“Shoftim,” means “Judges” – The portion begins with the commandment to appoint judges and police in every city. “Justice, justice shall you pursue” is the most famous half-sentence of our reading – justice needs to happen without corruption or favoritism. Crimes must be investigated and evidence thoroughly examine
d, a minimum of two credible witnesses is required for conviction and punishment.
Shoftim also includes the prohibitions against idolatry and sorcery; laws governing the appointment and behavior of a king; and guidelines for the creation of “cities of refuge”. Also, rules of war: the prohibition against wanton destruction and cutting down a fruit tree when laying siege. It concludes with the law of the eglah arufah, a procedure to be followed when a person is killed by an unknown murderer and his body is found in a field between two towns.
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Our parasha opens with a command about power and order: שֹׁפְטִים וְשֹׁטְרִים תִּתֶּן־לְךָ בְּכָל־שְׁעָרֶיךָ “Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourself in all your gates.” On its surface this is judicial planning: Appoint courts. Make sure you have officers at the city gates, since there were the judgments pronounced.
The rabbis, however, through the ages, heard something more personal in the words be-chol she’arecha, “in all your gates.” Each of us is like a walled city. Sefer Yetzirah counts seven gates in the human face: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and the mouth. Through these gates the whole world streams into us, and out of them our own world streams into others. And in that level, the Torah is really saying: at every one of these gates, post a judge, and post an officer.
Who are those two? A shofet, a judge, is one who discerns. That is the force of our judgment, telling what is worthy to pass through a gate from what is not. A shoter, an officer, is one who enforces. This is the discipline to actually close the gate and prevent entrance. We all know the distance between the two.
How often do we know perfectly well that something is unworthy, something that brings us down, diminishes us, makes us forget who we are and what our values are — and yet we let it through anyway. The Torah is telling us: at the gates of the self, knowledge is not enough. You need both the judgment to recognize, and the discipline to act.
And then, a few verses on, comes the verse that gives this parasha its moral spine: צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדֹּף — “Tzedek tzedek tirdof,” “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” The word is doubled, and the Sages could not let a doubled word rest unexplained. The Gemara in Sanhedrin reads one tzedek for strict law and one for compromise. But there is another reading, long cherished among the commentators, that I want to hold up tonight: tzedek Tzedek, they say, means that not only you pursue justice, but that you pursue justice justly. The end you seek must be just, and so must the road by which you seek it. You cannot arrive at a righteous destination by an unrighteous path.
We usually picture injustice as something large and official — courtrooms, contracts, visible wrongs. But if justice must be pursued justly, then injustice can hide in the smallest, most ordinary places. It can hide in how we speak about one another when the person is not in the room.
Consider what happens when we gossip; when we shave a little off someone’s reputation; when we repeat the story that makes them smaller. We tend to think of this as harmless, just a bit of talk. But the Talmud will say this is such a deep transgression that it amounts to murder. As we gossip, we are taking something away from a person — their standing, their good name, their dignity. We are killing them with words. And we do it in a way that leaves no evidence and offers no recourse. There is no beit din they can bring us to. That is not a small injustice. It is, in a way, a perfect one: a murder with no witnesses.
And whose dignity are we spending? Mishlei/Proverbs says it plainly: לֹעֵג לָרָשׁ חֵרֵף עֹשֵׂהוּ “One who mocks the poor blasphemes his Maker.” To diminish a human being is not merely to insult that person; it is to insult the One in whose image they were made. The tzelem Elokim is not a decoration upon the human being; it is the human being. When we hold someone up for ridicule, when we mock, when we disrespect – we are holding up their Maker for ridicule, our intentions are immaterial.
That same verse in Mishlei ends with a warning that cuts even closer to our own age: שָׂמֵחַ לְאֵיד לֹא יִנָּקֶה: One who rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished.” The verse is not speaking of the person who causes the calamity, the verse is talking about the one who merely enjoys it. There is a particular pleasure the human heart takes in watching someone fall, listening to bad stuff about someone we dislike: the disgrace of the powerful, the scandal of the admired, the tragedy we get to watch from a safe distance. We have built whole industries on that pleasure. We scroll toward it. And the Torah names it for what it is — a form of injustice, because it feeds on another person’s ruin and calls it entertainment.
The Talmud teaches that lashon hara kills three: the one who speaks it, the one about whom it is spoken and the one who listens. The listener. We tend to feel innocent when we are only the audience. But there is no gossip without an ear willing to receive it. When we listen to people degrading one another and let it wash over us as normal, when we lean in, when we nod, when we say nothing… we have opened a gate. We have let the officer sleep at his post. It is not just that we became complicit, but that we are letting those values – degradation, disrespect, demeaning others – become our values.
This is how injustice becomes ordinary: not by one great crime, but by a thousand small ones that no one stood guard against. Every unguarded gate is an invitation to become less: less in our respect, less in our grace, less in our compassion.
So on this Shabbat of Shoftim, in the week we began the month of Elul, the onth of preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, let me offer this small avodah, this small connection to the Transcendent: as we cross into Shabbat, which is itself a kind of gate, Kabbalat Shabbat is really the threshold between the noise of the week and the stillness of the holy, as we cross into Shabbat let us appoint our judges and our officers. At the gate of the ear, let us decide what we will refuse to listen to. At the gate of the eye, what we will refuse to look and oggle upon. And at the gate of the mouth let us be most careful of all. We say it at the close of the Amidah:אֱלֹקַי נְצוֹר לְשׁוֹנִי מֵרָע “My God, guard my tongue from evil.” Guard my gates. Let nothing pass through them that would rob another person of the dignity You gave them. Perhaps this week we can mean it a little more. Tzedek tzedek tirdof. Pursue justice, justly — beginning with the smallest kingdom you will ever be asked to govern, which is yourself. Shabbat Shalom.
=== Questions for morning ===
Why do you think the word justice is repeated twice? What are the lessons we can derive from this?
How are the powers of an Israelite king limited, according to our text? Do you know of Jewish kings who did not observe these limitations?
How do you think the triennial’s end connects with its beginning?