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The Pulpit
And The
Public Sphere

Parshat Shoftim: Deuteronomy 16:18-
21:9; Isaiah 51:12-52:12.

O

ne Shabbat, the rabbi of a con-
gregation delivered a sermon
about observing Shabbat.
Afterwards, the president of the congre-
gation came to him and said, "Rabbi,
there are a good number of people in the
congregation who don't keep Shabbat. It
would be better if you stayed away from
that topic:'
The following week, the rabbi chose to
speak about keeping kosher. The presi-
dent pointed out that this,
too, is a sensitive topic since
many congregants don't keep
kosher
The following week, the
rabbi's sermon encouraged
the congregation to give tze-
dakah. This time, the presi-
dent said to the rabbi, "You
know, rabbi, our congregants
have many financial obliga-
tions and aren't able to give
very much tzedakah."
The rabbi was baffled and
asked the president, "What should I
speak about on Shabbat?" The president
responded, "Just speak about something
Jewish:'
While it should be obvious that the
rabbi of the joke above thought that he
had found appropriate (if challenging)
topics for his community, recent public
discussions of the Iran nuclear deal have
raised the question: Should rabbis speak
about politics?
Parshat Shoftim is an important
example of the fact that Torah has much
to say about society and its workings.
Jewish life is lived on many levels at
once. Our tradition encourages us to
become good individuals. It helps us
consider the important issues for our
families and our Jewish community. In
addition, Torah is full of concepts and
ideas that are meant to shape entire
communities.
Shoftim begins with an extended sec-
tion that deals with the role of judges,
the prohibition on bribery and the
injunction to strive for justice. The par-
shah sets out rules for selecting a king
and, critically, the restrictions on the
king's power and position.
Later, we learn about the boundaries
of society and what actions are beyond

the pale of acceptability.
Shoftim will even lay out some of
the laws about war and the raising of
an army. The parshah concludes with a
section related to unsolved homicides.
While this may seem a bit specialized,
upon closer inspection it is actually
a crucial message about the role of
society and the broad responsibility of
leadership.
Throughout Jewish history, our
ancestors returned to these
topics for guidance on both
personal and communal
issues. Rabbis mined the
ideas and approaches of the
• Torah for the benefit of their
communities.
Rabbis have always spo-
ken about the life of their
communities — to comfort
them, to challenge them and
to guide them. To claim that
the issues of the day don't
belong in synagogue is to say
that Torah and Jewish life have nothing
to say to people today.
Here is the caveat: The Jewish com-
munity today is not unified on political
issues — if it ever was. That makes
speaking about the issues of the day —
Israel, social justice, local and national
politics — challenging.
My claim is that Torah has tremen-
dous wisdom to share about all sorts
of issues and that limiting ourselves to
learning only some subset of Torah is
impoverishing. Still, the pulpit is not a
Sunday morning talk show or a partisan
event.
Fortunately, the Torah can speak in
ways that are beyond the purely political
and can help inform our decisions and
actions.

❑

Steven Rubenstein is the rabbi at

Congregation Beth Ahm in West Bloomfield.

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41.

The Jewish FerIcrat e

OF METROPOLITAN DE

August 20 • 2015

49