shoftim: the sword of friendship
sholem aleixem,
Hope you all are well. I am full of the spirit of elul, which for me means soooo many Paula Red apples (the first apples of the season! so tart!)
I'm studying some Talmud this Elul as part of SVARA's Elul Chevrusa Lovefest. We had a kickoff beis midrash this past Tuesday, where we spent some time talking about the term chevrusa, whose root is חבר, which can mean to befriend but (in the Aramaic) can also mean to wound.
brin solomon explains (personal communication):
friendship requires vulnerability! vulnerability is the ability to be wounded! to open yourself to companionship is to open yourself to harm while believing that this is worth it, that it is better to be connected to those around you than isolated and impervious!!!
חבר is made of the same letters as חרב/sword. Moving from חבר to חרב is moving from בר/potential to רב/fulfillment. As a friendship deepens and fulfills its potential, the corresponding vulnerability increases. And it is crucial that we remember that this vulnerability is not one sided: in a true friendship, we have the potential to be harmed but also to do harm.
This is true on a larger scale. Mount Sinai, after all, is also known in Devarim as Mount חרב. Making a covenant with haShem -- making a covenant with each other! -- was also an act of vulnerability opening us to the potential of experiencing and committing harm. It's easy to imagine us being vulnerable in a covenant with haShem, but harder perhaps to understand haShem's vulnerability.
Let's turn to our Torah portion for some help. The Zohar on Shoftim describes the חרב of haShem:
חֶרֶב דְּקוּדְשָׁא בְּרִיךְ הוּא, י' רֵישָׁא דְּחַרְבָּא. ו' גּוּפָא דְּחַרְבָּא. הֵ''א הֵ''א, תְּרֵין פִּיפִיּוֹת דִּילָהּ
The sword of the holy one blessed be he!
י is the head
ו is the body
ה + ה are her two faces
The Zohar continues:
צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדּוֹף, חַתְכִין תְּרֵין דִּינִין, דִּינָא מִפִּי בֵּית דִּין דִּלְעֵילָּא, וְדִינָא מִפִּי בֵּית דִּין דִּלְתַּתָּא
justice, justice, you shall pursue!
[her two faces] sever two justices:
justice before the beis din dileila / the house of judgement on high
justice before the beis din diltata / the house of judgement below
There are two courts of justice: one on earth and one in the heavens. There are two justices: our justice and the pure justice we long for. And that longing, which is the separation between the justice we can achieve here and justice in its purest form, is quite literally HaShem: The Name Of Gd.
The Zohar concludes:
וּמֵהָכָא אִשְׁתְּמוֹדָע, אֵין אָדָם נוֹקֵף אֶצְבָּעוֹ מִלְּמַטָּה עַד שֶׁנִּתַּן לוֹ רְשׁוּת מִלְּמַעְלָה
and from this we recognize: a human cannot even move their finger down below until freedom is given to them from on high
This is Gd's vulnerability in friendship with humanity. Gd gives us the freedom to act from the beginning, so all our actions become Gd's actions. The word "recognize" above is אִשְׁתְּמוֹדָע, whose root is (intimate) knowing. We need to form a chevrusa/deep partnership with this idea: with the vulnerability and power of knowing our actions are Gd's actions.
We can pursue justice, or not. As a result, Gd can pursue justice, or (chas v'sholem) not. Can you imagine a greater harm to Gd? (Can you imagine a greater harm to us?)
If so, what is the difference between din dileila and din diltata? The secret to all of this, maybe, is that the two justices are really the same: both simply the letter ה. Because there is no justice for us other than earthly justice, done to the best of our abilities. And when we pursue justice, really pursue it, even our imperfect justice is din dileila, justice above.
Perhaps tzedek tzedek tirdof repeats the word justice davka to teach that there is in fact only one justice: there's no justice above without justice below, there's no justice for me without justice for others.
Good shabbos,
ada