By Rabba Daphne Lazar Price
This week’s Torah portion is Shoftim: Deuteronomy 16:18 — 21:9
At first glance, Parshat Shoftim seems like a patchwork of unrelated laws: judges and kings, prophets and witnesses, cities of refuge, the conduct of war, and the ritual surrounding an unsolved murder. But beneath that patchwork runs a single, persistent question: What kind of society are you building?
The Torah is not primarily interested in whether individuals are righteous, rather whether a nation is. It asks whether justice is woven into public institutions, power is restrained, truth is pursued carefully, violence is taken seriously, and whether the vulnerable are protected before they become victims.
The parsha opens with one of the command: “Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your gates … and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment” (Deuteronomy 16:18). It continues with the famous charge, “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). Justice cannot depend on the goodwill of exceptional individuals. It requires judges who cannot be bribed, truthful witnesses, leaders who understand they are not above the law, and legal procedures that protect both the innocent and the accused.
Seen this way, the parsha reveals its internal logic. The laws of judges protect justice from corruption. The laws of kings restrain political power. The laws of witnesses safeguard truth. The laws of war preserve human dignity even amid violence. And the ritual of the eglah arufah asks whether a community bears responsibility not only for crimes committed within it, but also for the people who fall through its cracks.
That concern reaches its most haunting expression at the end of the parsha. A body is found lying in an open field. No one knows who committed the murder. Yet the Torah refuses to let the community move on. The elders of the nearest city must publicly declare, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it” (Deuteronomy 21:7).
The rabbis ask the obvious question: would anyone suspect the elders themselves of murder? Of course not. The Mishnah explains that they are declaring they did not allow this person to leave their city without food or without an escort (Mishnah Sotah 9:6). The issue is not whether they committed the crime. It is whether they failed to create a society in which someone could become vulnerable enough to die alone.
That is a breathtaking expansion of responsibility. The Torah does not ask only who committed the crime. It asks what kind of community allowed a human being to disappear unnoticed. Justice requires more than punishing the guilty. It requires building a society in which fewer people become victims in the first place.
Those questions reach far beyond the courtroom. Do our institutions protect the vulnerable before they become headlines? Do our communities notice those who are isolated or excluded? Do our leaders treat power as a trust rather than a privilege? Do we recognize that the measure of a society is found not only in how it responds to tragedy, but in whether it works to prevent it?
We sometimes speak about Torah as though it is primarily concerned with ritual observance or personal spirituality. Shoftim insists holiness is measured not only by how we pray, but by how we govern.
That is the enduring challenge of Parshat Shoftim. Every generation inherits institutions built by those who came before. Our task is to ask whether they embody the justice the Torah demands. A society grounded in Torah values is measured not by the power of its leaders, but by whether truth is pursued, power is restrained, the vulnerable are protected, violence is neither ignored nor excused, and no one is left by the roadside.
Rabba Daphne Lazar Price is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and led the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance for seven years.
