‘Our Brother’ Parashat Shofetim 5786
The Mishnah in Tractate Sotah [7:8] tells a fascinating story. Once every seven years, during the holiday of Sukkot following the Sabbatical (Shemitta) year, the entire nation would gather in Jerusalem for the Assembly (Hakhel) ceremony to hear the king read from the Torah. It was a reenactment of the revelation at Sinai, with the king standing not as a sovereign above the people but as the reader of the covenant before them. On one such occasion, during the Second Temple, King Agrippas took the Torah scroll and began to read. When he reached the verse that said [Devarim 17:15]: “From among your brothers shall you place a king over yourself; you may not place over yourself a foreign man who is not your brother,” tears began to run down his face. The people cried out, “Do not fear, Agrippas. You are our brother! You are our brother!” The Talmud is not satisfied with this tender scene. It records a devastating judgment: at that moment, the Jewish People became liable for destruction because they flattered Agrippas. The conventional reading is straightforward. Agrippas understood that his lineage made his kingship problematic. The people reassured him that he was one of them. Their words may have been emotionally true, but they blurred an important constitutional question. A nation that cannot tell its king the truth is in trouble.
But perhaps there is another layer. Perhaps the people were not answering Agrippas’s question at all. Agrippas heard the words “from among your brothers” and wondered whether he belonged. The people answered, “We are brothers.” Not merely, “You are one of us,” but “Look around. You have brought us together. We are standing here as one people under one Torah.” To understand why that possibility matters, one must first understand who Agrippas was. He was not a simple Jewish king from a simple Jewish dynasty. He was a Herodian, descended from a family that had come to power under Roman patronage. Raised in Rome and connected to the imperial household, his kingship came through the machinery of empire rather than through a traditional Jewish dynasty. Yet ancient sources portray him as a ruler who respected the Temple, identified closely with the Jewish people, and cultivated strong ties with the Sages. He stood at the intersection of Rome and Jerusalem, power and piety, legitimacy and belonging.
That is why his tears are so powerful. Agrippas was not ignorant of his problem. He read the verse and understood exactly what it might mean. The Torah did not merely say that the king must be competent or popular. It said that he must come “from among your brothers.” The phrase pierced him. Kingship, he realized, is not only a function of power. It is also a function of belonging. The people answered with the most emotionally charged words available to them: “You are our brother.” They did not say, “You are qualified.” They did not say, “The verse does not apply to you.” They said, “You are our brother.” They were not issuing a legal ruling. They were making a declaration. In a fractured society, sometimes the most radical thing a people can say is not “you are right” but “we are still one family.”
This interpretation becomes even stronger when we look a few verses later in the Torah. The Torah speaks about a Levite who comes from one of the towns of Israel to serve in the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash). He may serve [Devarim 18:6-7] “like all his brothers the Levites who stand there before Hashem”. The local Levites cannot claim ownership of the Temple. He serves with his brothers. The Temple belongs to G-d, not to any particular family. That verse illuminates the Agrippas story. The Torah uses brotherhood to prevent monopoly. No Levitical family owns the Temple. No dynasty owns the nation. No social class owns the covenant. Brotherhood is not sentimentality. It is a constitutional principle.
This is precisely what the people may have been saying to Agrippas. The Hasmoneans could not claim ownership of the nation merely because their ancestors had fought the Maccabean wars. The Herodians could not claim ownership merely because Rome had given them a crown. The Priests (Kohanim) could not claim ownership because they merely served in the Beit HaMikdash. The nation, the Beit HaMikdash, and the covenant belonged to all Israel.
What makes this idea remarkable is that it runs against the normal course of history. Tribal identities are among the most durable forces in human civilization. The Book of Judges describes an Israel fractured by tribal rivalries and even civil war. In many ways, ancient Israel resembled countless tribal societies throughout history. A person’s primary loyalty was to his tribe, clan, and region. Yet something extraordinary happened. Jewish tribes largely disappeared as meaningful political entities while the nation endured. Jews remained diverse. They argued over law, philosophy, politics, and theology. They spread across continents and developed radically different cultures. Yet they continued to see themselves as one people. The descendants of Judah do not battle the descendants of Benjamin. The descendants of Dan do not compete with the descendants of Issachar. The triumph of Jewish history may not be that we eliminated our differences, but that we learned to place a shared identity above them.
This development is far from inevitable. Much of the world – particularly in the Middle East – remains organized around older loyalties of tribe, clan, sect, ethnicity, and extended family. Historians and sociologists have long noted how difficult it is for societies to move from kinship-based identity to a broader national identity. The Jewish people somehow managed that transition. We certainly retain different traditions, customs, and communities, but few Jews define themselves primarily by ancestral tribe. The categories that once dominated the Book of Judges have largely faded from Jewish consciousness. Perhaps this is one of the hidden roles of Jewish kingship. The king was not merely a military commander or political administrator. He served as a focal point around which twelve distinct tribes could become one nation. At the Hakhel ceremony, representatives of every tribe, profession, and social class stood together to hear a single Torah read by a single king. When the people cried out, “You are our brother”, they may have been expressing gratitude not merely to Agrippas himself, but to the institution he represented. A king succeeds when he convinces people who see themselves as members of different groups to see themselves first as brothers.
This is why the Hakhel ceremony is the perfect setting for the story. It gathered the entire nation in one place to hear Torah. The king reads, but he does not read his own law. He reads G-d’s law. At the Hakhel ceremony, the king creates unity not by commanding the people but by showing that he, too, is commanded. And yet the Talmud’s criticism cannot be ignored. The people may have been expressing a profound truth about national unity, but unity cannot substitute for truth. Brotherhood can create belonging, but it cannot erase law. The crowd may have answered a constitutional question with an emotional truth. The emotional truth was real but the substitution was dangerous. That danger remains with us. Every divided people longs for a leader who can remind them that they are one family. That longing is noble. But it becomes corrupt when the desire for unity pressures us to ignore principle. A leader who unites us may still be wrong. A beloved institution may still require criticism.
Agrippas cried because he heard the Torah asking whether he was a brother. The people answered by declaring that they were brothers. Perhaps both were right. Agrippas was right to tremble before the demands of Torah. The people were right to yearn for a nation that no faction could own. Brotherhood must stand in obediance before the Torah, not replace it. No Levite owns the Temple. No king owns the nation. No party owns the covenant. A Jewish leader’s greatest achievement is not proving that he descends from his brothers. It is reminding brothers that they belong to one another. Perhaps that is what the people were telling Agrippas: Despite our differences, despite our factions, despite our competing visions of the future, we are still brothers.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5786
Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Rachel bat Malka, Iris bat Chana, Sheindel Devora bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, Meir ben Drora, Golan ben Marcelle and Hodayah Emunah bat Shoshana Rachel.
