Having dealt with many of the aspects of worship in the Promised Land, Moses now turns to the institutions of governance. He begins with the overarching imperative of justice: there must be courts, judges, and officers in every city. Justice must be accessible and impartial. Procedures must be followed for the prosecution of idolatry, and there is to be a…
Some commands in the Torah were understood so narrowly by the Sages that they were rendered almost inapplicable. One example is the ir ha-nidachat, the city led astray into idolatry, about which the Torah states that “you shall put the inhabitants of that town to the sword.” (Deut. 13:16) Another is the ben sorer umoreh, the stubborn and rebellious child,…
…adapted from Torah IQ by David Woolf, a collection of 1500 Torah riddles, available worldwide on Amazon. For the answer, please head to the Education Companion section (directly below, in grey). Educational Companion Torah Trivia: this week’s answer Shoftim is the only parsha in the Torah which has the same name as a book in Nevi’im (the book of Prophets)….
The Parsha in a Nutshell In parshat Shoftim, Moshe finishes explaining how to worship God in the Promised Land. Next he discusses the different kinds of Jewish leaders and how they will govern society. He begins with the structure of the justice system: there must be courts, judges, and officers in every city. All people must be able to approach…
At a dinner to celebrate the work of a communal leader, the guest speaker paid tribute to his many qualities: his dedication, hard work, and foresight. As he sat down, the leader leaned over and said, “You forgot to mention one thing.” “What was that?” asked the speaker. The leader replied, “My humility.” Quite so. Great leaders have many qualities,…
The sedra of Shoftim comes as close as anywhere in the Torah to articulating a Jewish theory of government. The people were about to enter the land. They brought with them an already ancient tradition, begun in the days of Abraham and Sarah and continued through their children. In Egypt they had become a people (am) and a nation (goi),…
…political project Moses was engaged in the parsha of Shoftim and in the book of Deuteronomy as a whole. Why do crowds riot? The short answer is, because they can. This year we have seen the extraordinary impact of smartphones, messaging systems and social network software: the last things, one might have thought, to bring about political change, but they…
The parsha of Shoftim is the classic source of the three types of leadership in Judaism, called by the Sages the “three crowns”: of priesthood, kingship and Torah.[1] This is the first statement in history of the principle, set out in the eighteenth century by Montesquieu in L’Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of Laws), and later made fundamental to the American constitution, of “the…
In Shoftim, Moses speaks about the great institutions of Judaism: courts, judges, officers, Kings, Priests, Levites and Prophets. In the case of the Prophet, Moses says in the name of God: I will raise up a Prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself: I will put My words in his mouth, and he will speak to them…