The Spiritual I.n.s.
Many are worried about keeping out the negative influences. The Torah is just as concerned, if not more, with keeping in the positive influences.
Guarding Our Borders
With the national elections approaching, it is likely that we will hear more talk about the issue of protecting our borders from the encroachment of illegal immigrants and illegal substances.. While we are a country of immigrants and we should always remember the fact that immigrants have made this country great, there is still a vital need to determine whose entry would be beneficial to this country and whose would be detrimental.
Appoint Judges to Your Gates
This — in a modified form — is precisely the message conveyed to us in this week’s Parsha, according to the interpretation of the Shaloh.
Our Parsha begins with the commandment:
“Judges and officers you shall appoint in all of your gates.”
On the simple level of interpretation known as p’shat, this commandment is to appoint judges in all of the Land of Israel’s cities. Since judges usually presided at the gates of the city, the Torah refers to cities as gates.
On a deeper level, the Shaloh explains that each and every one of us is a miniature city. And it is our task to appoint our own internal judges or INS agents, if you will, to insure that no “illegal immigrants,” or “forbidden substances,” i.e., unsavory influences, enter our little city.
In our society, one can be bombarded with all sorts of influences almost 24 hours of the day in which our radio, TV, newspaper, magazine, book, video, movie, Internet, billboard, neon lights, etc. inundate us with every imaginable message. We must therefore appoint special agents, i.e., our powers of discernment to determine what influences are desirable and which ones are deleterious to our spiritual and even physical health.
Insidious Influences
Very often the nature of the influences are not clear. They may be smuggled in with other neutral or even positive influences. Because of their insidious nature, one must occasionally look beneath the surface; open up the “trunks of cars”, search between the “layers of clothing,”, search for “hidden compartments” in the luggage etc. to detect the hidden contraband.
In the spiritual realm there are also times when innocuous influences may contain hidden and unhealthy material as well. These must be avoided.
What are We Keeping In?
Having made a case for the role of our spiritual INS to keep out the undesirable, the truth, however, is that the primary message is not what we must keep out, but what we have to keep in.
This means, that our so called INS agents, that are to be set up at entry points of our miniature city, are primarily charged with the obligation to search for and allow the healthy and positive influences to enter our system. We must open our minds, ears and eyes to imbibe as much positive information as we can absorb, while, simultaneously, expunging that which is negative.
To underscore the point that the primary role of the judge is to encourage the positive, the Torah follows up the commandment to appoint judges with two statements: First it says: “And they shall judge the people with righteous judgment” — the positive. And only after that does the Torah speak of the role of the judge to avoid the negative: “You shall not pervert justice.”
Similarly, while we must always be mindful of the negative influences that pervade our environment, our focus, however, should be on looking for the right influences nd sources of knowledge and inundate ourselves, our children and our society with them.
The Torah does not call for the end of “immigration,” it calls for increased immigration as a way of strengthening our society.
In spiritual terms this means we must afford ourselves as many opportunities to study all the different levels of Torah, from the simple to the mystical, from Halacha to Aggadah especially now with the proliferation of translations of Torah classics into the English language.
As we approach the imminent redemption, we must realize that when the entire drama of the Messianic Age unfolds, there will be no more evil. Our senses and faculties will savor and imbibe the delightful taste of all the nuances of Torah and G-dly enlightenment without the need to filter out the negative, because, as the Prophet tells us, “the spirit of impurity I will remove from the earth.” Evil will simply cease to exist.
And while evil still exists and we must be ever so vigilant to filter out the evil from our “city,” we must realize that the primary function of the judge is to allow the good and holy to enter, particularly now that we are preparing for the age when goodness and holiness will reign supreme.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Shoftim by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
