Justice, Justice - Chase it!

A Shabbat reflection on tzedek, tzedek tirdof - justice, justice you shall pursue

Transcript

Why Justice Is Repeated

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There are verses from the Torah that almost everyone seems to know. In the beginning, God created, let my people go, get up and leave your home toward the land that I will show you. And in this week, in the Torah portion, comes another one that may not quite be as well known, but certainly ought to be. Four words, six syllables in Hebrew. And yet, Jewish tradition has spent 3,000 years unable to talk about these three words. Justice, justice you shall pursue. Now, if you know anything about how the Torah uses language, you know it doesn't repeat itself for style. The Torah is economical, it doesn't pad words. So when the text says justice twice in a row, back to back, our tradition sits up and asks why. Rashi, our great medieval commentator, gives us one answer. He says that the doubling teaches us to seek out a good court, not just any court, but a court staffed with judges of real competence and integrity. One Sadek

Rashi On Courts And Integrity

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tells us to pursue justice. The other Sadek tells us to pursue it through just means. In other words, you cannot get to a righteous outcome through a corrupt process. The ends do not justify the means. If you want justice, the way to pursue it has to be just. This is really a profound thought. Think about how much of our world operates on the opposite assumption that if the goal is good enough, we can cut any corners to get there. The Torah says no, tzedek, sedek tierdov, justice, justice, twice, because the path and the destination must match. I like Rashi's answer. But as with anything Jewish, there's always more than one perspective. The Hasidic master, Reb Sibchhabunam, offers something different. He says, one is a tzedek for you, the other is a tzedek for your neighbor. We are remarkably good at demanding justice when we're

Justice For You And Others

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the ones feeling wronged. We pursue that sedek, that justice with a sense of vigor. But the second sedek, the justice owed to someone else, the person we disagree with, the person we've already decided is in the wrong, that pursuit is much harder and much rarer. Two words, because justice has two directions, outward and toward the self. And it is far too easy to chase one of them. I like that answer too. Very psychological, very personal. But I want to offer you one more way into this verse, a way that has less to do with grammar and more to do with the body. I thought of this interpretation while walking through the parking lot of Congregation Benay Israel in this nearly intolerable heat and humidity. I never thought that a parking lot could teach me Torah, but here we are. Here is my parking lot

The Thirst That Returns

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epiphany. Think about somebody crossing a desert, not a metaphorical desert, an actual brutal sun-scorched desert, like the one our ancestors crossed for nearly 40 years. When that traveler finally sees water, what do they cry out? They don't say water, they say water, water. And every commentator who has ever noticed this pattern of doubling in the Torah has asked why the repetition. It is the sound of a need that doesn't quiet down after being named once. A person dying of thirst doesn't say the word water as a point of information. They say it twice, they say it more than twice because the thirst itself is relentless, because one utterance doesn't capture how badly, how continuously the body is crying out. That is what I think is happening with tzedek, tzedek, justice, justice. Justice is not a place you arrive at and then rest. It is not a box you check. The Torah does not say tsedek tierdov pursue justice once, as if a pursuit has a finish line. It says it twice because justice, like that traveler's thirst, you have to satisfy it and it returns. You build a just court this year, and next year new iniquities emerge that need addressing. You write one wrong and you discover another wrong standing right behind it. Justice, justice, because the moment you think you have achieved it fully and finally, you have stopped pursuing it. And the pursuit is the whole point. Notice too that the verb is tir dof, pursue, chase, run after, not to seek, not attain, not team sun, not find. The Torah could have said, justice, achieve it. Instead, it says, Justice, justice, chase it. And chasing is a verb with no natural stopping point. You don't pursue something you've already caught. The Torah is telling us gently but unmistakably that a righteous society is not a status, it is a direction, it is a way of walking through the world where you never quite say we're done here. True, it is a kind of an obsession, but obsession can lead to near perfection. Consider this true story. In 2011, a documentary came out called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It's a documentary about Jiro Ono, a Japanese sushi chef, so devoted to his craft that his tiny restaurant located in a subway

Obsession, Excellence, And Jiro

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station received a three-star Michelin rating. Ono was so exacting in his demands that employees weren't permitted to prepare food unless they learned the proper way to squeeze the hand towels, which were offered to guests upon arrival. And learning that could take weeks or even years. And when an apprentice finally made a passable tamago omelette, he wept with joy. Audiences arrived in droves, but critics were torn about his single-mindedness. One critic said this is a portrait of tunnel vision, and he didn't mean that as a compliment, noting that Ono's relationship to a meal that can be consumed in a matter of minutes wavers between love and madness. And while there may be a difference between sushi and justice, there is something to be said for the single-mindedness that people or societies pursue. What a different place this world would be if every government was obsessed with justice in the same way that Jiro Ono is obsessed with sushi. Our sages understood that. Keep in mind that this obsessive pursuit happens not because the earlier answers were wrong, but because sedek is a well you return to, thirsty again, no matter how many times you've already drunk from it. And so this week, as we read Parashat Shoftim, I don't think the question is, have we achieved justice? I think the question the Torah wants us to ask is smaller and harder. Are we pursuing it? Are we saying the word twice? One for the

The Hard Question: Are We Chasing

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process, one for the outcome, once for ourselves, once for our neighbors, once for today, and again because tomorrow the thirst for justice returns. And so on this Shabbat, I offer this hope. Let us never stop saying justice, justice twice.