Shoftim 

Kings & Trees: Ego, limits and balance, for harmony at various levels: Imagine actors in a play, one is the king and another a servant of the king, who the king constantly abuses through overwork, and demeaning him etc. 

Then after the play is over the actors gather in the backroom and the 'king' demands to be served drinks and be fanned by his 'servant'. 

What a fool! 

He can't distinguish between reality and the imaginary world they were creating on-stage!

Similarly for a wealthy person who is unkind to a poor person when they are interacting 'in real life' on planet Earth. They are actually both just actors in God's screenplay, and need to keep that in mind. Yes, one of them was made to be wealthy and the other poor, but they are both actors in this play, it is called 'reality' here on Earth, but it is not the true reality. 

Certainly a person who was gifted with special talents that made them wealthy should indeed utilize those talents, and should legitimately indeed be a boss of many workers, but keeping in mind that all the workers, like them, are all part of a play, meant to achieve a task designed by the Director.

.

Now back to the theater we spoke of earlier: imagine that people watching the play, having seen in action the actors portraying the king and the servant, feel that 'the servant' is a much better actor; and indeed maybe the theater community chose that actor as the best of the year, much better than the actor who played the king, and perhaps it turns out that the casting director chose the best professional for the role of the servant because it is more crucial for that play than the role of the king. So too for the roles we play in this life, we cannot make assumptions about 'who is more important'.

.

We all need to keep in mind that we are souls, in the image of God, all of us, but it is up to us to improvise the play to have our character play their role, and do so according to the higher rules of ethical conduct , and the Torah etc. 

This does not mean that the king should become a servant, in order to be humble. God chose each person for certain roles given their special abilities, in order to better be able to fulfil the overall goals. A surgeon was blessed with special abilities, they are not supposed to waste those through misplaced humility by taking a job as an itinerant farm-worker picking crops. Rather, they should be a surgeon, but with compassion and doing some surgeries for the poor not only the wealthy, and using their large income to endow philanthropic endeavors.

And the poor person can know that their soul was sent to this world to play a role, and perhaps they were given this role because it was known that their soul was at a very high level and could with great self-control and effort bear the indignities of the role, whereas the wealthy person, or the king, is that of a soul which is not yet sufficiently developed to be able to handle anything as challenging as that, and so was given 'an easy job'.

.

It's good to be the king! But......

This week we read about the laws governing the King of the people of Israel in their Land "in order that he (the king) not become haughty to his brethren""לְבִלְתִּי רוּם-לְבָבוֹ מֵאֶחָיו"(Deut 17:20). 

Indeed, as I myself learned the hard way, Kings don't own their people, to do with them as they please.

So if I can't do what I please, what's the use of being King!?

The Torah's answer to the king is: "it's not about YOU"!. The king and the people are all part of one system meant to run harmoniously, there is no divine right of any human to be a king-dictator, the king must follow strict laws special for kings, a concept perhaps radical for its time, proposed in this week's portion.

.

We also read in this week's Torah portion "Shoftim" Deut 16.18-21.9: ": כי האדם עץ השדה "A human..... the tree of the field(?)" (Deut 20:19) which teaches that humans do not "own" all the trees of the field, to cut them down when they please. Trees and humans are part of one system meant to run harmoniously - a concept radical for its time, proposed in this week's portion.

We'll develop this larger idea more in the following, but in the meantime let's get back to the king.

The Torah lays out a constitutional monarchy, with the Torah itself as the constitution.

"What's the use of being king if you are bound with so many limitations?" As we said above,  the answer is "it's not about you." And the king cannot claim he doesn't know this law - the Torah in our portion mandates that he has to actually write out the entire Torah himself, including of course the passage stating "in order that he (the king) not become haughty to his brethren"!

.

To continue my earlier humblebrag: At one point in my career, my brothers let me know that I was not fulfilling this command... I was in charge of a program overseas, given lots of leeway, quite independent, but didn't adequately realize that those who were working 'under me' saw us all as working for the overall faraway system, the Big Boss, and did NOT consider that they worked FOR ME. Of course I knew this in a technical sense, but hadn't internalized it, so my decision-making without consulting the others didn't adequately reflect it (and of course all the politics that resulted made doing my job much more difficult than it had to be).

So too, the Torah is teaching that we don't work for our king, but instead the king is placed in charge of a system meant to be run for the benefit of all - in fact the Torah explicitly states that the king is appointed due to the choice of the people that there be a king (17:14), not that he can impose himself on the people. And it is God who chooses who will be king via the prophet. And of course God is the "King of kings", and all of creation; the top of the pyramid and the bottom are meant to work together to achieve harmonious fulfilment of the divine plan, outlined by the King of Kings in the Torah.

.

What's the use of being king if you can't be haughty!? Well, too bad, the Torah is explicit that the king should be chosen from amongst "your brethren", and ""in order that he (the king) not become haughty to his brethren" so he is in some sense a 'brother' to his people (17:15) [but maybe they shouldn't call him 'achi"!  ]. And we will see several examples of how the highest souls understood this and internalized it and acted on it, giving themselves over to caring for the needs of those who others in this lofty situation might consider "beneath them", thus setting the best example of what the Torah means by a 'king'..

Examples throughout the Chumash:

There are similar points made by the Torah in other contexts, many of them in this week's portion, but we'll start at the beginning, not this parsha, ie with Adam/Eve, Noah, and Abraham:

• God created humanity in the divine image, the pinnacle of creation, but not in order to enjoy ourselves in the garden, and not in order to be served by all the flora and fauna there, nor even to sit in a corner and praise God or 'be holy', but rather our task (ie of humanity, Adam & Eve) in Eden was to SERVE: we were placed there as custodians, not owners: "le'ovdo u'le'shomro" "to work it and watch/keep it" [See Gen chapter 2: And the LORD God formed the human of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life..And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there He put the human.... to serve it (or 'work' it) and to preserve it."] Humanity, the very tip of the pyramid, was created in the divine image [As powerfully depicted in Genesis 1&2: And God created the human in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them...... the LORD God formed the human of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life"]. And we are told this in order to ensure that we treat all humans accordingly. We are not here in order to be served as a god by those 'below us' but rather in order to have the ability to be able to take care of all God's creation, and to ensure the needs are met even of those at 'the bottom of the pyramid', the vegetation! (or, in the case of general human society, those who are the weakest and most helpless.)

• The Flood was because of loss of balance of all living things; Gen. 6:12: "And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth". In last week's portion we learned about the Jewish People being chosen and I quoted Shlomo Carlebach's teaching that we were chosen to teach the entire world the message of the first chapters of Genesis, that all humans are created in the divine image - and so ALL are 'chosen'! And during the Flood, the most righteous man of the generation was chosen, but not chosen to pray or praise God or 'be holy'.... instead he was chosen to actually labor for many many years to himself physically construct a huge ark to save representatives of all animal species. And then to work throughout the entire Flood to feed all the animals and tend to all their needs, feeding them and cleaning up after they did their bodily needs in the closed confines of the ark. Yup, the most righteous man on Earth was chosen...to be zookeeper/garbage-collector/animal-waste-disposal custodian! This is true holiness. And Noah's willingness to serve in this way is an indicator of what had set him apart to God, and why he was chosen to be the progenitor of the second round of the human race.

• Abraham was the first to recognize God as God wished to be understood, and he understood that all humanity was created in the divine image. This understanding led Abraham to make sure to serve the physical needs of humans, strangers(as in the famous story in the Torah about him and Sarah), without God commanding him to do so (as opposed to the case with Noah).

• Abraham, by lowering his ego and thereby removing the veil over his essence - his soul, which is of the divine breath - caused the manifestation of the spark of the divine presence, inspiring others. Andso this service of his to others caused God to choose him as the progenitor of a people with a special mission (Gen 18).

And in our parsha and others we learn that:

• We humans rule the animal kingdom, but we cannot inflict unnecessary pain on them, not even covering an animal's mouth when it is working for us in 'our' field and wants to nibble but it mouth is sealed ('lo tachsom shor bedisho'), and other such laws;

• And the same re vegetation: this week's portion tells us that if we humans must go to war and destroy each other, we shouldn't think that we have permission to destroy the fruit trees to help achieve our war aims כי האדם עץ השדה "A human..... the tree of the field(?)" ((Deut 20:19);

• Our crop doesn't belong to us - we need to give a tithe to the priests (beginning of Deut Ch 18, in this week's portion), and to give part of our produce to the poor, and whatever falls from our hands while gathering, and the edges of the field etc;

• Also re ecology: keeping the 7-year cycle (shmitah: the rest-year of the Land itself), and other such laws which protect the land - we don't own the land to do with it whatever we wish, instead we are custodians, to work the land, and to guard against its depletion;

• the Jewish People are told several times by God that the Land is theirs as an inheritance (as opposed to those who falsely claim they are colonizers etc) granted by the creator of all the universe including planet Earth and all its lands, however they do not have an automatic 'right' to the land that God gave them - there are conditions to fulfill: laws of "righteousness" and "holiness", and not practicing idolatry (as told in the beginning of this week's portion Deut 16:20, and by implication also elsewhere in this week's portion re the conditions for 'inheriting the land'); in this sense the Promised land is not 'ours', but rather we get to live there, on condition; if we fulfil various conditions and laws we get to maintain our stay in The Land, otherwise it vomits out its inhabitants (see this week's portion, Deut 18:12) [not that those who try to evict us are righteous, just that if we are less deserving then God gives less protection from the evil forces always trying to destroy that which is potentially holy].

Conclusion: We need to lower our individual and collective ego. We don't own the planet, the animal and vegetable world do not 'belong' to us, surely not 'Nature' as a whole.

We need to assert ourselves in the role of top of the Nature-pyramid, to fulfil the task of developing it all to its maximal effect, but all the while with ecological awareness, and a humane attitude to animals, and even regarding vegetation we cannot just destroy all trees to suit any purpose, all the while led by a 'king' who serves humbly as a leader, following strict laws which limit their power, serving as our brother-in-chief.

We need balance, to see our proper role in the entirety, understanding the vast power we can wield over Nature, but using it for good, and exercising our might in its greatest form - that of character-refinement, and to see each human as the image of God (tzelem elokim) .

Every human has their role, and every nation has its role, and when all nations will be fulfilling their particular mission as a nation (which is not something we are witnessing today), and all individuals are fulfilling their mission as an individual, then together we can perfect the world.

We are all souls, playing our roles, and we are all part of the same play, just with different positions (though according to the idea of reincarnation those roles gets interchanged in different generations!), and so we need to remember that "all the world's a stage" but whatever our role, we all work to fulfil the same screenplay, all meant to attain the overall goal set by 'the boss'! And if we work harmoniously as a team in this way irrespective of our specific role in the team-effort, and treat all humans and all the rest of the system as appropriate - and not via ego, triumphing over other aspects of the system (animals, plants, planet) - we are promised that we will obtain blessing.

May it be so!