Clergy Sermons

Shoftim – Write a Torah

Charles Ramsey was the Chief of Police in Washington DC from 1998 – 2007.  Listen to his words: “Policing is often referred to as a job or a profession.  In reality, it is much more. Policing is a calling. It is a pledge to dedicate our professional lives to serving other people and protecting those things our citizens hold dearest: life and liberty.” It’s all about serving others and about values.

This is also how leadership is defined in today’s Torah portion.  It begins at the top, in the case of this morning’s Torah portion with the king.  I want to study together laws connected to a king, as we think about who we are, who we can be and how we might frame leadership and upcoming elections.

Let me summarize the Torah’s principles and then we will look at the text carefully:

1. Power is meant to be limited.  Too much power in the hands of any one human is dangerous. When everything is all about you, which too often occurs, service to others is lost.  The Torah is careful to separate powers.  There are four carefully balanced elements of power: the judges, the priests, the prophets and the kings, and each has their own role.  The ethic of service is protected when we prevent too much power accruing to one individual. Power can corrupt and we need to protect ourselves and our society from that.
2. The people are paramount.  Appointing a king is dependent upon the people’s will.
3. The King’s role must be defined by morality, devoting himself to understanding the moral imperative of each moment.  

Let’s look at the some of the verses. (Deut. 17:14-20)

Verses 14 and 15 teach that a king is dependent on the people deciding that they want one, once they enter the land.  The king is not the founder of society, rather it is society that establishes the kingship!  Micah Goodman in the book The Last Words of Moses, writes: “By postponing the appointment of a king until after the nation has already been founded, the monarchy is weakened and the myth of the king as founder is shattered.” 

We aren’t required to have a king.  The text merely gives dispensation if we choose to have one.  The power to appoint a king is vested in the people.  Power comes from the consent of the governed.  The Enlightenment ideal upon which our country is founded evolves from this ethic of power coming from the bottom up.

Verses 16 and 17 warn about the danger of power: “He shall not keep many horses…. And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.”  These verses caution about consequences of influence and the need to limit power.  The worry about foreign wives is about introducing idolatrous worship. Be careful of influences that creep into decision-making.  The law limiting horses curtails the king’s military power.  Without horses, there can be no chariots, which were the primary weapons of war.  The prohibition to not amass silver and gold stipulates that the king cannot drain the nation of its resources.  The Torah recognizes the need to limit power.  The hunger for power is difficult to sate and we need structures which limit power.

What does the king actually do? Verses 18 and 19: “When he is seated on his royal throne he shall have a copy of the Teaching written for him on a scroll by the Levitical priests. Let it remain with him and let him read in it all his life, so that he may revere the Lord his God, to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws.  Thus he will not grow haughty.”  Humility becomes the essence of real leadership.  That is the only thing the king is required to do is to engage in constant, ongoing study, connecting him to values, ethics, history and community.

What an interesting requirement! The leader, in this case the king, has to devote his, her or themselves to studying values every day.  How might that play out in your lives, where you work, in the community we seek to build both religiously and secularly?   Police Chief Ramsey did something interesting to make this real in Washington DC.  He instituted a training program at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.  His hope was to use the Holocaust as a backdrop – a graphic and disturbing backdrop – for teaching an important lesson about serving others by protecting their individual right and dignity.  He wanted to use it as a warning about what can happen when the police lose sight of their commitment to serve others.  This is a call for leaders across professions and across society to learn and know history, morals, compassion, courage, human dignity, respect and kindness.  That is true leadership.

There is an interpretation that the king has to write not one but two Torahs.  It comes from the verse: Katav Lo et Mishnei Torah.  Mishnei could mean two Torahs, one to keep in the library for reference and then a smaller one to put on his arm and carry with him at all times.  Such a Torah would need to be shorter and the rabbis argue as to which verses would be included, maybe just these particular verses limiting his power and demanding humility and service.  Maybe he writes down verses he needs to remember.  The image of the king combing through the text and selecting which ones to include in this second, smaller Torah is interesting.  It demands constant engagement with the holy word.  Think about where you work or what you do.  Which verses would you select for yourself?  What would be in your scroll? It’s why the verses around this building are so important and there is space to add new ones.

And now make it fully personal.  Maimonides says that each of us needs to write our own Torah.  Maybe this does not mean to physically write it out word for word but, like the king’s second Torah, to select those words and verses that we need to remember.  We are in Elul, a month of introspection and reflection.  Make this teaching real.  What will you write down that you need to remember this year?  What Torah will you carry with you?

One fact that needs to be added.  Sadly, the Israelite monarchy rarely followed the rules of Deuteronomy.  King Solomon, renowned for his wisdom, deviated from these laws.  He amassed foreign wives, bringing idolatry to the land.  He increased taxation to live in luxury and employed a forced labor force to build his projects.  It was a national disaster.  Under his son, the kingdom split apart.  Deuteronomy is a warning.  Too often, power is abused.  We need this message right now, especially with looming elections. I know that when I consider candidates to vote for, I certainly consider key issues that are important to me, but I also look for a people driven by character who live by a code of ethics that they have made part of their essence. I have witnessed across the political spectrum people of integrity and values. It matters.

The laws regarding the king weave together many different ideas, power of the people, a leader’s life devoted to moral learning, awareness of the danger of power and a call to serve.  It leaves us with a vision of the direction in which we should strive.  Let’s do our part to live the ethic. I conclude with Police Chief Ramsey, changing his words a bit to make them broader and extend beyond police: “We should view ourselves as a thread that is woven throughout the communities we serve, a thread that holds together the very fabric of our democracy….When the community hurts, we hurt. When the community celebrates, we celebrate. When the community is threatened, we stand up and are counted.  That’s what it means to be a thread within the community.”  Let’s follow the lessons of our Torah portion and be that thread.