Shoftim: ‘I Have a (Three-and-a Half-Thousand-Year-Old) Dream’

 In just over a week, on 28th August, we will commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of one of the Twentieth Century's most remarkable and important speeches.  Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, before a crowd of 200,000 people, Dr Martin Luther King Jr spoke about the dream he had to see a society where Black and White people could live together peacefully as equals.

He described the persecution that Black people had faced in the century following the end of the American Civil War and how they were segregated in Southern States such as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina.

Towards the end of his oration, he said the following:

"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.  I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.  I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the L-rd shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope… With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.  With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.  With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of G-d's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.  Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of G-d's children, Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last.  Free at last.  Thank G-d almighty, we are free at last."

I was minded quoting this extraordinary speech when I was considering one of the verses in this week's Parasha of Shoftim.

Moshe, who would pass away weeks after delivering his second oration, was instructing our ancestors on the crucial task of setting up a system of justice once they had conquered the Land of Israel.

Our sidra begins with the following verse:

Appoint judges and officials for your tribes, in all the towns that the L-rd your Gd is giving you, to govern the people with equitable justice.  Do not pervert justice or show partiality.  Do not accept bribes for bribes blind the eyes of the blind and subvert the cause of the just.  Pursue justice, only justice. (Deuteronomy 16:18-19)

There is so much that I could say about the first few verses but for the purposes of this Drasha, I will concentrate on the last pasuk in my quote.

For as long as I can recall, I have been endowed with a deep sense of knowing what is right and ultimately, what is wrong.  I have always and will forever continue to fight to the 'nth degree if I believe that an injustice has been enacted upon me or others.  This is not to say that I don't admit defeat, because sometimes, one has no choice but to accept this, but that does not stop me believing (and protesting) about how unfair I see a situation to be.  Call it obstinacy if you will, but my sense of what is and is not just or fair is as deeply ingrained into my very being as the blood that flows through my veins.

I can readily relate to Dr King's words because they scream out as to how unjust the treatment of his fellow Black citizens was at the time and sadly, continues to be to this day in many countries.  That America was able to vote in a Black president was a crowning achievement (whether one agreed with his policies or not).  This still did not stop the brutal murder of George Floyd a few years later and the prejudice that sadly still exists both in America and in the rest of the world.  We only have the case of Steven Lawrence in this country to remind us of how Dr King's speech is just as relevant today as it was three score years ago.  In trying to unpick and understand the words 'Pursue justice, only justice', our commentators were unequivocal in their interpretations of what this really means.

The Ibn Ezra (died c.1167) (as quoted by Rashi et al.) writes:

“Moses speaks to the disputants.  Moses repeats the word justice to indicate that one should pursue justice whether one gains or loses.  Or the word is repeated to indicate that one should pursue justice as long as one exists; or the word is repeated for emphasis.”

The Ramban (d.  1270) writes:

“Go to seek a reliable court...The reason for the repetition [of the word “justice”] is to indicate that the judges should judge the people with righteous judgment, and you must also pursue justice constantly by going from your place to the place of the great Sages: “after Rabban Yochanan ben Zaccai to Yavneh; after Rabbi [Yehudah Hanasi] to Beth Shearim.”

In other words, the Ramban is emphasising the fact that if a court is unable to pass fair judgement, it needs to seek its authority from another court.

We are all too well aware of the significant levels of injustice that have transpired over the years in this country where innocent people were convicted of crimes they did not commit, such as the Birmingham Six, whose sentences which were pronounced by one court were quashed by another in 1991 after sixteen years and The Guildford Four/Maguire Seven in 1988 and 1991 after a similar amount of time in confinement.  Several recent cases also raised my ire in connection with a huge miscarriage of justice such as the scandal regarding the convictions of innocent postmasters by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015. 

As of last month, 86 convictions have been overturned and the cases are ongoing (there were a total of 700 people accused) and nearly £13 million has been paid out.  This of course cannot reverse the trauma of what has happened.  Thirty-three people have died without ‘knowing’ that they had been wrongfully accused.

Just last month, Andrew Malkinson was acquitted after serving twenty years having been wrongfully convicted of having raped a woman in Manchester.  It transpired that there was no DNA evidence linking him to the crime and that following his incarceration, Greater Manchester Police took measures to dismiss his appeal.  Those involved in this deception included a chief of the Police.

The examples that I have cited demonstrate how relevant the words of the Torah are so many years later and this is without even describing the institutionalized racism that exists against Black people and has done so for too many years.  You can read about this in a recent article in The Guardian^*

Dr King's speech has many references to the Torah that we hold so dear.  His call for freedom echoes our Prophets and later Rabbis' views that real freedom exists in the creation of societies built on a strongly defined and maintained rule of law, the equal treatment for all citizens and a solid foundation of justice.  One which grants everyone, irrespective of their gender, creed, ethnic background or physical condition the right to be protected and represented in equal measure.

The only way that this can happen is if we follow the words of the Torah and pursue justice, only justice.  If we have a justice system that is seen to be trustworthy and fair, it sends out the message that, from the very highest echelons of the State, nothing but the rule of law and the equitable treatment of all citizens is acceptable.  Without this, we cannot be surprised that the people who use the system, view it as flawed and unjust.  If we wish to mend society, the first place to begin the process is by ensuring that we pursue 'justice, only justice.'

Sixty years ago, Dr Martin Luther King reinforced the message that we have been reading about in the Torah for three and a half thousand years.  We the 'people of the book' want nothing more than to hold hands with our brothers, Black, White, Gentile, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu and everyone else and sing a song of peace.

As we say in our prayers throughout the day: Ose Shalom Bimromav, Hu Yaaseh Shalom Aleinu Ve'al kol Yisrael -He who makes peace in His High places, make peace for us and all Israel.  Amen. It is a message that rings through the ears and through the years for justice and peace are indivisible – without one, you cannot have the other.  

Shavuah Tov

^*‘Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.’