Reading Torah bravely
Inspired by a teaching by Daniel Septimus.
Shoftim, this week’s Torah reading, opens with first principles: “Judges and officers you shall appoint” (Deut. 16:18), followed by the insistent drumbeat, “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof – justice, justice shall you pursue” (Shoftim 16:20). Shoftim is the Torah’s civics lesson. It asks: what is our “grundnorm,” the ground-rule under which all power lives? The answer is Torah, not as a cudgel, nor as certainty, but as a sacred center that commands leaders and citizens alike, each generation in turn, to answer to something higher than themselves.
That higher call is about systems, not vigilantes. The Talmud names what corrodes justice: those who speak one way and mean another, those who withhold exonerating testimony, and those who act as a lone witness to accuse a neighbor (Pesachim 113b). Justice is collaborative and accountable; it refuses the righteousness of going it alone.
And yet, Shoftim also breaks our hearts. We’re told to offer peace before battle – but then we read the next verse: if peace is accepted, “all the people… shall serve you as forced labor.” (Deut. 20:11) This is Torah, too. It’s hard, and it’s ours. Medieval voices lean further: Sefer HaChinuch, the 13th-century rabbinic text, dares to say judges and officers are there to enforce religious observance and cast “fear… over the mass population.” (Sefer HaChinuch 491:1) That’s not liberal constitutionalism; it’s theocracy’s shadow in our library.
Daniel Septimus asks a brave question:
Can we credibly cite Jewish teachings that encourage a better world when there exist parallel teachings that could lead to a worse one?
His answer is yes – if we are honest about “which texts we are excluding from active duty,” and if we also study the ones that contradict our agendas. Otherwise, “neglected texts left unattended have a nasty way of coming back to life in more virulent forms.”
That charge lands differently in our generation. Power changes the moral math and expands our responsibility. When Jews lacked power, the ugliest passages could feel theoretical. Today, they cannot. Our duty is not only to pursue justice but to scrutinize how we pursue it – military ethics, policing, courts, speech, protest, and policy. “Tzedek, tzedek” might be doubled because one “justice” is the goal, and the other is the way there, re-examined by leaders of every succeeding generation as they turn and return Torah for their times.
Daniel closes with a daring reframing: this disciplined, honest learning is itself a fulfillment of another of Shoftim’s wisdom teachings: “u’vi’arta hara mikirbecha – you shall purge the evil from your midst.” (Deut. 19:19) This “evil” includes our capacity to ignore the parts of Torah that unsettle us. To purge it, we must read bravely, argue lovingly, and legislate humbly.
“Tzedek, tzedek tirdof.” You don’t get to pursue it once and be done. Justice is a lifelong verb – for nations, for communities, and for each of us.
May we keep reading and rereading our sacred texts, arguing toward decency, and aligning our power with our deepest emergent Torah.
May we always reach higher.
