Shoftim: Mindfulness and Justice
The world right now is in a lot of pain. Many of the structures we have built in this country, and around the world, are broken. Each time we open a paper (or our newsfeed), we hear of another young Black person taken from the world at the hands of police, another lake polluted or species gone extinct, another refugee fleeing a war-torn country with nobody willing to take them in. It is tempting to click “like” on a social media post about the issue, shrug it all off, and go back to our daily lives
and then this verse shouts at us from the pages of the Torah:
20 Justice, justice you must pursue! That you may live and possess the land the Eternal, your God, is giving you.
- Devarim 16:20
Justice is not something that it would be nice if we had, and it is not even something we do for the sake of others. We must “pursue” – chase after – justice (a thing that runs away from us?) for the sake of our life. For each of us, living a healthy life depends on a world that is fair and righteous in its systems.
And then there is the curious repetition in the verse. According to Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, the word “justice” is repeated because “the Torah is telling us to be just also in pursuit of justice -- both the end and the means by which it is obtained must be just.”
Later in the parsha, we also have the line:
13 Be wholehearted with the Lord, your God.
- Devarim 18:13
The word tamim is often translated here as “wholehearted” but it can also be read as "complete.”
If we put the two verses together, we are being asked to create a justice system where we, and all our community-members, are treated as whole and complete –even when we get into conflicts. We are being asked to create and safeguard a
system where justice permeates through the entire system and our highest values are represented at each stage of the process. Not an easy thing to do!
I. Being Peace
Fortunately, mindfulness practices are particularly well-suited to help us with this mandate. There is a saying in the Zen world: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” Mindfulness is a way to shine the light of awareness on our speech, action, and thoughts so that, in the words of Ghandi, we can be the change we wish to see in our world.
And yet, as we are doing this difficult work of being peacemakers within our lives, it’s important we don’t forget our mission to also engage in our local and global communities to change unjust laws and systems. Our ends might change when we pay careful attention to the means, but we are not absolved from our responsibility to “pursue justice” because we are meditating and becoming better people to our friends and family. Why? Because sooner or later, the suffering of others will spill over into our daily lives, whether we like it or not. We are simply too interconnected. As Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg writes: “The human heart is only one muscle. When it opens to grief, it also opens to love. You can’t divide the heart without closing it down. A spiritual life must participate in the whole of life, which includes the golden aspens on the mountain as well as the hungry children in the inner city.” We are all responsible to one another for our very lives, and we must take care of each other as a result.
So we may live.
II. Mindful Social Justice
What might the type of justice look like that is tamim, wholly just from means to ends? What might we look like as we engage in that type of work?
Roger Gottlieb, in his book, Joining Hands, offers a vision of what this might look like:
Imagine, if you will, social activists who meditated on their intentions as a prelude to meeting about a controversial policy decision, who were well aware of their own internal tendencies to violence as well as the ‘external’ manifestations of violence by the “enemy”, who took as their model political militancy motivated by commitment to service rather than the personal accomplishment of – and recognition for – ‘great deeds.’ Imagine a political leader who had no fear of her repressive jailers because ‘she did not hate them.’
Imagine a group of people that could believe, in the words of a Mennonite peacemaker, that to transform global conflicts, they first had to ‘identify our own inner patterns’ and ‘do so humbly, contritely, and honestly.’ Imagine a group of people that felt a seamless connection between self-transformation and social transformation, who felt their ability to continue to do the good
work of political action depended in part on sustaining their own self awareness and capacity for compassion and who also believed that spiritual development required participation in world-making politics.” (95)
We have had wonderful leaders who embody/embodied this dual, overlapping commitment to the spiritual and the just, the internal and the external. Thich Nacht Hanh, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rev angel Kyodo Williams, Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, Joanna Macy, Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, Rabbi Rachel Cowan, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, to name a few. We can learn so much from their examples and their steadfast commitment to mindful social justice.
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s mission is to develop and teach Jewish spiritual practices so that individuals and communities may experience greater awareness, purpose, and interconnection.
Learn more: jewishspirituality.org
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