Jason Lever Sermon 30 August 2025/1st Elul 5785

Sermon for Shoftim

With Rabbi always taking his summer holiday at this time of year and myself always being around this month, I found that I’ve actually done three sermons in this parish on Parasha Shoftim before.

Now, while one of the great attributes of our Rabbi is that he never resorts to getting an old sermon out of the drawer to re-use it, as your shaliach tzibbur, I re-read this sermon I gave 8 years ago, and I barely remembered it. So, I’m hoping the same will be true of you – or your money back guaranteed (you didn’t hear that, Peter).

In this sermon, I invoke that well-known sage – Rav Harry Potter – in focusing on the prohibition on all forms of magic that could be a slippery road to idolatry. Harry Potter has a mixed press across different religions.

The Vatican under two Popes ago [I had to update this reference] condemned the Harry Potter books for posing a danger to children by promoting witchcraft and the occult.

An Iranian state television documentary concluded that Harry Potter is a Zionist plot for devil worship.

However, Harry has found a good number of friends in Jewish quarters. According to an Israeli academic, the Hogwarts saga would not have been regarded as pagan worship by Maimonides. For the Rambam rejected the kind of magic that was supernatural and could not be explained, as he saw it as competing with Judaism. However, the version of magic used by Harry Potter can be seen as similar to normal science and so explainable – whether we understand it or not! I’ll leave you to agree with that or not….

As you heard in today’s Parasha, there is a major warning to the people of Israel not to copy "the abominations of those nations" whom they will encounter in the land of Israel. And a gateway to this is undertaking any divination, being a soothsayer, or charmer, or enchanter, or a necromancer. The methods of the necromancer, I had to look up, employing the deceased for information gathering, is forbidden by the Torah, as they seek to create a pathway to knowledge that circumvents the Almighty.

By the way, a “charmer” here means a spell binder of snakes, rather than shall we say any ‘smooth operators’, obviously not thinking of anyone in our fine congregation.

Before plunging – or not – into the world of sorcery, let’s take a step back to what comes at the start of this whole Torah portion of Shoftim. Arguably, the most famous passage in the portion is "Justice, justice, shall you pursue", as a condition of inheriting the land of Israel. But what sort of justice is this?

In the next two lines, the very first answer is eradicating idols.

"You shall not plant an Asherah of any kind of tree...”, ‘Asherah’ being a mother goddess in the Canaanite religion.

Tackling idol worship immediately follows the proclamation to pursue justice. But are there not some instances of spirituality or verging on the supernatural that crop up say in the Talmud?

On the one hand, the Babylonian Talmud (the Bavli) recounts that the greatest of sages Rabbi Akiva allegedly wept when reaching this verse about sorcerers and necromancers, out of concern that such sins were separating the people from God. Yet, I think we can find examples in the Talmud of metaphors, maxims, fables and tales that could be seen to blur that boundary between permissible spirituality surrounding God’s word and work, and nefarious supernatural spells of sorcerers?

As my teacher of Hasidut in Jerusalem, Rabbi Levi Cooper, says, the Talmud is a text that provides a window into the mystical world of the sages and contains ‘strategies for dealing with the esoteric world‘. For example:

•                The Hasidic Rabbi Meizlish explains that on Shabbat a person can work out what his or her portion will be in the World to Come – but how? By taking his own excitement and spiritual awakening and multiplying by a factor of 60! Seems close to wizardry to me.

•                The Tashlich practice of tossing breadcrumbs, representing sins, in flowing water, that we’ll do on Rosh Hashanah afternoon on the beach, has some origins in ancient peoples believing that the best way to win favour from evil spirits living in waterways was to give them gifts. Is this in the realm of the supernatural?

•                And a final example, in the Song of Songs that we recall during the Amidah, it is said that the Divine spirit rested on all present and each person spontaneously composed the same words to this shira (song). Not just the adults, but the infants and babies, and even foetuses whom the Talmud explained could perceive the Almighty through their mothers’ abdomens becoming like clear glass, and so declared as well, “This is my God”. A vivid metaphor verging on magical properties?

Overall, a fine line seems to exist between spiritual invocations within the practice of Judaism, and supernatural incantations that are held to be utterly abhorrent and bot permitted.

But if sorcery and the like are out, how should the Israelites get the spiritual guidance they are needing to pursue the goal of justice?

One answer is to look to the Prophets and you won’t go far wrong. Through Moses and the line of Prophets that followed that God will communicate His message to us. Fine, but how do we guard against false prophets leading us? Well, the proof is in the pudding. The Rambam states that only when a prophet predicts good fortune can he be truly tested; and if this prophecy doesn‘t come true, then he is a false prophet.

As Rabbi Kook (Chief Rabbi of Israel) put it, the people must also see lucidity and charisma in their leader, on top of seeing a pure heart and unpolluted soul and penetrating, profound wisdom. 

But one person’s charismatic leader may be another’s false prophet, depending how this quality is exercised... such as revolutionary leaders who preach deliverance of a fairer society but end up practising as arbitrary and corrupt sharing of the spoils as the dictators they‘ve just ousted.

In modern services, to help bring the Prophetic vision to reality, we always incorporate into our weekly Shabbat Torah service a reading from the Prophets. And as you heard today in the Haphtorah, in a consolation for the people of Israel and foretelling the redemption for mankind, the prophet Isaiah reassures us that “the LORD has comforted Zion... and made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord”, bringing joy and gladness. 

Taken as a whole, then, the message from today’s Torah service is no sorcerers or diviners need apply. Such sorcery will distract us from the paths and practices of justice that is the central message of this whole Parasha.

But what about Harry Potter I hear you ask? The Bible tells us that evil can be finally and totally defeated? Isaiah (25) again tells us that there will be a day when “death is swallowed up forever and the Lord, God, wipes the tears from every face.”

In the wizarding world of Harry Potter, he does, indeed (so I’m told by my little cousins) vanquish Voldemort at the end of Book Seven.

Shabbat Shalom.