The Blogs: When We Breathe Elul Again

When We Breathe Elul Again: Shoftim & Elul

Years ago, I confided in a mentor about my struggle to balance raising children with building a career.

I admitted to moments of envy toward those who seemed to give themselves wholly to one path—either professional success or family life—while I feared that my divided attention meant I would always fall short in both.

She told me something I still return to: “When your life has multiple dimensions that are rich and textured, it’s one of the greatest gifts. Because when you’re struggling in one area, you can lean on another.”

That wisdom has echoed for me not only in my personal life. Jewish life, too, is meant to have multiple dimensions.

But lately, it feels as though we have been breathing only one: the political.

So many of us are exhausted by politics even as we are trapped in its grip. We follow every twist in Israel and Gaza. We doomscroll through U.S. headlines, anxious about antisemitism, polarization, and the fragility of democratic norms.

We feel helpless rage at the decisions of leaders both here and there. We protest, organize, sign petitions, donate—and still it feels as if “the great bodies” of power act without accountability, silencing the voices of ordinary people.

It is a Purim reality: rulers constrained only by their power, lives hanging on their whims.

But as my mentor reminded me years ago, when one dimension feels unbearable, there is power in choosing another to lean on.

That is what struck me this week as we began reading the Torah portion of Shoftim, just as we entered the month of Elul.

Elul is the Hebrew month that leads into the High Holidays, traditionally devoted to soul-searching, asking forgiveness, and returning to our best selves.

Shoftim turns our attention to the political dimension of Jewish life. Elul turns us inward to the spiritual. And this year, the Torah’s timing feels like more than coincidence—it feels like a reminder of where to turn.

Shoftim and the Order of Things

This week, in Shoftim, Moses turns for the first time in his great Deuteronomy speeches squarely to the political dimension of Jewish life: systems for judges, kings, prophets, and cities of refuge.

After so many chapters devoted to reverence, humility, memory, and service of God—the spiritual dimension—Moses finally lays out the structures of governance.

That sequencing should give us pause. Moses’ speech could have opened with politics—monarchs, armies, statecraft—as if government were the heart of Jewish society.

Instead, it begins with the inner and spiritual work of individuals and communities—ego, reverence, faith, memory—and only afterward describes the scaffolding of governance.

Shoftim follows chapters that expand on the Ten Commandments, underscoring that spiritual life is the foundation upon which politics rests.

The Torah seems to be saying that political institutions, however vital, cannot endure unless they are rooted first in the divine.

Even within Shoftim itself, the order is striking. The portion begins not with a king, not with charisma or military might, but with the judges: “You shall appoint magistrates and officials… and they shall govern the people with due justice” (Deut. 16:18).

Governance begins with accountability, impartiality, and the rejection of bribes.

Only afterward, almost reluctantly, does the Torah address the possibility of a king—and even then, it places strict limits on his authority.

A king may not multiply horses, wives, or wealth. He must keep a Torah scroll beside him at all times, a reminder that even at the summit of power, he remains bound to a higher law.

At the same time, Judaism is not a post-Enlightenment, Protestant-style faith focused only on inner salvation or the separation of church and state. It insists that politics, too, is an essential part of Jewish religious life.

The message is clear. Politics matters enormously—it organizes society, defends the vulnerable, restrains corruption. But it is not the first thing, and it is not the only thing. The spiritual dimension precedes it, and the political dimension is hemmed in by law.

Shoftim insists that politics be kept in its place: essential but bounded, vital yet answerable to deeper moral and spiritual priorities.

Grasping Elul With Both Hands

Elul reminds us to hold fast to the dimension of life that remains most fully in our agency. It arrives like oxygen for starved lungs.

After months of suffocation in the shadow of power struggles, Elul restores us to the one realm we truly command. Its ancient rhythm insists that beyond politics, there is work only we can do.

At first it might feel impossible—how can we think about our own teshuvah (spiritual repair) when we are still at war?—and yet it also feels like the grounding work without which nothing else can endure. When the political dimension falters, when battles lie beyond our reach, the spiritual one still holds us.

Elul offers work no government can take away: the work of return, repair, forgiveness, and growth. It calls us to examine our relationships, to mend what we can, to come back to who we want to be. That is work squarely in our hands.

As Jews, we are not called to choose between politics and spirituality. We must remain committed to fighting for a politics of hope and mutual safety in this difficult time. But Elul offers us an invitation to calibrate our focus.

Without the grounding of the spiritual dimension, and without the willingness of ordinary people to rise to it, politics alone cannot sustain us. This is why Shoftim turns to politics only after pages of Moses’ spiritual call.

This Elul is an invitation for all of us: to grasp the spiritual dimension with both hands, to recover the language of the soul, and to weave it back into the rhythm of our lives.