Dvar Torah on Parshat Shoftim

In 1960, something occurred which is widely understood to have changed the world. I am referring to the first televised presidential debate, between Nixon and JFK. Kennedy, younger and much better looking to begin with, looked cool and collected on TV, whereas Nixon, who had recently been ill,  was pale, sweaty, unshaven, and looked nervous and much less presidential. I emphasise "looked' because, although TV viewers thought Kennedy had done much better, those who listened to the debate on the radio actually thought Nixon had won! These debates are understood to have swung the very tight race in Kennedy's favor. Since then, it has become common knowledge that a candidate has to "look presidential", and perform well before the cameras, if he or she  hopes to win the nomination and election. In the last presidential campaign, the ways that looks, demeanor, body language, and that certain visual  something that spelled "winner" or "loser" (or, in all too many cases, "lunatic") were parsed and parsed again, ad nauseum, by an army of pundits, for whom it was absolutely clear that the visuals are everything, a crystal ball that will reveal all we really need to know about one candidate or another.

The reasonable onlooker has got to ask: is this the best way to choose the people who will make the important decisions for the country and the world? Has TV and the internet, and the visuality of those media, the primacy of the image that they represent, taken over completely, rendering irrelevant things like content, policy, and party platform? Is it really all about how people look? In this week's parsha, Shoftim, which contains a good deal of material about how the Jewish people are meant to govern themselves and run their society once they arrive in and settle the land of Israel, there is an interesting verse, with a fascinating commentary from the Sforno, which tells us that these issues of "visuals", "body language", "looking presidential" (or judicial, or gubenatorial, or Rabbinic) are not as new as TV, youtube, and the internet, but, apparently, have been with us, and plagued us, for quite a long time. 

The parsha begins with the commandment to appoint שופטים ושוטרים - judges and police - in all the cities which God will give us in Israel, who will judge the nation משפט צדק - with a just (or righteous) judgement. The parsha goes on to instruct the judges to be fair and even-handed when running a trial, and not to take bribes. This short, first section ends with the well-known injunction:  צדק  צדק תרדף - "Justice, justice shall you pursue".

The commentaries are all interested in the double language of צדק צדק - justice, justice. What does the repetition mean? And how are we meant to apply the word "pursue" to justice? What are we meant to be chasing after, exactly? The simplest answer, supplied by the Ibn Ezra, is that the repetition, and the word "pursue", are for emphasis, as he calls it:  "לחיזוק" - to underscore and strengthen the message. Justice is very important, crucial and basic to any reasonable society. You must therefore make it a real priority, and be sure to establish and maintain a good judicial system, with disciplined and competent police, honest judges, etc. However, other commentaries, and, in fact, the Ibn Ezra himself, feel that the doubling seems to indicate more than just emphasis. It points to some kind of duality, some ongoing process of two or more steps. The Ibn Ezra, for instance, says it might mean that we need to seek justice whether it will mean we lose (the case) or win it, we must accept the two-sidedness of justice. Or it might mean that we need to seek justice again and again, all through our lives. Rashi brings a Talmudic idea to the effect that we need to go from court to court, looking for the best one, the most competent and learned of judges. Justice can not be achieved by just convening any old court, we must engage in a process of seeking out the best one, with the best judges.

The Sforno (Italy, 1475-1550) also sees the double language as indicating some sort of duality, and comes up with an interesting idea. He says that this sentence is addressed to those who appoint judges - the leaders of the nation - and serves as a warning against something very specific. The Sforno says: "...you, who appoint judges, must choose those who will be more likely to judge righteously, even if they don't have so many of the features which are appropriate for a judge, such as material and physical perfection, as it is written 'do not look at his appearance, or his height' (Samuel 1; 16,7, pertaining to Eliav, the most impressive-looking son of Yishai, who will be rejected as king in favor of his youngest brother, David, as the vesrse goes on to explain: 'For it is not as a man sees, for a man sees what is visible to the eyes, and God sees into the heart')." The Sforno, centuries before TV brought us  a handsome JFK and a sleazy-looking Nixon (appearances may, actually count for something, sometimes), reminds us that when King David was chosen, he was not the most royal-looking candidate, not the most physically impressive. But he was the right choice. When choosing judges, the verse is saying, we must look beyond the candidates who appear to be judicial, and get to someome who really is judicial. Someone who really is fair, honest, impartial and wise, even if he or she doesn't look that way.  That is the meaning behind "justice, justice shall you pursue" - look beyond the appearance of justice - the impressive look of a serious, respectable, honest, and wise candidate, and seek out real justice, the candidate who really has those attributes, on the inside, where they are not always readily visible. That is the candidate we must "pursue".     

The Sforno goes on, brilliantly, to read the next three verses, which contain three mitzvot concerning the Temple and its ritual, in the same vein. Immediately after the "Justice, justice" verse, we are commanded to not plant an אשרה - a sacred tree - or any other tree, next to the altar, nor place a pillar there, nor offer an animal sacrifice which has a blemish. The Sforno posits that the common denominator between all these commandments is a rejection of the aesthetic in favor of the ethical. The sacred tree and the pillar are the classic Canaanite features used to beautify their pagan temples, and, as such, we must reject them, 'as, in selecting a judge, we privelege spiritual righteousness over physical perfection, as the latter is sensual, physical". The rejection of the animal with a blemish would seem to contradict this polemic against the primacy of the physical, but the Sforno explains that these blemishes, determined by the Torah, often do not really indicate that the animal is less beautiful or physically whole. For example, a beautiful, big, strong, physically impressive ox, with one of the minor blemishes mentioned in the Torah, is rejected as  a sacrifice, while a small, scrawny little ox, without a halachic blemish, is accepted. It's not really ther physical, it's the halachic definition which matters.

Taken together, the Sforno's message, which predates television and internet by almost 500 years, stands as a polemic against what would seem to be a very basic human inclination to be taken in by the aesthetically pleasing and physically impressive. Although the tendency to choose a leader who looks like a leader was already there in 1000 BCE, when David, the runt of his parents' litter, was initially overlooked by the prophet Samuel, in favor of his more attractive, impressive, and "presidential" looking older brothers, the advent of electronic media has turned us into image junkies, bombarded by a constant stream of aesthetic overload, rendering us even more suceptible to the false promises of the image, and blind to inner qualities of infinitely greater meaning and importance. Judaism, which has always been about an inner, nuanced, complicated, and more abstract truth, while rejecting the obvious, external, but often empty attraction of the physical, stands in opposition to this new, pixelated (and pixilated) aesthetic development, as it stood in opposition to favoring the judicial-looking candidate over the really qualified candidate, or the guy who looks like a king over the one who should be king, millenia ago. Plugged in, as we are, to a barrage of visual information, It's become harder than ever for us to follow the Sforno's advice, and we seem to have the leadership, and the society, to prove it. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix