Dvar Torah on Parshat Shoftim

Parshat Shoftim contains the Torah's vision of how a Jewish state should be governed. There are provisions made for judges, law-givers, priests, a court system with rules of testimony, prophets and false prophets,  and, ostensibly at the top of the heap, a king. Kings have been in charge of counries, city-states, empires - all kinds of entities - for most of human history. We are lucky enough to live in a time when things have changed, and, in the west at least, most of us live in democracies. This does not mean that there are not, even today,  plenty of countries with kings, or, more commonly, rulers who might call themselves presidents or prime ministers, but are actually despotic, absolute monarchs, with the power of life and death over their subjects, i.e., kings. Examples range from the many third world countries which are, tragically,  run this way, to Russia's Putin, who looks more regressively imperial by the day. 

Now, you will have noticed that I am a big fan of democracy. I don't believe I have to waste time making my case. Monarchy is idiotic; an invitation to theft, murder and general injustice on a grand scale, and a patently unfair and unsafe arrangement. If you want proof, learn history. So, the question must be asked: why, then, does the Torah give us a king? Why do we still, in our prayers, yearn for the House of David to be reinstated? Who could possibly want such a regressive turn of events? Are we not better off, in spite of all their faults, with the Likud and Meretz, Republicans and Democrats, the Tories and Labour?

Well, happily, the answer is, of course we are better off in a modern, liberal democracy, with the rule of law, due process, and regular elections. The Torah is very clear about the fact that a monarchy is not the best option for governance. It communicates this by couching the laws about a king in a quite tentative way: "When you enter into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and you take posession of it and dwell in it, and you say: 'I will place on myself a king, like all the nations around me'. Place, you shall place a king upon yourself, one whom God will choose..." The Torah makes it clear that it is not demanding that you have a king. Rather, the Torah allows us, if we decide to be like the other nations, to choose one.  The Torah then goes on to severely limit the king's powers: not too many horses or wives, not too much silver and gold, and he has to write two scrolls of the Torah, and carry one around with him at all times, in order to keeep him in line. In other words, not only is a king unneccessary - simply permitted if you want one - but, once you do deciide to go that route, he won't really be a king at all, because, if you took my advice from a few lines ago and learned history, you will know that unlimited access to horses, women, silver and gold, slaves, soldiers, power, etc., is what being a king is all about. Without these things, he's not really a king.

What the Torah is describing here is a constitutional monarchy, with the Torah as the constitiution, and the Rabbis, who understand and interpert it, as the real repository of power. The king works for them. Now, of course, during the centuries of Jewish history, many of our kings disregarded this fact, and behaved like real kings, which is why the Torah didn't want us to have one in the first place. The firsst king off Israel, Shaul, was appointed by the prophet-judge Samuel, only after Smuel bitterly expanded on the Tirah's aversion to the idea. In Samuel I, chapter 8, Samuel goes into great detail, explaining how oppressive and rapacious a king  - any king - will be: "And he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself on his chariot...and he will take your daughters for perfumers, and cooks, and bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards...". It goes, depressingly, on and on.

Ultimately, God tells Samuel to give up, just as God "gives up" in our parsha, and says if they want a  king, give 'em one. Why? If the Torah is so wise in the ways of the world, and knew, back in 1300 BC or so, that monarchy is a bad idea, why does it allow it here, and again in the Book of Samuel? Why not introduce democracy (well, maybe a certain form of democracy, more like a sophocracy, run by a democratically functioning (they vote on things, and are transparent, open to public discussion and debate) group of Torah scholars) to the world at the giving of the Torah, and get rid of these ridiculous monarchs?

The answer lies in the way the Torah, here in our parsha, and again, later, in the Book of Samuel, introduces the idea of royal rule: the people say give us a king, like all the other nations. The Torah is doing something which it does quite a few times, and which Maimonides explains, at length, in connection with the many laws of animal sacrifice. Clearly, animal sacrifice is not a great idea. Like the monarchy, I imagine most of us do not want to go back to it. Maimonides felt the same way, and explained, in his Guide for the Perplexed,  that the Torah did, too. The Torah would have rather done away with animal sacrifice, and mandated prayer and contempaltion as our central religious acts. However, at the time of the giving of the Torah, all the other nations were deeply commited to it, and the Israelites, living, as we all must, in the world in which they lived, would have been unable to fathom a religious framework without the ritual of sacrifices. So, God limited the amount of sacrifices - relative to what other nations were doing at the time - to wean them away from that rite, and move them towards the ultimate goal of religious service through prayer and study. The Torah was for evolution, rather than revolution.

The question of what form a Jewish government should take is dealt with in a similar manner. The Torah describes a fully functioning state without a monarch. There are Priests, judges, rabbis, policemen, a court system, and it works just fine. You people, however, do live in a real world, not in a bubble, and I know how ubiquitous a form of government monarchy is. So I will point the way forward for you: you don't need to have a king. However, if you must be imitative of the world around you (and, by the way, we must. This is a crucial lesson, of great importance. The Torah does not want us to withdraw from the rest of the world and create a hermetic Jewish life. If they all sacrifice, I guess we  will, too. They all have kings, we will as well. They all have slaves, so will we. But the Torah will point us to a better way to navigate these practices, leading, hopefully, to a time when we can show the world how to move forward, towards a better, more just, society. This has important implications for us, in terms of arguing against the mistaken approach of separation and segregation from the rest of the world championed by the ultra-Orthodox. Clearly, the Torah demands that we engage critically with the world in which we live, as an integral, essential, part of it. This was a long digression, so I will start the sentence again.) However, if you must be imitative of the world around you, the Torah will help you through that, ultimately to a better, wiser, place.

Had the Jewish people been stronger, more independent-minded, smarter, they would not have asked to be like all the other nations and have a king. Failing that, they are given a way to soften the blow of their shortsightedness, and establish a constitutional monarchy, which takes much of the sting out of the bad idea of royal rule. We, who live in a time when the Jewish ideas of the rule of law, individual rights and responsibilities, and equality, all based on the belief that each and every human being is created in God's image, and is a unique individual (see Mishna Sanhedrin, chapter 4, mishna 5), have, in part of the world, at least, gained credence and acceptance, must be sure to not learn wrong pshat, and think that monarchy is a desirable form of government. That is not the House of David we should be praying for.

Shabbt Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix