PARASHAT SHOFTIM – GAINESVILLE
When scholars began looking at the book of Deuteronomy from a literary-critical point of view and not just as a religious text, the general consensus was that the book was written long after the first 4 books of the Torah and that it reflected a moment in Jewish history when the reality of being in the Land of Israel was an immediate concern. Like much of Deuteronomy, the text speaks of a nation where the people are sovereign, settled, and agrarian. It is a vastly different world than the one they left behind in the desert and in the slavery of Egypt. Put into a modern context, Exodus and Numbers and Leviticus were books of vision and Deuteronomy is a book of dealing with a new reality. And one big issue in this new reality is one that nations deal with all the time; the problem of kings.
Listen to the words of Moses: ”If, after you have entered the land that the Eternal your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, ‘I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,’ you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Eternal your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kin. Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Eternal has warned you, ‘You must not go back that way again.’ And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.” (Deuteronomy 17:14-17)
Not very controversial but there is a hidden warning in there. Notice how it says, ‘If you decide, I will set a king over me and do as the nations,’ it is the people deciding to take matters into their own hands. God isn’t deciding to place a king. And the second half about the horse and the gold is the second warning: kings steal and by setting yourself a king, you are inviting him to steal from you. Moses knows how hard it will be to find a king who cares about the people and who cares about leadership. But such a leader is next to impossible to find.
There is good evidence that this part of Deuteronomy was written after the reigns of Kings David and Solomon and Saul – all problematic kings in their own way – and made to appear as a warning after the fact.
Take the story in 1st Samuel, for example. Samuel is a judge, prophet, and priest– the ideal Jewish leader. This is the model set forth in Judges, and it seems to be working well enough. But his elders come to him one day with a concern and say to him, “You have grown old, and your sons have not followed your ways. Therefore, appoint a king for us to govern us like all other nations” (I Samuel 8:6).
I doubt Samuel knew the words of Deuteronomy as they were written long after he had died. This must have been a jarring request and Samuel reaches out to God. What to do, he asks God? God calms him down, reassures him that the Jews are rejecting God’s leadership (not Samuel’s), and tells him to fulfill their request. God is saying, essentially, if they want to see a king over them, they will get the full menu of what kings are capable of doing. Enter Saul who not only created an administrative state complete with its wars and conflicts but also was capable of great anger and jealousy toward his son Jonathan and a very deep paranoia. Not an effective way to rule or be king. But this is what the people wanted, right?!
The people wanted to be like every other nation with a king and with all the paranoia and complexities that come with a king. Now they were finding out just what that meant. Deuteronomy, especially this portion, is a warning that says, “I know you want to be like everyone else but you are not to be like everyone else.’ A meaningful nuance to the issue of chosenness.
Whether you understand “chosen-ness” as an exclusive or inclusive condition, our sacred texts, starting with Torah itself, make it clear that Israel is not meant to be just like all the other nations. Indeed, for the Rabbis it was the ignoramuses that demanded a king and they were louder and more threatening than those who said ‘ours is not a nation to be ruled by a king.’
Today, we live in a world beyond that which our Biblical ancestors could have imagined. Jews have sovereignty in our own land and are subject to foreign powers at the same time. We have freedom in this land but are still subject to the vicissitudes of the political winds. We choose leaders but often forget that leaders go bad. And so we have this paradox: we are free to choose our leaders and each of us has a role, but there is always a risk and, at the same time, our text is there to remind us that we are still set apart. In other words, we are part of the greater world but we are to set ourselves apart in some very important ways. What does this mean?
The Torah says that Israel is “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” (Exodus 19:6). The prophet Isaiah calls us “a light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). The whole Jewish bible and later Jewish history is clear: the Jewish people — in its rules, behaviors, theology, and leadership — is not supposed to be like all of the other nations. We live in both worlds. Our blessing is that we can bring holiness into the secular world but, at the same time, our curse is that too often the secular world and its priorities and values seep into the Jewish world and not every value and moral that seeps in is valuable or moral! Our Jewish curse and our Jewish blessing is having our feet in both worlds and bringing holiness to both is our duty, our mitzvah, our joy, our burden and our responsibility. Jewish grandparents used to say,
es iz nisht gring tsu zeyn a eyd – עס איז נישט גרינג צו זיין אַ ייִד
‘It’s hard to be a Jew.’ It is. But it is also the gift and consequence of chosenness that we received at Sinai. How we choose our chosenness is the never-ending Jewish question and each of us out to seek to answer every moment of every day. It may be hard to be a Jew but it can also be the greatest gift.
