Parshat HaShavua

Living a life in accord with the Torah’s teachings is a daunting proposition.  Six hundred thirteen is a big number.  Even the top ten commandments can be challenging; try going a week without coveting something.

For many Jews taking the steps toward a more observant life, steps like keeping kosher or even skipping a secular workday for a Jewish holiday*, can seem so challenging that one wonders whether these laws are really meant for us.  Can human beings really follow all these rules?  Even with the encouragement of tremendous blessings and fearsome curses, perhaps the prescriptions and prohibitions of the Torah are more of an ideal, a path to sainthood, but not for everyday people.

Nitzavim reminds us that we all have the ability to hold up our end of the covenant.  We have the strength, the intelligence, the will, and most importantly, the proximity:

Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach.  It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us?”  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?”  No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Etz Hayim Humash)

The Torah is not for angels; it is for us diverse and flawed humans.  It is not inaccessibly distant; it is in our mouths and in our hearts.  Some mitzvot are readily easy.  Others take study and practice.  Many require a Temple and perhaps a messiah.  But there is nothing in our part of the covenant that we are permanently incapable of handling.

When you consider the overwhelming task of being one of God’s people, don’t look to heaven and despair.  Don’t consider the vast distance of foreign shores or the distance in time from Sinai our modern age and give up.  Look into your heart, and get started.

* I’m talking to you, mid-week Sukkot.

A traditional assumption of Torah study is that the scripture contains no superfluous material. There are no “extra” words in the Torah; if the Torah repeats itself, there must be a reason.

Shof’tim contains one of the more oft-quoted examples of this:

“Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (Etz Hayim Humash, Deut. 16:20)

I think the first explanation I ever heard for this repetition pertained to emphasis.  The Israelites pursuit of justice is so critical to God’s plan — or maybe to the proper fulfillment of the covenant — that Moses repeated it in his exhortation.  In other words, justice is so nice he said it twice.

I think I found an explanation I like better.  Last night I attended a class at my shul for adults who want to improve their prayerbook Hebrew.  Our first lesson was on noun pairs.  Hebrew uses a lot of compound nouns or noun pairs; in English we have campground and backpack, but in Hebrew they might be written as “camp ground” and “back pack”.  I learned that Psalm 23, often considered one of the most vividly descriptive of the Psalms, contains no adjectives per se, only lots of noun pairs.  “Green pastures” is more directly translated as “pastures of greenness” and “still waters” as “waters of restfulness” but actually written as “pastures greenness” and “waters restfulness”.  Or something like that.

The orgininal text has no comma or other markings to guide us in the relationship between the two instances of the word for justice.  It just says “tzedek tzedek”.  It would be as easy to understand this as “justice of justice” as “justice, justice”.

In fact most of Shof’tim describes not what is just, but how we are to conduct ourselves in investigations, trials, and sentencing.  It’s clearly not enough that we pursue justice.  In order to properly fulfill the covenant and prosper and possess the land, we must even pursue justice in how we go about pursuing justice.

So much for 24.  So much for Guantanamo and rendition of terror suspects.  We are better than the doctine of “any means necessary”, and more is expected of us.