“You shall place judges and guards in all of your gates
which Adonai your God has given you to dwell in. You shall judge the people
with righteousness. (Deuteronomy 16:18)”
In trying to understand this passage the Chatam Sofer
connects it to a passage from Hosea (Chapter 2) in which the prophet links
righteousness and judgment with kindness and mercy. He (the Chatam Sofer) sees
that later passage as a kind of quid pro quo between us and God. God
gives us kindness and mercy, while we are expected to give the world righteousness
and judgment (judgment, probably in the sense of fairness, in this context). In
fact, it’s a bit more than an ordinary deal that God made with us — it was,
essentially, our “bride price.” It was the exchange by which our marriage to
God (the Rabbi’s favorite metaphor for our covenant with God) was created. God
said, “I promise to give you kindness and mercy; you promise to judge fairly
and with righteousness, and by this exchange, we will be linked forever.”
That’s why we have to put “judges and guards” at our gates
to make sure that we judge with righteousness: if we don’t have those
protections, and our righteousness falters, we’re in violation of our marriage
contract. We have to hold up our end of this bargain, or we’ll have no right to
expect God to do so in return.
Our entire relationship with God is contingent on our being
willing to continually act with righteousness and justice in the world.
As always, I don’t take this literally. I don’t believe
that, were we to stop caring about justice, the earth would rebel and start
treating us with viciousness. I don’t think that the rains will stop or disease
will descend on us if we stop pursuing justice. But, I very much believe that
our relationship with God is based in our willingness to pursue justice, and
that there’s no way to ignore justice without violating that relationship. I
believe that our ability to connect with the Most High only exists when we are
concerned with fairness “down here.”
I’m pretty sure that religion which is unconcerned with
justice isn’t actually religion, at all. It’s sacrilege.
