Guest Sermon by Michael Harris 15th August / 2nd Elul 5786

Parashat Shoftim

In case you are not aware, I want to let you know that I am member of the legal profession, yes, a

lawyer, and still working some of the time.

Have you heard of Montesquieu – in full, Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de

Montesquieu? Possibly some of you have. As you’ve probably guessed, he was French, indeed of

French nobility. Born in the Bordeaux area, he lived mainly in the early part of the 18th century.

His family was catholic, Huguenots. But he converted to become protestant. He was a jurist, an

historian and a philosopher. He started his career as a lawyer and then moved towards study and

wrote several important texts. For me and most others, the text which was most important and

lasts to this very day was The Spirit of Law (De l'esprit des lois), published in 1748. Montesquieu

explained that government should be divided into three administrative powers or functions: the

executive, the legislative, and the judicial. These should each be separate from, yet dependent

upon, each other so that the influence of any one power would not be able to exceed that of the

other two, either singly or in combination.

At the time, this was a radical idea because it went against the three Estates structure of the French Monarchy, namely the clergy, the aristocracy, and the people at large represented in the Estates-General (États généraux), thereby erasing the last vestige of a feudalistic structure. Not surprisingly, I am a very strong advocate of the judiciary, and the independence of their appointment and their operation.

Now, I can turn to the connection to this week’s parsha. Bear in mind this week’s parsha is named

Shoftim meaning judges and you will read in our first Aliyah of this parsha (chapter 16, v20)

“Justice, justice shall you pursue”

God clearly wanted us to understand how vital it was for government to include a fair and just

system of justice, administered by fair and just judges, whoever they might be. In fact, this is a

mandatory requirement, a mitzvah. Whether he recognised it consciously or unconsciously, I

doubt Montesquieu could have progressed to his then modern and sophisticated adaptation for the whole of government administration without paying attention to what God required the Israelites to do in Shoftim.

This and other parts of the parsha also made me think again that nothing is static. As we move

forward, we must change or, if you prefer, develop - hopefully and mainly for the better. The

Torah had prescribed that we must “pursue justice” – what an excellent starting point, but without

change and development of the justice system to match the needs of a hugely increased

population and changing world, we would be failing in our duty to follow this exhortation, this

requirement.

Surely, we must not interpret the Torah literally. We must understand the underlying principle and

then apply it to our contemporary life.

Let me explain what I mean with another example from this week’s parsha. A translation of

chapter18, verse 10 reads as follows –

“There must not be among you anyone who passes his son

or daughter through fire, a stick-diviner, a diviner of times, an illusionist, a diviner who interprets

omens, a divining sorcerer”. Verse 11 nominates a few more types of diviner. These diviners, at

the time, clearly represented abhorrent practices and professions to be avoided.

Diviners as described would no doubt, at least by implication and possibly by explicit

declaration, claim magical or other powers equal to or even exceeding those of God. Such

must obviously be offensive to God and God’s commands.

How and why should we worry about diviners now. After all the reference to diviners is surely

only an example of a principle – of course, they and their practices would have been the

important thing to avoid at the time. We need to use the principle to see what practices and

things which we need to avoid nowadays in order to fulfil the relevant mitzvot. Certainly,

shouldn’t we now talk about the websites to be avoided. Surely some parts of social media

need to be shunned, at least for our children. However, I suppose I would accept that you

might not want to entirely abandon the classification of diviners as a profession to be avoided

so that we can include some of our extremist politicians in the category, on the grounds that

they do appear at times to claim magical or even divine powers!

In conclusion, I am simply going to repeat the mitzvah:

“Justice, justice shall you pursue” .

Amen, and Shabbat Shalom