Parshas Shoftim – "Judges You Must Establish . . ."

Parshas Shoftim PERCEPTIONS

by Rabbi Pinchas Winston Shlit”a

This week’s PERCEPTIONS and 

CONNECTING THE DOTS 

is dedicated in memory of 

Sara Chana bat Sarah Imeinu, z”l, 

a friend, supporter, and someone who 

was clearly devoted to Hashem and His Torah.

Judges and law enforcers you must 

establish in all your communities . . .(Devarim 16:18)

EVERY YEAR WHEN I get to Parashas Shoftim, I am reminded of the world in which we live. The truth is, I do not need this week’s parsha to do that. All I have to do is read a newspaper. I mean something else.

The Torah is God’s program for history. It is built upon ideal concepts that are supposed to help a person achieve personal perfection, and the world, ultimate fulfillment. It pre-dated Creation by thousands of years and will outlive history as we know it. It is the word of God, eternal, and FAR above our everyday mundane reality. 

So how is it that the Torah talks about such mundane matters as court systems and police forces? These sound like issues for societies that do not have Torah, and which have a difficult time getting their members to rise above crime and strive for loftier goals. It’s as if the Torah is giving up on the Jewish people before they even have a chance to try and set themselves up as a Torah nation. It’s as if the Torah is saying, “You’re going to be just like everyone else.” How disappointing.

We’ve discussed this idea in the past, how the version of Torah we currently learn is not the ideal version we were supposed to have received, prior to the sin of the golden calf. When Moshe Rabbeinu broke the first set of tablets, we lost our opportunity to receive that Messianic level of Torah. That one is based upon the same eternal concepts as our rendition of Torah, but expressed in a far loftier manner. 

The sin of the calf greatly lessened our spiritual capacity. After that we were no longer capable or worthy of receiving the Torah of the Messianic Era. The Torah we have now is meant to try and lead us in that direction, and to allow us to rectify the world to whatever level we can. How’s it working out so far?

In the incredible work, “Yesod v’Shoresh HaAvodah,” by Rav Alexander Ziskind, in the section about the “Ten Days of Repentance,” he mentions the real damage of a sin. By doing a sin, the person has lowered himself spiritually and become worthy of punishment in the process. But the ultimate damage is the profanation of God’s Name that the sin caused. 

Any time a person sins, less Divine light enters the world. The sin blocks the spiritual pipe, and prevents God’s light from positively impacting Creation. Just as a child who misbehaves denies his parents’ the pleasure of giving him nice things, likewise a sinning person denies the Divine Presence an opportunity to do what it likes most: bless mankind. 

The prophet Yechezkel says that this situation will be so bad at the End-of-Days that God will be forced to bring the Final Redemption just to end the “Chillul Hashem,” the profanation of God’s Name constantly committed amongst the nations of the world. The amount of light entering the world will be so minimal that if God doesn’t change the situation Himself, the world will fall apart on its own.

A person might ask, “What difference can it possibly make to Creation if I personally improve myself and work on sanctifying the Name of God? I’m only ONE person against millions of others who are profaning His Name!” 

As the Nefesh HaChaim points out, a person never knows how much their effort is worth in the eyes of God. It can be capable of a far greater impact than they might have otherwise thought. And does it matter anyhow? The main thing is that a person does whatever they personally can to make the world better, and it starts by being more concerned about God’s Name than their own.  

DEDICATION OPPORTUNITIES

Reincarnation is a hot topic, as I have written about already. This has caught the attention of my distributor of Sha’ar HaGilgulim (Hardcopy), who would like me to package up “Reincarnation Clarified” and “What Goes Around,” into a single hardcopy book for worldwide distribution. To cover the cost of the printing, I need to raise the money through dedications. If you are interested in dedicating the entire sefer, or contributing to its publication, please let me know at pinchasw@thirtysix.org at your earliest convenience.

Also, attached is a sample of my latest book, “See Ya: Regarding the Downfall of American Society.” This is a book in need of dedication as well. If anyone is interested, please let me know. The paperback is now available through Amazon. Click here.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

AUGUST 12-18, 2018, ISSUE #1

I stopped writing CTD for two reasons. The last American election brought out the worst in the media and, between the new levels of deceit and childishness, I had a difficult time stomaching it. I began to greatly limit my exposure. The second reason I stopped CTD is that Amazon made it much easier for me to constantly publish new books. The books themselves are where I do most of my “dot” connecting. 

Though I am REALLY enjoying the book writing, b”H, and do a fair bit of dot-connecting in Perceptions, I felt that some element of what I do best was still missing. This has been confirmed to me on several occasions by readers who have urged me to return to at least a bi-weekly CTD. This week’s mailing represents a compromise: a tag along CTD at the end of the parsha sheet, with a twist.

I’m asking YOU, the READER, to supply me with an issue to be addressed. I would like to receive questions from YOU for me to deal with. This will save me the time of scanning the news, which I have little patience for these days, and allow me to focus on what people are thinking about. No names need to be attached to the question.

I was actually asked this last week:

I am aware that there are many who condemn the recent passage of the Basic Law declaring Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish people. I'm not interested in the political implications of the law and all the people who think it means the end of a democratic Israel. I'm intrigued by the fact that it happened at all—that the government of Medinat Yisrael openly declared that Israel is a Jewish state just eight months after the US recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. These are Biblical realities that secular governments are openly validating . . . I’m looking for your thoughts about how these two validations happening less than a year apart, are connected to geulah.

Redemption, explained the Vilna Gaon, is kind of two-steps forward, one-step back process. But, even the step backwards, he added, is really a step forwards as well, when everything is taken into account. It just looks to US as if it is backwards. What this means is that history can be difficult to read, from a redemption point of view. It can be hard, even impossible to properly interpret everyday events, and what they ultimately mean to the redemption process. 

Therefore, it cannot be downplayed when at such a late stage of history, and especially while Liberalism is so strong around the world, that America has acknowledged Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, or that a secular Israeli government is bold enough to declare Israel first and foremost a Jewish state. It is easy to let these happenings to get buried among the many issues impacting world history today. But the person with an eye to redemption knows that they are signs of the geulah times, not just something else randomly catching the attention of the public.