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The Biblical Psychoanalyst

A Newsletter Featuring the Work of Rabbi Dennis G. Shulman, Ph.D.

Volume Three, Issue One     January-February 2005

 

Article

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Twice the Justice

Dennis Shulman is presently writing a second book, Walking with Moses: A Weekly Guided Tour of the First Five Books of the Bible (to be published later this year). Each chapter will include a summary of, and commentary on the week's biblical reading, written for the open-minded Jew, Christian, Muslim and agnostic who is interested in what the ancient text can teach us today about ourselves and our lives.

This article is an excerpt from Week Forty-seven of Shulman's new book.

 

Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9           Hebrew Torah Portion: Shofetim

 

Commentary: Twice the Justice

 

            At the beginning of our reading this week, Moses, deeply concerned about the future of his people and of the body of law he has been instrumental in fashioning, summarizes his message to his audience in a single verse. Moses says, “Justice, justice (tzedek, tzedek), you shall pursue; so that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving to you.” So central is the concept of justice to Moses in our text that he asserts that the very existence of the people in their new land will depend upon it. But what is this “justice” that Moses so adamantly argues is a matter of communal life and death? One of the answers can be discovered by studying the rest of this week’s reading.

            As we have seen, our text this week identifies specific and formal legal structures required for a society to be just. We learn first that judges must be chosen. In the new land that the Israelites are about to enter and possess, officials must be impartial in their determination and uninfluenced by anything other than the law. Moses argues that if this society is to be truly just and therefore endure, it must have structures by which the criminal is punished and the innocent acquitted. This is what motivates Moses’ teachings concerning the establishment of truth in a court of law only when there is testimony of at least two witnesses.

            A theme of the biblical text we read this week is that when the criminal goes unpunished or the innocent person is put to death, in both cases, the society bears the burden of the blood guilt. Formal legal process and structures—for example, the establishment of the cities of refuge for the accidental murderer and the heifer ritual—are necessary to prevent and absolve the society’s guilt.

In the eleventh century, Rashi, the preeminent biblical commentator, summarizing his understanding of our reading this week, wrote that the establishment of equitable legal structures is sufficient to keep Israel alive and settled in their homeland. A century later, Maimonides will disagree with Rashi. Maimonides will ask why the text doubles the word, “justice” in our key verse, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.” He will assert that the first “justice” refers to a government of justice as Rashi correctly explains, but that the second “justice” refers to an individual responsibility. Maimonides’ point has solid grounding in the study of the Hebrew. Tzedek, the Hebrew word that is doubled in our verse, comes from the older word,”tzadak” which means “to make right.” It is “tzedek” which is the root of “tzedakah, charity.”

            Consistent with Maimonides’ point, in our text last week, the Israelites’ longevity in their new land is not only linked to legal structures. In our last reading, Moses taught that his children’s survival on the land will be ultimately determined by whether and how they care for the needy among them. Last week, we read, “If there is a needy person among you, in any of the settlements that the Lord is giving to you, do not harden your heart and close your hand to him. Rather, you should open your hand widely to him and lend him whatever it is that he requires. ... Give to him readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return, the Lord your God will bless you and all your undertakings.”

Also last week, in order to eliminate gaping economic chasms between those who own large farms and those who own little or no land at all, Moses instructed his people to forgive all loans every seven years. Moses taught, “Every seventh year, you will practice remission of all debts, ... and therefore, there will be no needy among you.” This biblical practice, certainly foreign to modern economic principles and deemed impractical even by the time of the rabbis, redistributed the wealth and re-divided agricultural property more equally on a regular basis.

Combining our readings for this week and for last, we can see that equity—the two “justices,” the two “tzedeks,” both in the court of law and in the class structure of the society in general—is to be vigorously pursued.

            In a comment on the key verse of our week’s reading that demonstrates astounding creativity and insight, the nineteenth century Chasidic master, Simcha Bunam, interprets the double “tzedeks” differently. Rabbi Bunam translates our verse, “Justice justly, shall you pursue.” He understands Moses’ message to be that justice cannot be achieved if one uses unjust means. In a teaching that has profound and far-reaching implications for his society, his age, and our own, Rabbi Bunam asserts that the ends never justify the means. He writes, “The worthiest of goals are rendered worthless if we have to compromise tzedek to attain tzedek.”

            But the world is so large and injustice so ubiquitous! How much can any one of us do to pursue justice? How much justice-seeking does God require of us? How much justice-seeking is enough?

For wisdom on these questions, we turn to the Mishnah. Nineteen centuries ago, Rabbi Tarfon addressed the enormity of the weight exerted by a largely unjust world on the individual who is truly committed to social justice. Speaking across the centuries and directly to us today, Rabbi Tarfon taught, “The time is short. The work is great. ... You are certainly not obliged to finish the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

 

As I wrote these words, I met with a father of one of my Bat Mitzvah students. Speaking about his parents’ deeply conflictual relationship with Judaism, this father said what many have said to me over the years, “My parents were not religious. They were passionate social activists.”

Our text summons us. It confronts and cajoles, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue!” In other words, the pursuit of justice is religion. The pursuit of justice is God. It is our reading this week that forcefully challenges the father’s definition of “religious.” It is our reading this week that jolts us from our complacency, and with clarion voice, commands us, for God's  sake, "Do something!"

 

 

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