Dvar Torah on Parshat Shoftim

The parsha, called Shoftim - Judges - has a lot of material about government: judges, court cases, rules of testimony, etc. One of the really fascinating sections deals with the executive branch of government - the king. The relevant verses go like this:

"When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law... It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees, and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel".

Now, anyone thinking about being the King of Israel, upon reading these verses, would really have to think again: "If I can't have lots of horses, women, gold and silver, what, precisely, is the point? That is so why I want to be king - for those perks. What kind of deal is this, anyway, if I can't 'consider myself better than my brothers'? And, on top of everything else, I have to write and schlep a Sefer Torah around with me all the time? Who needs it? I'm better off going to law school".

In fact, the commentaries are divided on the question of whether we really need a king at all. Maimonides understands these verses as a mitzvah - we are commanded to appoint a king. Others - Rav Saadia Gaon, Sforno, the Ibn Ezra - see it as an option, something we have permission to do but are not commanded to do. The phrase "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," does sound like a bad idea - Israel leaving behind its beliefs and traditions in order to imitate other nations. In fact, when this actually happened, in the days of the prophet Samuel, he really got angry at the people for wanting a king, chillingly describing the excesses that he would no doubt commit: "He will take your sons...he will take your daughters...you will be slaves to him, and cry out... " (Samuel I, 8). Ultimately, he acquiesces to the nation's demand for a ruler, but he really thinks it's a very bad idea.

I'm writing this on Rosh Chodesh Elul, the first day of the Jewish month of Elul, exactly 30 days before Rosh Hashanah. Traditionally, on Rosh Hashanah, we crown God as King of the Universe: many of the high holiday prayers speak of God as king, and the blowing of the Shofar is seen as an act of coronation - trumpets announcing the crowning of God as King. With the idea of God as king in mind, we can readily understand the Torah's negative attitude toward the institution of monarchy: if there already is a king of the universe, who else can rightly call himself a monarch? It makes perfect sense for the Torah to see the notion of monarchy as a bad one, one which the Torah actually subverts at the same time as it, reluctantly, acquiesces to it. For most of human history, monarchy in one form or another was an almost universal system of government. As in other cases, most notably sacrifices (and, as I've pointed out on occasion, the status of women), the Torah, rather than demanding a revolution which would turn the world order upside down ('Go ahead, have a religion, worship God, but, unlike everyone else you know, no sacrifices, OK?'), the Torah chooses an evolutionary approach, and gradually weans us away from monarchy towards democracy, by limiting the powers of the monarch and clearly indicating the problematic nature of this sorrt of government.

Rather than simply saying: 'Don't you get it? The notion of one God, who created the universe, clearly implies equality for all, and demands that no man consider himself "better than his brothers", so could you please have elections next Tuesday', the Torah accepts that monarchy has a very strong hold on the human imagination (the Sefer Hachuinuch (13th century) writes on our parsha of the "good that accrues to a nation when one man is above them as a head and leader, for a nation cannot dwell in peace without this...it is a curse for a group of men to rule together as one"), and that centuries would pass before democracy would become acceptable to most people (we are not actually there yet). So, the Torah establishes the conceptual foundation: there is only one King, God. Anyone else who acts as a king will, invariably, be tempted to oppress rather than serve his people, and therefore, since we do need someone to run things for now, we must try to limit his power. Ultimately, however, the notion of a human king is unacceptable, and a democratic system, one which stresses and insures equality for all, under God, is to be preferred. That is why the Torah, in our parsha, actually subverts the very notion of monarchy that it allows for (or mandates), in the hopes that we will learn to evolve past it to a more democratic system, one that recognizes the Creator of the Universe as our only true king.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix