religious

Jewish history begins with God\’s call to Abram: \”Go forth from your native land and from your father\’s house to the land that I will show you.\” This call resonates through the millennia in two important ways. It connects our earliest beginnings and very identity as a people to the Promised Land, Israel. And it roots being Jewish in renunciation, deviation from the natural flow of events and radical independence.

Fall was just beginning to turn the Moscow air crispy when the lot of us — 10 high school seniors and three faculty members of YULA Girls\’ School — trudged down the stairs of our Intourist Hotel in the late \’80s, and began our walk of several miles, not to the better-known Chabad Lubavitch Synagogue or to the Moscow Choral Synagogue, but to another shul in the city\’s nort

\”Judges and officers shall you appoint in all of your cities.\”

This divine commandment to establish a judicial system serves as the basis of all Western law; a fair system affording protection to each of its citizens and guests.

Though this is a communal responsibility, it is stated in the singular, lecha. Why? Why is God talking to each of us as individuals? What message lies in this portion dealing with judges for us, the non-judge community?

Society needs to feel there is an operative judicial system. Community, as we know it, can only run when there is a feeling of justice.