tzedek tzedek tirdof
Aug. 24th, 2006 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThis week's torah portion contains the directive "justice, justice you shall pursue". My rabbi had an interesting comment on this tonight, not about "tzedek, tzedek" but about "tirdof". Why does the torah say "pursue" instead of, say, "establish"? Isn't establishing justice a goal, moreso than just running after it?
He suggests that we are commanded to pursue justice precisely because we can never fully achieve it -- pursue, meaning never let up. There is always more to do. I see shades of eilu d'varim here -- these are the obligations without measure.
The rest of this entry is me talking, inspired by that.
If the commandment were to "establish" justice, we might delude ourselves into thinking we'd achieved the goal. Most of the western world has a pretty reasonable judicial system, at least in the abstract. But the abstract isn't good enough; there's a big gulf between, say, the idea of defendants having competent legal representation and all of them actually having it, or between fair rules of evidence and what actually happens. And it's not only about formal systems of justice; we must pursue justice on a personal level, in the ways we interact with other people and the world at large -- the kinds of "tzedek" that are fully ours to control.
"Establish" sounds like something that can be checked off -- yup, did that, on to the next commandment. "Pursue" does not have that connotation -- we can get closer, but we can't fully get there. Pursuit is an ongoing task.
"Pursuit" raises another issue in my mind, one that seems less positive: when we pursue something, don't we usually do it at the expense of something else? Pursuing an educational or career goal usually comes at the expense of time and comfort; pursuing a person comes at the expense of attention to other people. What does pursuing justice come at the expense of? If complacency, well and good -- but is that it?
He suggests that we are commanded to pursue justice precisely because we can never fully achieve it -- pursue, meaning never let up. There is always more to do. I see shades of eilu d'varim here -- these are the obligations without measure.
The rest of this entry is me talking, inspired by that.
If the commandment were to "establish" justice, we might delude ourselves into thinking we'd achieved the goal. Most of the western world has a pretty reasonable judicial system, at least in the abstract. But the abstract isn't good enough; there's a big gulf between, say, the idea of defendants having competent legal representation and all of them actually having it, or between fair rules of evidence and what actually happens. And it's not only about formal systems of justice; we must pursue justice on a personal level, in the ways we interact with other people and the world at large -- the kinds of "tzedek" that are fully ours to control.
"Establish" sounds like something that can be checked off -- yup, did that, on to the next commandment. "Pursue" does not have that connotation -- we can get closer, but we can't fully get there. Pursuit is an ongoing task.
"Pursuit" raises another issue in my mind, one that seems less positive: when we pursue something, don't we usually do it at the expense of something else? Pursuing an educational or career goal usually comes at the expense of time and comfort; pursuing a person comes at the expense of attention to other people. What does pursuing justice come at the expense of? If complacency, well and good -- but is that it?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 02:11 am (UTC)One is that there is a mitzvah to proactively kill a rodef -- meaning one who is in the act of pursuing another with intent to murder -- even if the victim-to-be is a third party (so it's not strictly speaking self-defense). I've long felt that the use of the same shoresh in tzedek tzedek tirdof was to tell us that we should pursue justice with that same zeal of not just doing mitzvot to protect our own interets but to go out, find the injustice in the world even if it would pass us by and hurt another person, and take drastic measures if needed to prevent it.
My second thought on R-D-F is that I've always felt uncomfortable being labeled a "Ba'al Teshuvah" because that implies that I have some claim to have "mastered" the process of teshuvah. I call myself a "Rodef Teshuvah" along the same lines as your rabbi's interpretation that we pursue justice because it can never be fully achieved.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 02:53 am (UTC)I like that interpretation, and hadn't yet made the connection to killing a rodef. Thanks.
I call myself a "Rodef Teshuvah"
Ooh. That's much better than "ba'al teshuvah"! I'm not a big fan of "ba'al" anything; some uses incorrectly imply mastery (your example), and in other cases we use it to indicate agency alone. The "ba'al t'filah" isn't necessarily a master of prayer or even the best person in the room; he's just the guy who's leading today. Sometimes, I presume, they really do mean mastery (ba'al shem tov), but the word is used more broadly than it should be.
I'm not a BT or FFB; I'm a ger (another non-ideal term). I wonder if there's a "rodef [something]" that fits... not "teshuvah", because I wasn't obligated in the first place so there wasn't anything to "return" to. Eh, mostly I just don't worry about labels, but now I'm curious.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 12:46 pm (UTC)I think that's symptomatic of the "praise inflation" of our times. Why does every show get a standing ovation these days?
In my community some -- but not all -- do make a distinction between a shaliach tzibbur and a true ba'al tefillah (of which we are blessed with several), between a kor'ei and a ba'al k'riyah (again, we are fortunate to have several of those).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-25 01:16 pm (UTC)And every child deserves an A. Yes, good point.
I actually haven't heard "ba'al {t'filah, k'riyah}" much in my community. Often people just use English, or we say "sh'liach tzibbur" or "leiner" (but usually not the latter). Often we don't use a noun -- David is leading services, Monica is reading torah, etc. I don't know to what extent this is expedience (assuming some people won't know the Hebrew terms) and to what extent it's philosophical (the objections we're talking about).