Shoftim: The Justice of God's Love

The Torah commands us that “Judges and officers you shall place at all your city-gates.” (Deuteronomy 16:18). The Prophet tells us that “and I [God addressing Jerusalem] will restore your judges as at before, and your counselors as at the beginning: afterward you shall be called 'the city of righteousness, the faithful city'.” (Isaiah 1:26).

Also in our daily prayers we bless the Creator by saying, “Restore our judges as they were at before and counselors as there were once. Remove our sorrows and troubles: we long for You Lord, to rule over us with kindness and compassion, with righteousness and justice. Blessed are You Lord, the King who loves righteousness and justice.”

Let's reflect on the connection of these passages. There is an evident relation between placing judges in all our city-gates, and afterward we will call our city a righteous, faithful city.

If we consider Jerusalem as the highest level of consciousness -- which indeed is --, we need the Creator to assign the best judgment we can ever have, and that is His judgment. He rules with kindness and compassion, and loves righteousness and justice as His attributes He wants us to emulate because we are His children.

These attributes certainly remove our sorrows and troubles because God's ways do not cohabit with anything different from His attributes. These are the judges and counselors that we want God to restore in our consciousness so they can rule every aspect and dimension of our life. Thus His Love will reign with its inherent righteousness and justice in Jerusalem as the united awareness of our permanent connection to Him.

The process to do that is achieved when we pursue the fairness and rectitude God's Love pursues in His Creation.

“Justice, justice shall you follow, that you may live, and inherit the Land the Lord your God gives you.” (16:20)

It is such, for in this Land we are destined to dwell with Him. Our Land is the time and place where we live united with the One who gives it to us, where there is no room for other gods and idols (16:21-22, 17:1-3).

In God's ways and attributes there is nothing alien to them.

“When you come into the Land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.” (18:9)

We approach this awareness when we integrate all aspects and dimensions of consciousness as a harmonic unity free from negative traits.

“Be wholehearted with the Lord your God. For these nations, that you are to dispossess, hearken unto soothsayers, and unto diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not given you so to do.” (18:13)

First we must be wholehearted in our consciousness in order to be wholehearted with the Creator. Once we unite our intellect and discernment, thoughts and emotions, feelings and passion, instinct and actions under the rule of Love's judgment, righteousness, justice, compassion and kindness to approach life and the world, we will be wholehearted with the One only God because in this unity we allow Him to reign on us with His kindness and compassion.

This is about our Essence and identity that define what we are, have and do in consonance with our Creator's ways and attributes, apart from ego's fantasies and illusions (see our previous commentaries in this blog on Parshat Shoftim: “Approaching Justice as Love” of August 7, 2010 and “Living in Love's Judgments” of August 28, 2011).

The Prophet reminds us about the slavery of living under the yoke of the nations, the idols disguised as ego's fantasies and illusions that keep in captivity the higher awareness of our connection to God's Love that calls us to freedom.

“Shake yourself from the dust, arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; free yourself of the bands of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.” (Isaiah 52:2)

It's up to us to walk out from the mirages of the material world by the hand of Love's ways, which are the true judges and counselors that must stand at the gates of every aspect of consciousness to keep it united and close to our Father and King.

After all He is who fights the battles against our own enemies, either be ego's illusions or people.

“When you go forth to battle against your enemies, and see horses, and chariots, and a people more [numerous] than you, you shall not be afraid of them; for the Lord your God is with you who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. (…) for the Lord your God is He that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.” (20:1, 4)

Let's restore our best judgment and higher values and principles at the gates of what we discern, think, believe, imagine, feel, hear, see, speak and do. Let them lead and guide all aspects of life honoring the justice and righteousness of God's Love along with His compassion and kindness to reign in our land, in Jerusalem our undivided capital and anchor of our permanent connection with the Creator. Amen.

Parshat Shoftim: Living in God's Justice

The best guidance and counsel we have in consciousness is our judgment, and we have to endow it with the highest awareness of love's ways and attributes.

Our consciousness encompasses multiple facets, layers, dimensions and expressions that in the Torah are represented by our Tribes (the best human traits and qualities to fulfill the Creator's will), the Promised Land (our individual and collective lives with their entire potential in God's ways and attributes), cities (material knowledge, habits, customs, ideologies, beliefs, convictions, tendencies) that we must direct with the wisdom God teaches us when we follow His ways.

This direction is the judgment, the discernment that only the righteousness and justice of God's love must be the conductors of all aspects of life in plenitude, abundance, happiness and peace.

"You shall set up judges (shoftim) and [law enforcement] officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your Tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment." (Deuteronomy 16:18)

Hence the best judges in our consciousness are love's ways and attributes, not only to guide all dimensions of life but also the way we approach our surrounding material reality.

"Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and possess the land the Lord, your God, is giving you." (16:20)

This is the justice of love, the only one that we must pursue in order to live in our Promised Land.

We have indicated that righteousness, justice, truth, peace and loving kindness are all inherent qualities of themselves, as it is reminded by our wisest kings and prophets.

"Loving kindness and truth have met, righteousness and peace have kissed", "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; loving kindness and truthfulness go before You." (Psalms 85:11, 89:15)

"Let love and truthfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the table of your heart." (Proverbs 3:3)

"The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be tranquility and confidence forever." (Isaiah 32:17)

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act with justice and to love loving kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

"Thus said the Lord of hosts has said: 'Administer true justice; do loving kindness and compassion to one another." (Zechariah 7:9)

We have to understand them all as the primordial ways and attributes of love, as well as clear reflections of God's love in us.

The portion continues emphasizing the inspiring, guiding and teaching role of our highest awareness of God's love, represented by the high priest and the tribe of Levi, as our best judgment to approach life and the world.

"According to the law they [priests and Levites] instruct you [and] according to the judgment they say to you, you shall do; you shall not divert from the word they tell you, either right or left. (…) For the Lord, your God, has chosen him [Levi] out of all your Tribes, to stand and serve in the Name of the Lord, he and his sons, all the days." (Deuteronomy 17:11, 18:5)

We need the best judgment when we have to confront ego's materialistic desires in the battlefield of illusions.

"And it will be, when you approach the battle, that the kohen [high priest] shall come near, and speak to the people." (20:2)

This discernment also reminds us that when we live in love's ways, God's love is also fighting in our wars to freedom from the attachments to ego's fantasies and illusions.

"For the Lord, your God, is the One who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to redeem you." (20:4)

It is thus, for He is our sole redeemer from the traps of the illusions that we create with our feelings of lack.

These wars and battles are about regaining love in every aspect of our life, love as our essence and true identity. In order to set up love in all dimensions of consciousness we first must work with the traits that have taken us down into the darkness of negative thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts.

These traits are the cities that represent our mistaken beliefs and ideas, negative thoughts and emotions, lower desires and passions, and instincts out of control. We have to confront them not necessarily as mortal enemies that we must destroy, but as traits that we can transform or redirect into the positive and constructive ways of love's attributes.

"When you approach a city to wage war against it, you shall propose peace to it. And it will be, if it responds to you with peace, and it opens up to you, then it will be, [that] all the people found therein shall become tributary to you, and they shall serve you." (20:10-11)

We must be persistent until we refine them enough to make them part of our intellectual, mental, emotional and physical strength.

"(…) and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until its submission." (20:20)

Again, the prophet recalls in the haftarah that God's love is with us in our wars to regain the freedom that love is, in order to leave behind the negative consequences of ego's materialistic illusions, the nothingness for which we sale our true identity.

"Shake yourselves from the dust, arise, sit down O Jerusalem; free yourself of the bands of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For so said the Lord, 'you were sold for nothing, and you shall not be redeemed for money'." (Isaiah 52:2-3)

God's love teaches us that though we sale our consciousness for the nothingness of illusion, not with another illusion ("money") we regain it, in order to return to love.

Thus we know that it is up to us our return to His love, because He always speaks to us even in our darkest illusions.

"Therefore, My people shall know My name; therefore, on that day, for I am He who speaks, here I am." (52:6)

Parshat Shoftim: Approaching Justice as Love

Justice is the main subject in Shoftim (Judges). Our Sages say: “By three things is the world sustained: justice, truth and peace.” (Pirkei Avot 1:18), as it is written, “Truth, and a judgment of peace, you should administer at your [city] gates.” (Zachariah 8:16); and in this statement we must understand the context of shoftim.

Judgment is the application of justice, and justice is the righteous thing to do. Hence by doing the right thing we indeed do justice. Although the word may suggest “law”, its meaning is related to make truth prevail as the foundation for peace.

“You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show favoritism, and you shall not take a bribe, for bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the wise.” (Deuteronomy 16:19)

Doing what is right is acting with and for the truth, which is encompassed by love’s ways and attributes that oppose ego’s agenda of manipulation (perversion of justice), self-interest (favoritism), and corruption by pursuing materialistic fantasies and illusions (bribes) at any cost (losing the truth and trust in love).

The portion continues addressing idolatry as the separation from our Creator’s ways and attributes. Idolatry as the masks ego wants us to wear for every aspect of our lives.

“If a matter eludes you in judgment, between blood and blood, between judgment and judgment, or between lesion and lesion, words of dispute in your cities, then you shall rise and go up to the place the Lord, your God, chooses.” (17:8)

Mystic sages comment on this verse saying that our “cities” represent the aspects of consciousness that we have to watch over in order to maintain their harmonious balance and expression. They also say that the gates of these cities are seven in the head (ears, eyes, nostrils and mouth) and two in the lower part of the body. All these must be guided with justice, meaning in love’s ways and attributes.

In sum we have to conduct every aspect, dimension and expression of our consciousness in the direction of love's ways. As we have mentioned in previous commentaries, our higher awareness of the Creator (represented by the high priest) is the best “judge”.

“And you shall come to the Levitic kohanim and to the judge who will be in those days, and you shall inquire, and they will tell you the words of judgment. And you shall do according to the word they tell you, from the place the Lord will choose, and you shall observe to do according to all they instruct you.” (17:9-10)

The awareness of love as our permanent bond and connection with the Creator is the best judgment we can have to deal with the illusions of the material world. When love conducts every aspect of our lives, truth is served and peace prevails individually and collectively.

The portion mentions divination, soothsaying, and other kinds of incantations as the lowest means to pursue control over the forces of nature and to transgress love’s ways and attributes (18:10-12, 14) and “Be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” (18:13).

If love is our sustenance as the material manifestation of God's love, why should we pursue the mirages of ego’s fantasies and illusions? Still, the choices are only ours and also their consequences.

The text continues with a reiteration of the cities of refuge (19:2-21) where the Levites are responsible for bringing back to God’s ways and attributes those who have transgressed against their fellow man.

Our sages teach that every man, for the primordial fact that he is the image and likeness of the Creator, is not evil. Any crime that he may commit is the result of ignorance, therefore he must be educated with the teachings of the Torah. This is one of the main principles of Judaism. The cities of refuge are places designated directly from our Creator to rehabilitate those who fall into the negative trends of human consciousness.

This is one of the most precious commandments given to us, and we must comprehend it as part of the divine essence that created everything and sustains everything.

God's love is about learning to be and do His ways and attributes, and the cities of refuge were established for that purpose. When we are not able to live harmonically among our brethren, and transgress against them, we need to be helped in order to redeem ourselves.

This help is available by those who can guide us back to who we really are: the image and likeness of God's love. The Torah calls them Levites and we also call them the highest level of our consciousness, the sublime awareness that we are always connected to our Creator, the existential knowledge that we are His creatures. 

In this awareness we can return to our true identity and be able to amend, restore, or rectify our transgressions against ourselves and others.

“You shall not have pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (19:21)

Our sages emphasize that this is not about revenge or retaliation but to restore, give back or compensate for the damage caused by our negative actions.

The parshah ends with the following verse.

“And you shall abolish the [shedding of] innocent blood from among you, for you shall do what is proper in the eyes of the Lord.” (21:09)

This invites us to reflect on the value of life in order to protect it and to sanctify it according to love’s ways and attributes.