, a judge. He needs to learn to weigh and measure from different sides - whether this be the aspect of kindness, chesed, versus strictness, din, or any other competing considerations called up in a particular circumstance - before finding the best choice, that which tells him what he will carry out. Once he's decided what his action will be he needs to move to the aspect of enforcer, the executive aspect, the one that takes care of translating thinking into action. And one of the tasks of implementing is not to look back at the decision again after a certain point. This takes a certain self vigilance to disregard the temptation to second-guess.
This dualistic approach is something we can always rely on. It is the base line of all decision making and doing. But there is another level which a person reaches that we could call "king." This occurs when a person reaches a certain rung in the ladder: He has made many, many important decisions and seen them implemented. He understands the relationship between education and doing, between thinking and acting, between intellect and physicality. The king is the paradigm of the person who embodies thought and action in one. We might call him decisive but we really mean something even above this. He knows how to give himself over to action. He realizes that he must trust himself to do based on instinct of the body without even thinking, for without this he will not be able to do in the world. He knows that there is a necessity of action and that if, Gd forbid, it brings him to sin, there is nothing to do other than teshuvah.
This is why the crown of the talmid chacham and the crown of the king are distinct. The crown of the chacham is represented by the raised gold filigree on the ark in the Holy of Holies in the innermost part of the Temple. The crown of the king is symbolized by the border of the table that held the loaves of bread on the left side of the tabernacle.
And there is a third crown which is the crown of Kehunah. Because whether he is king or chacham he must make his life an offering to Hashem. He must strive to offer himself in holiness on the altar. And the symbol of the crown of the priest is the incense altar that stands in the middle of the tabernacle. Because a person needs to serve Hashem with all of his abilities, his kindness and his strictness. But he must reach beyond these individual attributes to the unified truth they embody. And he must not hesitate at some point because if the one making offering reflects in the middle, stalls, he will make his sacrifice invalid. We have to strive to get beyond second-guessing ourselves. We have to believe in our ability to do teshuvah so that we can act without watching ourselves.
This is the connection between the salt on the altar and the story of Lot's wife. Lot's wife was told that she would be saved from the destruction brought about by the immorality of Sodom if she could leave it without looking back. But something niggled her. She gave in to the feeling of wanting to watch, to check herself one more time. The result was that she turned into a pillar of salt. She became frozen in the past, stuck there.
Salt represents the bitterness of life but also a spice that brings out the taste of things. Looking back is human - all too human. If we give in to the pull of looking down at the evil in the world and in ourselves we can be hypnotized, paralyzed. But if we take the need to look back in order to know who we are and use it to propel us into a new future of overcoming our fears then we reach new life. This is why every offering is made with salt. Because every offering is an overcoming of ourselves in approaching Hashem and this is what makes our sacrifice a praise to Hashem Who created us human.
Turning A Generation Of Lookers Into Seers
As we said already in parashat Ekev, the later generations come from the heel, the lowest part of Adam HaRishon who was the source of all souls. Just as the heel touches the earth so these last generations are the most caught up in material pursuits. And as we said in parashat Ra'eh there is a manner of spirituality which is called seeing where Hashem's reality becomes clear to us like seeing. These notions from the two parshiot seem to conflict one with the other. If we are becoming more physical how can the spiritual become clearer? That is the advice given to us in this week's parashah. We who are so subject to the influence of outer forces must guard ourselves from strange desire and so, as the Sefat Emet says, the parashah speaks of placing judges and police who will guard the gates of the heart, the inner man.
But the question returns: If we spend all our time watching and protecting our inner reality, won't we become cut off from seeing the world? This is what is alluded to by the Mei Shiloach that there is a stage that comes after the judges and police which is called appointing a king. As the Ishzbitzer says, this king in some sense becomes greater than the judges that placed him in his position. The king is chosen out of the wisdom of the sages but once he begins to act for the nation as a whole he reaches to something more than the weighing of opposing considerations.
Let's apply this to our own era. We live in a time of gross materiality. Every sensorial titillation is pandered to through all possible means of consumption. We are the generation of mass media where through the aspect of sight the illusion of all possible realities are dished out to us till we are surfeited and glutted with the abundance of our own seductive abilities.
As a result of this there is something in this generation that thinks it embodies a kind of kingly freedom. We expect everything from every moment. We are not content to build in a plodding and endless way towards a promise - we want to see it now. This lust for immediacy is so painful. Because every moment that this is not achieved is a negation of who we think we are, what we deserve. Nevertheless, we tell ourselves that this is our need and our expectation.
But if seeing the holy in this world is the highest spiritual achievement it is only reached through attaching ourselves in the most powerful way to Hashem. Rebbe Nachman explains this in Lekutei Moharan, Lesson 234. He says there that one way to heal ourselves is through hearing stories of how the tzaddikim acted in this world. By hearing these tales we begin to see things in a different way. But Rebbe Nachman says this is complicated because there are tales of rasha'im that sound very similar. Thus, the only way for the story of the tzaddik to heal us is by virtue of how it is told. In order to tell the story of a tzaddik one needs to make himself like the Promised Land about which it says, "The Land is constantly under the providence of Hashem" (Devarim 11) and "He watches from his holy place" (Devarim 26). Because if one wants to tell these stories he must, so to speak, see from Hashem's perspective.
The media is constantly telling us the story of who we are. We hear it and we see it all the time. But we are all too often being told the lowest possible stories about the worst kinds of people. What we need to do is to take back story telling and give it to one who makes himself like Hashem.
Telling a people who they are is the role of the king. The king is at the pinnacle of worldly power and the Torah warns him to bind himself to Torah because the power of the king is the power of seeing and the temptations associated with this we see all too clearly with our own eyes.
This is why Rebbe Nachman says a king must be appointed according to what is hinted in the story of Yosef. He had a dream when he saw his bundle of stalks rise while those of his brothers were bowed. But the pasuk hints to us that this was not a matter of Yosef exercising power over the brothers but an expression of making his vision like Hashem whose "eyes are always on the Land. Jewish kings must be aware in this way. They must see the affairs of the Land through the eyes of providence so they can truly tell the people the stories that will let the people know who they are and heal them.
The last generations will be leading up to this kind of kingship. Every individual will feel that he is king but in the way that he feels he is entitled to everything. This is leading to the greatest reversal of all. Because the kingship of sensual gratification leads nowhere. The seeming power of our commercialized lives is hollow and bankrupt. At some level we are beggars, and we are pleading for the opportunity to surrender our addictions for something real. This will only come through giving glory to Hashem, the real king.
Were we not in a generation of "kings" this would not be possible. But because we have are so burdened with self we are coming ever closer to surrendering to the highest. Through admitting our poverty we can become bathed in the light of serving Him. By setting aside our children's toys we can be entrusted with the reigns of the King's chariot.
So is there glory in this world? Yes, but not our own. There is only His glory, there is only His light. The longer we seek our own the longer we block out the light of the sun of all suns the King of all kings.
The Sefat Emet says as follows:
Why is it necessary to appoint a king? Like it says in Pirkei Avot, if not for fear of the government one man would swallow the life of his fellow. But if people had fear of Hashem they would not need a king they would not need government. Lacking a fear of Hashem they need to have fear of man and then they can learn fear of Hashem from that. But from where does the king himself get fear of Hashem? From the Torah and thus the mitzvah on the king to write his own sefer Torah that he should refer to constantly. This is why Shemuel who appointed a king also chastised the people. Because if they'd had fear of Gd they would not have needed the fear of man to teach them this middah. In reality Hashem rules all the worlds. As it says in Tehillim, "Your Malchut is the rulership of all the realms of creation." (145) To learn fear of Hashem a person should run to see even the king of one of the nations. But actually this is different. Because from seeing such a king he has fear of punishment which parallels the fear that a person should have for the Heavenly repercussions that his actions can bring in this world, Gd forbid. A Jewish king who shows the true glory of Heaven arouses in a person something different, an exalted fear or awe of Hashem. The truth is that any Jew who has awe of Hashem affects others in this way. This is why a Jew is called a son of the King. Because each of us can be the source for another to come to an exalted fear of Hashem. As it says about Avraham Avinu that because he called Hashem Master of the Universe therefore Abraham was called king. Because by accepting upon oneself the yoke of Heaven this causes the glory of Heaven to rest upon him making him a true son of the King. (p. 41)
Mitzvot
According to Sefer HaChinuch there are forty one commandments in parashat Shoftim.
At A Glance