Parashat Shoftim
Shabbat shalom ya all and happy first week of school! Check out our High Holiday schedule and weekend services. Read all about it…..Friday Night services tonight, August 25 at the regular time of 7:00 PM. We hope to see you.
Shabbat morning services are THIS Saturday August 26 at 9 AM. We will have the Torah service at around 9:45 AM and a children’s service/story time with Morah Shereen at 10:30 AM. This week’s lovely kidush lunch is generously sponsored by Yosef and Claudia Aguilar in honor of the new school year starting up for their children, Vania, Sofia and Nathan.They wish all our children a successful and great year ahead.
Cantor Ben Moshe’s Message
This week, as we read Parshat Shoftim, we are now into the month of Elul, the month of preparation for the High Holidays. This week we continue reading the Haftarot of Consolation, as we have been since Tish’ah B’Av, and in this week’s prophetic reading, we see a word appear three times-“awake”. The prophet Isaiah is telling the People of Israel to awaken from the nightmare of exile, of course, but in the context of the calendar we may read these words in a different way. At this time of year, as we begin to blow the shofar and begin in earnest to examine our lives, we are called upon to wake up-wake up from our delusions, from our mistaken ideas about our lives, and to seek the truth. As we see the words “hit’oreri” and “uri, uri” echoed in the hymn “L’cha Dodi” on Friday evening and again in the haftarah itself on Shabbat morning, let us resolve to be truly awake and aware. Shabbat Shalom.
Hazzan Yitzhak Ben-Moshe
Parashat Hashavua from Rabbi Dr. Peter Tarlow, Rabbi Emeritus Texas A&M, and Director of the Center for Jewish Latino Relations.
The name of this week’s parashah is Shoftim (meaning: Judges). You will find this week’s section in the Book of Deuteronomy 16:8-21:9. The section deals with the rule of law, its administration, the right of appeal, or the concept of going to a higher court, regulations to stop blood feuds, and perhaps the world’s first attempt at creating “moral” rules of war.
On a primary level this week’s parashah sets the basis for Jewish jurisprudence. It gives us the principle that once the law is decided, assuming it is decided in a fair fashion, then the decision is the law. In other words, a society needs a certain amount of consistency for order to flourish and for the citizen to know what is or is not expected of him/her.
Underneath this legal guide, however, there is a still more important principle. The text assumes that where there is life and law, there are also those who might try to take life so as to destroy the law. In other words, this text is teaching us that where there is no realism then idealism cannot exist. Is this text a reaction to humanity’s early failures as noted in the Book of Genesis where all too often idealism failed because humanity chose to ignore reality?
Is the text teaching us that societies need laws because without these laws that form the basis of a civil society humanity loses its way and in the end self-destructs? This Biblical text reminds us that humans are by their very nature capable of greatness but also fallible and capable of horrendous deeds. Law then becomes the protective edge of humanity. To be human, to be just a bit below the angles, we must have structure and both personal and group regulation.
This week’s parashah teaches us that there is evil in the world; that some people are capable of doing a great deal of evil. To fail to confront evil is evil; to refuse to face reality is to become allies of those who seek to undermine stability and social norms.
There is also a flip side of humanity, for just as we are capable of creating horrors so too are we also capable of greatness and acts of kindness. The Biblical text thus describes humanity as both good and evil, of being capable of descending to deep ethical lows of climbing to great ethical highs. Is this text teaching us that we may never be able to eliminate strains of evil from the world and therefore we must be constantly vigilant? The question that has faced humanity since Cain murdered Abel is how do we regulate and control our evil impulses, both on the personal and on the societal level?
What do you think? What does this passage teach us about war and relations between both people and nations in our own age?
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