Shoftim | Inner and Outer Judging

שֹׁפְטִים וְשֹׁטְרִים תִּתֶּן־לְךָ בְּכׇל־שְׁעָרֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לְךָ לִשְׁבָטֶיךָ וְשָׁפְטוּ אֶת־הָעָם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶדֶק׃

Judges and officials you are to provide for yourselves, within all your gates, that Eternally Present, the Divine Presence expressing as you, is giving you.*

Deuteronomy 16:18 (based on Everett Fox translation)

 

צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדֹּף לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה וְיָרַשְׁתָּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ׃

Justice, justice (Equity, equity, Tr. E. Fox)  shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that that Eternally Present, the Divine Presence expressing as you, is giving you.*

Deuteronomy 16:20

*The word Eloheicha is composed of Elohim, the name for the Creating Energy, and the suffix cha, meaning “you.” Eloheicha can be read as: “the Divine Presence expressing as you.”  Betalef.org, Parshat Shoftim 2021

 

In Shoftim, "Judges," Moses continues offering Torah's vision and instructions for entering and inhabiting the Promised Land. How do we judge ourselves and each other? And what systems do we set up to support individual and collective integrity with the Source of the Created World, with each other and with the land?

We need to pay attention to and pursue both aspects of justice/equity: developing "inner" awareness of how we judge and guard ourselves and others; and in creating the systems that organize and govern how we live.

Inner Judging

We read this Torah portion during the Hebrew month of Elul, the month leading to Rosh Hashanah, when we take stock of, even judge, how we have shown up to ourselves, our loved ones, community and world.

Hasidic interpretations of these opening verses focus on our inner voices and judges. Rabbi Toldot Yaakov Yosef, chronicler of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, wrote, “Torah is telling us, to appoint internal judges, to ‘First judge yourself, and, using the same yardstick, judge others.’"  Rabbi Cheryl Peretz, Shoftim 5770

In Nonviolent Communication, we look closely at our judgments about ourselves and others. We use them to understand and connect with the values that are so important to us or others, they have generated judgment. Connecting like this is called empathy, holding tenderly our experience and what it reveals about what's important to us, without the separation and disconnection created by judging.

First we look at what has happened, what have we experienced, that is generating the judgment? If it's a regret about something we ourselves did, what did we do? When we are judging someone else because of something they did, what exactly did they do or say? This is an observation. Discerning what happened from what we are telling ourselves happened gives us knowledge and insight about what entered our gates. This discernment gives us insight into how we are processing our experiences, what is important to us, what pre-existing judgments we already carry, from past hurts, the culture, our biology.

The next step is to look at how we feel when we think about this observation? We want to generate curiosity about our own and others' feelings so we create understanding and connection to ourselves and others. How did what happened impact us and others?

And then we want to look at what was so important that these feelings and judgments arose? What are the values, needs, longings of the heart that generated the judgments and feelings?

The Svat Emet, Rabbi of Ger and Warsaw, Poland, wrote in the 19th century that establishing judges and officials at your gates means each of us has the mission and capacity to find our own truth and integrity. Finding the values and needs underneath our judgments of ourselves and others is a door to doing this.

Inner Guarding

In the 17th century, the Rabbi from Ishbitz, (today Poland), the Mei HaShiloach, also taught this as an instruction to set up judges and guards at the gates of our own person: eyes, ears, mouth and nose.

Not just what comes out — our anger, our words, our desires — should be checked before it comes out, but also what comes in.

— Rabbi Nelly Altenburger, Justice and Compassion (Parshat Shoftim) 2018/ 5778

Guarding carefully what comes into our bodies and consciousness is also a core practice in Buddhism.  We are in continual exchange with the environment and culture around us. What we take in affects what we send out. Our habits of consumption affect how we respond to ourselves and others. The Fifth Mindfulness Training developed by Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, brings our attention to many aspects of this:

Nourishment and Healing

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. I am determined not to gamble, or to use alcohol, drugs, or any other products which contain toxins, such as certain websites, electronic games, TV programs, films, magazines, books, and conversations. I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing, healing and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear, or craving pull me out of the present moment. I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society and the Earth.

— Plum Village Community

Seeing the interconnection between what we take in and what we put out is shockingly clear today. Our political views, our views about public health, about whether something is public health or political, are all shaped by what we take in. The way we speak to each other is conditioned by how we hear others speaking to us. How much meat we consume affects the carbon-catching rain forests. Everything is interconnected; every choice we make about what we consume is important.

Systemic Justice

The repetition of "justice, justice" is also translatable as "equity, equity" (Everett Fox). This awakens us to the relational context that values the relative and real time impacts of actions and solutions. We have to "get proximate" to each other, as Bryan Stevenson says. Policy and decision makers must understand the history and conditions of everyone in a system, so that we can create systems that operate with and confer equity. These aren't abstract principles: they are living systems that affect life itself.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg tells a story from the Talmud that highlights this principle in Shoftim:

The Talmud tells the story of Rabbah, son of Rav Huna (Babylonian Talmud Bava Metzia 83a). Some porters broke his barrels of wine after he had hired them to transport them, so he took their cloaks as payment for the lost wine. They complained to Rav. Rav told Rabbah to give them their cloaks back, ruling that, given their limited means, he should restore their cloaks which they needed. Presumably, given their poverty, one should give greater leeway to them and not penalize them for breaking the casks. Rabbah challenged this ruling. “Is this the halakhah? Is this what I have to do?” Rav answered, “Yes, as it is written, ‘that you may walk in the way of good men” (Proverbs 2:20).

The porters then said to Rav, “We are poor people and we toiled all day. We are hungry and have nothing (to buy food, etc.).” In response, Rav said to Rabbah, “Go and give them their wages.” Rabbah challenged him again. “Is this the halakhah?” Rav’s final ruling: “Yes, as it is written, ‘and keep the paths of the righteous’ (Proverbs 2:20).”

In other words, justice must consider equity, and the basic needs of the poor litigant have a weightier claim on the law. The same holds true in welfare laws. In the commandment to give tzedakah, the Torah says, “You shall grant him what he needs that he lacks” (Deuteronomy 15:8). The Oral law applies this principle that the welfare tzedakah grant preserves the dignity of the needy person, including special grants, if needed, to maintain his or her sense of dignity and self-respect.

Thus, the Torah and Jewish tradition allow for affirmative action or extra benefits based on the deprivation level of the person. In such a case, exact equal treatment would not constitute justice, for it would leave the poor person without basic life needs.

— 
Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue, Parashat Shoftim 5781, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, https://www.hadar.org/torah-collection/yitz-greenbergs-divrei-torah    

Recognizing the repetition of justice as an invitation to equity shifts us to consider the deeper causes and conditions that give rise to violence and conflict. We are reminded that there are at least two parties to a dispute, and that justice involves healing for everyone involved. This is a principle of restorative justice, a way of dispute resolution that is intended to bring healing to the community and anyone affected by something that happened. This concept of justice values looking closely at both the intention and impact of an action and the systems we create to address the action.l

Torah Renouncing Punishment As A Motive For Our Actions And Systems

Torah, here, is like Nonviolent Communication. First, there is the importance of creating safety from imminent danger. For this, the Torah sets up Cities of Refuge, safe places. These are not places of punishment, to remove people suspected of causing harm.

The Torah portion ends with instructions for communal rituals that reject guilt as a motivation for healing ruptures in the community. This is a radical turning away from punishment to forgiveness and healing:

כַּפֵּר לְעַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר־פָּדִיתָ יְהֹוָה וְאַל־תִּתֵּן דָּם נָקִי בְּקֶרֶב עַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל וְנִכַּפֵּר לָהֶם הַדָּם׃

Absolve, Eternally Present, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel.” And they will be absolved of bloodguilt.

Deuteronomy 21:8

The new society, The Promised Land, will embrace both Individual justice and restorative justice: Remove guilt from your midst — if the first idea/possibility of justice isn’t found, the society must find another one. If the individual who did the killing isn’t found, the collective must take responsibility for restorative justice. The path and purpose is not individual punishment — the vision is to transform, through collective engagement, that which has given rise to violence and hatred.

In the restorative circle practice of NVC, we avoid labels like "victim," "aggressor," and "punishment."  We think of situations as involving actors and affected people. Everyone is damaged by harm and the karma of a hurtful action began long before that action.

Justice, justice, calls upon us to look beyond the action that has brought people into a court or a restorative circle. The second justice is addressing the roots of harmful actions. These roots trace back to our culture, history, societal, childhood and ancestral trauma. The justice that makes a Promised Society possible addresses the root causes of violence, hatred and desperation.

Justice, justice reflects the insight that everything that is, all phenomena, arises when multiple causes and conditions come together to make something appear.

The Bud­dha described this basic principle of dependent origination by saying:

When there is this, that is.

With the arising of this, that arises.

When this is not, neither is that.

With the cessation of this, that ceases.

Justice, justice, calls upon us to look deeply at the roots of what we think of as "wrongdoing." This is the call of our times for reparations for peoples who have been systematically denied or stripped of access to wealth and decision making power. Thich Nhat Hanh explains the depth of this:

...[karma] is sometimes called the teaching of cause and effect, but that can be misleading, because we usually think of cause and effect as separate entities, with cause always preceding effect, and one cause leading to one effect. According to the teaching of Interdependent Co-Arising, cause and effect co-arise (samutpada) and everything is a result of multiple causes and conditions

...For a table to exist, we need wood, a carpenter, time, skillfulness, and many other causes. And each of these causes needs other causes to be. The wood needs the forest, the sunshine, the rain, and so on. The carpenter needs his parents, breakfast, fresh air, and so on. And each of those things, in turn, has to be brought about by other causes and conditions. If we continue to look in this way, we'll see that nothing has been left out. Everything in the cosmos has come together to bring us this table. Looking deeply at the sunshine, the leaves of the tree, and the clouds, we can see the table. The one can be seen in the all, and the all can be seen in the one. One cause is never enough to bring about an effect. A cause must, at the same time, be an effect, and every effect must also be the cause of something else. Cause and effect inter-are. The idea of first and only cause, something that does not itself need a cause, cannot be applied.

Judaism too recognizes the interconnectedness of all phenomena and, in particular, of justice as a means and an end, cause and effect (another nod to the repetition of tzedek, tzedek, justice, justice.

The Kedushat Levi writes in his first commentary on Shoftim: [justice] must also reflect the attribute of Compassion employed in the celestial spheres. ... We as Jews should constantly remember that everything that was done to us in the Third Reich was legal. Taking the law to its mechanic, compassionless conclusion has led to one of the great tragedies of this year, maybe of this decade: the forceful separation of children and parents, with no plan for reunification.

May we have the courage to set up judges, internally and externally, who will do what is right and what is good, going beyond the mere mechanics of the law."

— Rabbi Nelly Altenburger, T'ruah, citing "Book of Education,'' a 13th-century Spanish rabbinic text.

Justice in New York City Courts

One of my heroes when I worked in the New York State judicial system was Judge Bruce Wright. Judge Wright was first appointed a judge by New York City Mayor John Lindsey and then the people of New York City voted to move him higher in the judiciary based on his commitment to two forms of justice: the law and the application of the law.

Judge Wright lived in occupied Harlem, as he wrote in his book, Black Robes, White Justice. This was the land of promise for millions of Black people who migrated there between 1917 and 1970.

After he was appointed to the New York City Judiciary in 1970, he regularly spoke to college students, explaining how:

the criminal justice system, by routinely acquitting officers in excessive-force cases, had given the police “a license to hunt down blacks.” Holding up the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits excessive bail, he set off a powder keg when he gave some defendants, some charged with attacking police officers, little or no bail. In 1972, he twice released on $500 bail a man accused of killing a police officer.

This, to me, is the meaning of the double "justice" that Torah promises.

The Torah portion suggests that the commitment to double justice must be ongoing. It says, only in the ongoing pursuit of justice will you be able to thrive and occupy this promised society.

They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.

— Isabel Wilkerson, Author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste

 

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Shoftim: The Seven Qualities of Awakening
By Elana Klugman

You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes …and they shall govern the people with due justice.

— Shoftim, Devarim 16:18

 

The seven factors of awakening are mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, unification and equanimity.  It is the development and enjoyment of these deeply wholesome qualities that gives our hearts the strength to let go.

— from Tricycle webpage

 

Torah is what makes the heart leap

— Rabbi David Ingber, “paraphrase of the Talmudic dictum, 'ein adam lomed elah mah she'libo chafetz- we only learn what our hearts yearn to learn.”

 

The Moshe within,
the one who has struggled
to see and hear, quick
to anger, slow to forgiveness,
rule maker and breaker,
standing on the plain before the people
for the last time, reviewing yet
again the laws. He wants,
even needs my attention,
but in this moment
the Torah that makes my heart leap
asks something different of me

and so the Moshe within, that wise one
among my generations of confused and struggling
wanderers instructs her inner tribe:
appoint the Seven allies of awakening as shoftim,
your judges and guides to accompany you
as you walk up and down the many mountains
to officiate over, to legislate how to build
and inhabit holy time and space

and because the Torah that
makes my heart yearn asks,
I ascend Mt Grace, so far from the River Jordan.
Guided by the seven allies, with arms linked,
we walk. one foot with presence
the other with compassion,
investigating the web of reactions
blocking the light in the shifting canopy,
directing me to notice
the blessings of how I am
but one etz chayim in this
dense forest. My breath,
received and given
flows into to a river of joy,
fed by tributaries of tranquility
and life-energy, releasing
everything in her path
from the brambles of separation with
ease and kindness. I sense
the eyes of bear, fox, fisher
cat returning my watching,
noticing fear and awe filtering
through me on this mountain-side of
our belonging.
I become aware of the
underworld weave of mycelium
how they are the chèvre kadisha of this holy ground
honoring the bodies of broken limb and dying trees,
transforming death into families of organisms
living cooperatively in this Queendom. Then I see -
orange wings hugging a half living oak,
a rare fruiting fungi growing on the trunk
of an elderly oak, like wings of the Shekinah.
Oh the joy of eating directly from the tree -
I tenderly stroke and release a handful
to become an early Elul feast blessed
by the prayer offered by the seven shoftim:
may you awaken to who you are
a vessel  from which
beauty and wonder
can grow into this world
of abundant gifts and griefs,

and so on this early
day of Elul, the sound
of the shofar pierces
my forest being,
the cries of longing
summoning the allies, the exiles,
the Moshes within
to descend and return
to the wide plain by
the Jordan: we still have so
very much to receive,
and release, before beginning
once again.

— Elana Klugman
draft 8-11-21

 

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*Chana-Toni Whitmont is an artist, crystal sound healer, teacher, student and creative whose practice and passions are born from her spiritual connection to her Jewish lineage. She lives with her husband close to nature on Dharug and Gundungurra country in the magnificent Blue Mountains of eastern Australia. She can be contacted at sacredvesselsounds@gmail.com