Shoftim: Thoughts on Peoplehood

By Stu Woolley, delivered Sept. 10, 2005

Part 1

In his call for a reconstruction of Jewish life in pre-war America, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan identified the three pillars of modern Judaism: G-d, Torah, and Peoplehood. Seventy years later, I think it’s a dubious proposition to believe that all three pillars are equally intact. If they were, and if full commitment to all three were the price of admission to Jewish identity in the 21st Century, there would be a greatly diminished number of people who could meaningfully call themselves Jews.

I’m not advocating a lesser commitment to traditional Jewish belief and practice; I’m merely describing what I see as the modern Jewish reality -- notwithstanding the fact that there are many Jews leading frum and meaningful lives within the context of modernity. But on balance, neither Hashem nor Torah retain the influence in Jewish life that they had a century ago when modernity was still in its infancy. This is just a matter of fact, not a matter of value.

First pillar: the existence and nature of G-d. In our time, not every self-proclaimed Jew is a true-believer. Some Jews are atheists, some are agnostic, some are devotees of other spiritual paths, and some don’t care enough to think about religious faith, one way or the other. And even among those Jews who profess a conception of G-d as the ground-of-being, that G-d may not be Hashem, the mighty personality who thunders through the pages of the Chumash. Ultimately, in modernity, G-d and G-d’s power mean different things to different people.

Torah: the second pillar – the mandate and evolution of human morality. Jewish acceptance of modernity and public secularity tends to leave us suspicious of certain forms of scripturalism, Jewish or otherwise. Post-biblical Judaism is an exegetical tradition; we interpret and reinterpret our foundational texts, recycling and renovating the Judaic vision, generation after learned generation. In other words, we evolve – and so our literature evolves in tandem. We avoid fundamentalism – generally speaking – and other static, stagnant theologies. And, happily, Torah loses none of its power or significance even when it’s understood primarily as a national narrative or mission-statement.

We recapitulate our own history. Today, again, we live in Babylon, and contemporary Babylon -- that great, civilization called The Modern Age -- shapes us, whether we approve or disapprove of its effects. No matter how we welcome Torah into our lives, regardless of our individual attainments in Torah-awareness, no matter how strongly we may feel that it’s impossible to be a Jew without some palpable commitment to the Talmud-Torah tradition, the fact remains that neither biblical nor rabbinic parameters define Jewish civilization in 2005.

This brings us to the last pillar: the one motivating idea that seems to bind the vast majority self-declared Jews in a trans-national community. Peoplehood: the notion of a “Jewish People”. This is the only pillar that has survived the Shoah intact and enhanced; the State of Israel is the primary proof. Israel has emerged as the modern, national fulfillment of Jewish Peoplehood because the previous historical model of Jewish existence, which Litvak historian Shimon Dubnov sagely dubbed the “portable culture”, was fatally flawed and littered with Jewish fatalities. Those of us who are publicly willing to call ourselves Zionists view extreme anti-Zionism as the “new” anti-Semitism because it’s grounded in the rejection of Jewish Peoplehood. Anti-Zionists trade in the denial of the national component of Jewish identity -- as if Jews were merely a faith community with no right to national consciousness, national aspirations, and an aboriginal territory.

Still and all, we do have to ask ourselves: Is Peoplehood enough? Is this modern devotion to national coherence enough? Is Israel enough? Can this one pillar, alone, truly support the temple of Jewish Civilization? Can it sustain us on the long and arduous journey through history? According to my friend Steve Guttman, who thinks deeply about these things, this is the century when we discover that, alone, it cannot. Peoplehood is not enough.

Part 2

Sidrah Shoftim draws the inquiring mind to the concept of justice. The ringing imperative, that clarion call: “Justice, Justice shall you pursue!”, is anthemic in Judaism. But Sidrah Shoftim, like many of the magisterial parashot, is also a deep, rich mine of many themes, observations, fiats, and declarations about the human condition. And a central motif in all these elements is the Jewish condition specifically -- the moral, legal, political, and doctrinal state of the emergent Jewish People. The nation created by slavery, exodus and revelation at Sinai. The people chosen for the Divine Blacksmith’s fire and forge, anvil and hammer.

Yet there’s no single element in Shofetim that draws my attention this morning – not the call for justice, the arrangements for courts, the provision for kingship or the logic of the art of war. Rather, what strikes me as significant is what Shoftim means in -- and what it contributes to -- the larger context of Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy.

Today, we closed with Chapter 21 of the final book of the Chumash. And in doing so, we moved closer to the end of the liturgical cycle. With the Yom tavim only a month away, the epic tale that is Torah is coming to a close once again. Soon, Moshe ha-Navi will complete his second farewell address and disappear into the thickening mists of Mount Nebo; his G-d chosen grave will never be found. Without him, the Yehudi -- the People Israel, the Jewish People will be on their own and never quite as divinely-governed as before. Hashem will never intervene in history and direct the course of the Jewish journey as deliberately as He did in the time of the Patriarchs, the Pharaohs and on the trek to Sinai. So, let’s take a closer look at this defining moment in the drama of Jewish Peoplehood. Let’s reach back into Jewish historical memory – back to the 17th century BCE and those ragtag, rebellious fugitives called “Israel”…

Part 3

We are The Yehudi. Nomads-of-the-spirit. But what a mess we’re in! The hours are ebbing out of Moshe’s life; the childhood of the world is coming to an end. As we stand at the last boundary of the Wilderness and at the border of a new consciousness called Canaan, we know we must make of the future -- and of ourselves -- what we can. And what we must. We are only just beginning to grasp the essence of the Mosaic mission: Moshe has been tasked with transforming us from the Children of Israel to a Jewish nation. We are so painfully slow to understand this.

Our great leader says that Torah is given as a guide to life, but it’s we-the-people, not our G-d, who have to do the living. We, the people – the mortal Jewish People -- are called upon to make the best of history from this moment forward. A long trek still lies ahead. The Long-Promised Land waits on the horizon; it’s not so far now. But beyond that, the millennia stretch away into the nether reaches of time; and their full extent, none of us of the Sinai generation can even begin to imagine let alone predict. History is as much a mystery to us as Hashem. And Hashem, like Moshe, expects so much.

So, yes, we are about to emerge from this forty years wandering at last. But first we must face a calamitous loss. The grim sheen on the prophet’s face tells us what we already know and fear above all: Moshe is leaving us. He has fulfilled his mission; his decades of stewardship are nearly at an end. Moses is dying. Still, G-d’s chosen servant has so much to tell us. So much to remind us of, so many last words of preparation, encouragement, counsel, admonition. In his private heart -- because he is a man and not a god -- Moshe is painfully restless. His sleep is fitful -- when he can sleep at all. He broods incessantly. He worries us; we worry him. What will become of us without him? Will his final words be enough to last the thousands of generations that the Jewish journey will require? Will there be enough power in these last prophetic instructions to carry the generations forward into history after their prophet is dead and their G-d has withdrawn to a distant place beyond the skies?

Hashem. Mitzvot. Ha-Am. G-d. Covenant. Peoplehood.

In his heart, Moshe knows that faith in G-d’s unity, mercy and justice will wax and wane and wax again. He knows that devotion to Torah and adherence to the Mitzvot will be inconstant because inconstancy is an essential component of the human nature that the Covenant was meant to elevate. So he lies on his cot in his windswept tent, waiting for sleep to strengthen him for one more day of leadership for a stiff-necked rabble composed of certified whiners. As sleep finally comes, Moshe, himself, suddenly understands: he must place his hopes in the one thing that these complaining, tempestuous, and ungrateful descendants of Jacob can truly grasp: Peoplehood. Peoplehood and the bonding of the Yehudim, one to another, in their own land.

“My time with you is nearly over,” Moshe tells us early the next morning. He looks worn, ill, exhausted-in-soul – yet, the power, the awesome, transcendental power of a man who has seen the Face of The Eternal!…Moshe still has the power! He’s electric! He’s luminescent! And we tremble before him as he distills the essence of the Sinai event one last time. His voice booms across the Assembly in the desert: “Soon I will be gone, but you will carry on. Here is my legacy to you…This is your G-d. This is your guidebook. These are your laws. Here is what is expected of you. Do this, but do not do that. And above all: know today, and never forget in the eternity of tomorrows, that you are a nation. Belong to one another – now and forever. Am Yisroel Chai!”