On 6 September, at our Kabbalat Shabbat service, Sharon Marjenberg gave a Dvar Torah on Parsha Shofetim.
This week’s parsha is Parsha Shofetim. Shofetim means ‘judges’. This parsha is all about justice. Many of you will have no doubt heard, some of what I am saying today already.
Its most famous quote is ‘tzedek, tzedek tirdof’ - ‘justice, justice you shall pursue’. In this parsha Moses lays out to the people of Israel the need for just leadership, just laws and institutions that act with social responsibility. As such, Moses outlines the rules of war, and the qualities needed to be a righteous leader and mostly the text is about the responsibilities of public officials. He emphasises the importance of fairness and the sanctity of life.
Ultimately, it is about ensuring that those entrusted with power use the laws to make a just society.
This week has not been a week of justice - these principles that Moses spoke of have not been upheld in the world we are living in at this moment in time. It has been a heavy, heart-breaking week, a week where we have all felt such sadness by the loss of 6 beautiful young people- Ori, Eden, Almog, Hersh, Alexander and Carmel who would have suffered so much in a year in captivity only to be in the end cruelly murdered. No fairness, no justice.
And yet, I have also come to think of Leonard Cohen’s song about hope called ‘Anthem’ – In
it he says:
Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
And maybe there has been a glimmer of something. In this parsha there is one critical part, which looks not at the decision makers, but at the everyday people and their responsibility. And since October 7 and amidst all this horror, we have seen this. We have had the privilege to come to know via our phones and televisions, the parents of Hersh. Rachel Goldberg Polin and Jon Polin have carried the burden of this responsibility. They tirelessly advocated to try to save Hersh and all the hostages. We saw them at the UN, the Democratic convention, praying and singing with their community and near the end calling for Hersh at the Gaza border. It is hard to comprehend how they could even just get up every morning. Yet at Hersh’s funeral, Rachel was able to thank God for the gift of being Hersh’s mother. The Polin Goldbergs have shown wisdom, determination, compassion, vulnerability and a deep wish for peace. Above all, they have shown incredible grace. I am truly in awe of them.
Through his mum and dad, we also came to know Hersh. Jon Polin said of Hersh at his funeral a few days ago:
“You would have worked harder for justice. And what you would be pushing for now is that your death and the deaths of all the soldiers and so many innocent civilians, that your death is not mishav, not in vain. Your starting point would be the return of all the hostages. …You would keep on pushing for a rethinking of this region. You would say- you have said- that we must take a chance on the path with potential to end the ongoing cycles of violence.
You would push every decision maker to truly look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves every single day: will the decisions I make today lead to a better future for “all of us”? And you would tell, any decision maker who cannot answer that question with an emphatic yes to step aside."
And that’s it - that is the heart of Parsha Shofetim- demanding justice and making sure as much as we can, that the people who make decisions in our world, pursue them so that our world can be a better place. I don’t know if that is possible – I , like most people I suspect, am full of uncertainty and it is so hard to really know who to trust or what is the best way forward – but, in the end, as the parsha says, we must try no matter what- tzedek, tzedek tirdof – justice, justice you shall pursue.
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