Chase Justice

Sermon Shabbat Shoftim 5783

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

Now that Sophie and Ayelet and I are back from Maui, where we had a little too close of a call with the terrible Lahaina fires, I’m rediscovering what it’s like to recover from a personal encounter with a disaster.  It’s a strange and complicated process.

First, our hearts go out to the victims of the disastrous wildfire—really, a firestorm—that destroyed the historical capital of Hawaii and killed so many people.  The families who lost relatives and homes are permanently traumatized, and that part of Maui, including Lahaina’s iconic Front Street and banyan tree, are unlikely to recover fully.  We were there the day before the fire, drove through that morning and then back again early that afternoon.  The historic structures of Lahaina are gone, and many of the missing have still not been located.  Identifying human remains is a painful, awful process that will continue for a long time to come.

Our own experience was trivial in comparison to what these people are suffering through, and I encourage everyone to contribute to funds that assist survivors.  I particularly like the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund, which is providing direct help, on the ground, without taking an administrative cut of the charity.  I support it, and urge everyone to do so now, when it helps the most.

I guess for Sophie and me the challenge is putting the events of the past weeks in the context of transforming uncertainty and fear and deep sadness, not to mention exhaustion, into something positive and valuable.  We are of course incredibly grateful for having avoided any serious physical harm. 

There is nothing so capricious as a wildfire.  When we were finally permitted to leave the area of Kaanapali, about 2½  miles north of Lahaina, we drove through neighborhoods burned to ash, cars still smoldering, right next to houses that appeared untouched, with utter destruction on the other side of the standing homes.  The overall reality was devastating.  We were incredibly fortunate that the fire did not turn north towards us, as we sheltered in place a couple of miles away; and it was horrible that the fire’s direction turned so suddenly towards the many people of Lahaina town.  We are told the firestorm, driven by 60 to 70 mile an hour winds, raced forward at a mile a minute.

So, we are grateful to be OK, and especially that our six-month old daughter Ayelet is just fine.  We offer a prayer of thanksgiving, a birkat HaGomel, on escaping such a danger:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַגּוֹמֵל לְחַיָּבִים טוֹבוֹת שֶׁגְּמָלַנִי כָּל טוֹב

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who rewards the undeserving with good, and has rewarded us with goodness.

My friends, gratitude is a wonderful feeling, but it’s also incredibly hard to hold onto.  We may offer thanks for good things in our lives, yet simultaneously be aware of just what we don’t have or what is currently irritating us.  Holding onto feelings of profound thanksgiving is no small feat.  I’m not sure I’ve mastered this.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t mastered it.   

In Mussar, Jewish ethical and spiritual self-improvement teaching, gratitude, hoda’ah, is a powerful midah an important skill to cultivate, a personality trait to nurture.  It’s not an easy thing to do, to focus on what you have and are fortunate to have and not on what you don’t have and wish you did—or on what you do have and wish you didn’t.

The truth is that we are entering into a period of the year that reflects deeply on how we assess our own lives and experience, and to seek to cultivate gratitude for all that is good in our own lives.  As we enter this month of Elul, the final month of the Hebrew calendar year, I hope we can all come to appreciate all the good we do experience, and feel that sense of gratitude to a greater degree.

I also want to explore, for a moment, how much the concept of justice interacts with the emotion of gratitude.  For it’s much easier to feel grateful when we feel that the world is fair and just.  It is much harder to be content and give thanks when we believe there is an underlying element of injustice in the way that things are working.

I have a question for you: what is the most unjust thing that ever happened to you?  What unjust thing in your life truly upset your belief that the world is fair, or that our systems of justice, in any area of life, actually work the way that they are supposed to? 

I suspect that if you really think back over your life you will find incidents and events, even entire processes, that were unfair to you.  You no doubt can think of people who wronged you in your personal life, institutions or people you counted on that were unfair to you, situations that got out of hand and in which you were the loser for no very good reason.  These kinds of things happen to everyone.

Did those situations, those unjust occurrences, affect you?  Did they damage your belief in the justice of the world?  Did they even make you feel hopeless, perhaps, or as though things were never going to work out? If so, I must tell you, it’s exactly that sort of sensibility that our portion of Shoftim is trying to address.  Because as much as we admire justice, Shoftim is trying to prevent injustice, seeking to create a society and a world in which right will actually prevail in matters of human living and civilization.

So what does Judaism have to say about justice, in the abstract, in the practical sense, and in the personal?

One of my favorite passages in the whole Torah comes from Genesis, in the episode of Sodom and Gomorrah.  God informs Abraham that God is about to destroy these two bastions of evil, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Las Vegas and Atlantic City of the ancient world, places where sin was cultivated and virtue punished.  Abraham objects and asks if God will destroy the cities if 50 righteous people can be found.  “Far be it from You to kill the righteous with the wicked,” Abraham says, “Chas v’challilah, chalilah l’cha.”  So, God agrees not to destroy the cities if 50 righteous live there.  Then Abraham negotiates.  What if there are only 45 righteous people, will God destroy the cities for the lack of a mere 5 righteous people?  Again, God agrees, and in a wonderful, spirited narrative God is bargained down to 10 righteous people being enough to save the city from destruction.  It is ultimately one of the bases for why we require 10 adults to form a minyan, a minimum number for a full prayer service and Torah reading and Kaddish.  10 righteous people are enough to save a city.

But what I love best about this famous section is the line where Abraham summons up the courage—you might say the Chutzpah—to proclaim to God, “HaShofeit kol ha’aretz lo ya’aseh mishpat?  Will the Judge of the whole world not act justly?”  It is a powerful argument, and it works, and God gives in.  Of course, you don’t find a minyan of righteous people in Sodom, and eventually the cities are destroyed.  But still, that phrase is spectacular: shall the judge of the whole earth not act with justice?  It proves beyond question that justice lies at the very heart, as the very essence of the Jewish understanding of God.

And yet, justice must be applied.  High principles only matter when they are actually employed in the real world.  And sometimes that’s quite a complicated process.

All Jews, whether Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal or something else, come originally from a religious culture shaped by a complex process of applying divine law to a very human, fallible, earthbound population. Our heritage is based on the kind of thinking that takes great, idealistic proclamations designed to further morality and applies them to mundane daily life with sometimes fascinating results.

A core ideal of Judaism is to work to create a society based on justice, which will lead, ultimately, to peace and goodness.  But it is justice that is always the focus, which is embodied in the Torah portion we read this Shabbat, Shoftim, “Judges,” filled with the concept of justice.

Tzedek tzedek tirdof, we are commanded here: pursue true justice!  It is a powerful and remarkable ideal.  Our societies must strive for absolute fairness, must be just in every way.  But justice is more than high ideals.  It is applying sacred principles to the mundane reality of daily life, including rules of ritual observance.  Judaism makes no distinction between ethical and ritual laws.  All are part of creating a society based on justice.

in Shoftim we are charged not only with being just but pursuing justice.  The Hebrew word used for pursuit, rodef, is the same word used for an atempted murderer pursuing his prey. It is the strongest possible use: don’t just act for justice, chase it down!  That means, in pragmatic Jewish terms, that we must find a way not only make personal choices about how we live ritually or even in ethical terms, but we also must work to make our organizations, like our synagogue, and especially our society more just.  It is this great injunction that underlies the Jewish commitment to religious action and social justice, the need we Jews have to try to make our synagogue, but also our city, our state, our country and our world into something that more closely mirrors our own conception of justice.

When our own society strays from justice, it is no surprise when many of those who protest the injustice are always Jewish.  Because for us justice is not just an idea.  It must be made the basis for any society that wishes to believe itself based in good. 

Justice is very likely the highest Jewish ideal.  Is justice more important than peace?  Ultimately, yes, because without justice peace cannot truly be maintained.  Is justice more important than charity?  Yes, because the very idea of tzedakah, charity, is based in the same word, tzedek, justice.  Charity is derived from the need for justice.  Is justice more important than happiness?  Yes, because real happiness depends upon the trust that things are fair and just for each of us.  Is justice more important than love?  Ultimately, again, yes, because for love to truly exist we must be in a relationship that is based in respect and fairness, which are the essence of any deep love.

And of course, in order to feel true gratitude we must believe that there in an underlay of justice in our society and in our lives.

Remember that it is always how we apply principles of justice that matters most.  Because ideals alone don’t really matter in Judaism; you must put them into practice.  If you believe an aspect of our society is unjust, it is the imperative command of Shoftim that you, yourself, seek to rectify that by your own actions.  Pursue justice, we are taught.  Chase it.  Make it real.

May this be a Shabbat of ever-increasing justice for each of us.  And may we find our own ways of seeking to improve the justice of this often unjust human world around us.