A live recording of Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz as they explore the Torah’s visceral disgust for the monarchy and how this rejection sheds light on the New Year Festival and it’s powerful message.

Link to Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/340788

Transcript:

Geoffrey Stern 

This week's parsha is Shoftim. And it is the first time that the Jewish people ask for a king. And so I'm just going to go ahead and read Deuteronomy 17. Because this is the first time that not only is the Jewish people asking for a king, but frankly, we'll see in our discussion. kingship is not that much emphasized throughout the Bible till now. So again, we start almost like last week, trying to put it in the context of entering the land. It says, "If after you have entered the land, that the Lord your God has assigned you and taken possession of it, and settled in it, you decide, I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me, you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the Lord your God, be sure to set as a king over oneself one of you own people, you must not set a foreigner over you who is not your kinsmen. And then it goes on to further limit what the king can do, you shall not keep many horses, or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the Lord has warned you, you must not go back that way again. You shall not have many wives, you shall know amass silver and gold in excess, he shall have a copy of the teaching of the Torah written for him on a scroll, and he shall read it regularly. And then it goes on to say, thus he will not act haughtily toward his fellows, or deviate from the instruction to the right. or to the left." We've seen many times where the Jewish people have gone to Moses, whether as a group or individuals and asked for exceptions to the rule. But I think this one is really striking, in that if you had to give one argument to Moses, or God, I think the last thing you would ever say is, I want to do something because the nations around me are doing it. I mean, that is a really bad strategy, seeing as so much of what Moses and God are trying to do is to create a distinctive narrative. But sure enough, that's what they do. And then God goes ahead and says, or, the Bible says you can have it, and then gives a bunch of limitations. So what is your read on this Rabbi, what what is going on here? Is this totally unique in terms of the type of give and take that we've seen, when the Bible, the Torah is being tweaked as the rubber hits the pavement and the Jews come into the land of Israel?

Adam Mintz 

First of all, thank you, Geoffrey, this is a great topic. And I think that you really hit on something that's so important, the uniqueness of the message of the Torah. And the fact that the Jews want to be like everybody else. You see, think about it for a minute. The Jews were slaves in Egypt, they've been 40 years in the desert. That is the unique story. Nobody else has the story. And finally, after all of this, 40 years of the desert, and all the all the trouble and all the this and all the that they finally have a chance to be like everybody else. Wow, what an amazing opportunity to be like everybody else. And they kind of slip up, because they tell God, hey, God, we want to be just like everybody else. And God basically says (the story doesn't play itself out here until the book of Samuel)  then you're not like everybody else. And you can't have a king, because God is the only king that you have. But the fact that the Jews want to be like everybody else really tells you what they've been thinking for 40 years. Enough is Enough of all these miracle stories. We just want to be regular people.

Geoffrey Stern 

You know, there's another clue here, where it says, "Do not keep many horses, or send people back to Egypt to add to the horses, because I have warned you You must not go back that way again."  It's almost a recognition that this is a full retreat from everything that's been accomplished till now. It's almost as though you're going back to Egypt, not so much with the horses, but with the whole endeavor, asking for a king, a Pharaoh, if you will. And you're almost surprised by the lack of drama here, it's almost a factual response: Okay, you want a King, this is what the limitations are going to be, you can't have a lot of horses, can't have a lot of riches can't have a lot of wives, and you got to read the Torah a lot. I think you're absolutely correct. This doesn't really play itself out until we get to Samuel. And in Samuel, it's almost as though we're reading two galleys of the same story. You know, I've talked a lot about when exactly the book of Deuteronomy was written, but we can put that to the side and look at Samuel, because in the version that we have with Samuel, it gets a lot more emotional. And they're they come to Samuel. And they said to him, also appoint a king for us to govern like all the other nations. And Samuel was displeased. And he, (like Moses, in the old days) went to God and say, God, what should we do? And God says, "It is not you that they have rejected, it is me they have rejected as their King." So God is saying, this is a total rejection of all that we've worked for. And the Hebrew term that he uses "ki lo otcha ma'asu ke oti ma'asu" ... if you know, yes, you know, the word meese or meeskite means something that is detestable. It almost works into the fabric of our story, you know the cornerstone that was rejected by the builders, "Even She'moasu habanim" in a sense, you are turning the table on God, and you are rejecting God outright by asking for a king. I think that there's so much emotion here that we have to stop almost, and wrap our hands around what is happening here? And how personally, if you can say that, God is taking it?

Adam Mintz 

Yeah, I mean, there's no question that God takes it very personally, I think that's not the surprising part. The surprising part is the fact that after 40 years, this is the case that makes the Jews kind of, you know, jump up and say, we want to be like everybody else. The idea of being like everybody else, is very much not a religious idea. to this very day. It's bad to be like everybody else. If you're religious, whatever religion you have you're defined by being different than everybody else. If you want to have a title for today, the idea of being like everybody else, is a very problematic idea in religion.

Geoffrey Stern 

If we were to stop here, you would be absolutely correct. And what I mean by that is, there's a lot of truth to what you're saying. But being different can kind of be like you dress in white, I'm going to dress in black, but in Samuel, he actually puts some meat and what is distasteful about having a king and a ruler and a monarch. So it's not simply, you are just trying to blend in and assimilate. It's really you're giving up on a whole set of values. Listen to what Samuel says, and he warns them, what will happen to them if they have a king, "he will take your sons and appoint them as charioteers and horsemen and they will serve as outrunners for his chariots. He will appoint them as his chiefs of his 1,000s and his 50's or they will have to plow his fields reap his harvest and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters as perfumers cooks and bakers, he will seize your choice fields, vineyards and olive groves, and give them to his couriers. He will take the 10th part of your grain and vintage and give it to the unichs and courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, your choice young men and your asses and put them to work for him. He will take a 10th part of your flocks and you shall become his slaves. The day will come when you cry out because of the king who you yourselves have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you on that day." So it's really not so much that you're making  a mistake, because you're blending in and you're losing your cultural identity. You're really making a very profound mistake and you can't but hear in this, the clacking of the armour and the chariots there's war here there is putting people into subjugation. You are asking to give up. God, you're throwing him away, and you're taking on a ruler who's going to subjugate you.

Adam Mintz 

Yeah, I mean, that just makes it all that much worse. It just shows how near sighted the Jews are, that they just want the immediate power, or the sense that they're like every other nation, the long view, which is the God takes care of them better than anybody else that doesn't seem to figure in their minds.

Geoffrey Stern 

 Michael?

Michael Stern 

I was hearing it so different not to take a king of the material world in the physical world, but to gain and earn sovereignty over ourselves. And to, you know, in different programs, it's: have a higher power of my understanding. And if everybody met in their own higher powers and this kingdom over my hurt angry child that wants to wear armor and go out and kill people, my little girl that shamed for being in a man's body to other cultures, you mentioned we're the only one with that story of 40 years in the desert, I don't know how long the blacks were slaves. And they are having identity crisis too. How do we find the king within, for the sovereignty of our inner nation, so that we can see who's aho, who's sitting in the captain's seat, to watch over the domain and listen to the hurt child to the angry to the competitive, and so on. So I just wanted to say that's what I heard in the process.

Geoffrey Stern 

I love that. You've almost kind of artistically joined the two, two narratives together the distinctive one of remember who you were, and how unique you were, and that you were slaves, and that you were poor, and that you didn't have those horses. And I forgot to bring the punch line here where Samuel really combines it all. And he says, "We must have a king over us that we may be like all the other nations let our King rule over us and go out at our head and fight our battles." So it is fascinating that he kind of combines the fact that you want to be like everybody else. And everybody else is out there, seeing who has a bigger stick, and you want to join that and you're losing everything that makes you unique. So I think that one can only conclude from this, that the Torah is totally against the Monarchy, totally against having a king. And we all know how profound a distinction that made for the Jewish people in the sense that the temple was built by Solomon, ..... I just watched an episode or two of CNN called Jerusalem the other night. And, you know, this is when we became truly like every other nation, where we established our cultic Center, and we established a monarchy and a king. And the Torah in these two visceral paragraphs is so much against it, how do we take that as a commentary on what we've become? So much of what is in Judaism revolves around the monarchy and and and us becoming a nation amongst the others?

Michael Stern 

Well, I really love the different perspectives and if we're coming from a past that proves that we were like the other nations, maybe we need to adjust it because we still have presidents who are like kings and so on, and have self sovereignty and internalize the whole story. And hopefully the higher power is one, in my understanding.

Geoffrey Stern 

Thanks! I'd like to move move on a little bit and talk in terms of one of the solutions to this problem. A few paragraphs later in Samuel 9, they go out and they anoint the the new king, and the word that they use is anoint him ruler "Mischato le'nagid al amey Yisrael" and those of you who have an ear for the Hebrew knows that anointing meshiach is is the same word is used for the Messiah. And so I'd like to jump ahead, a little bit of time to Zacharia, and talk about what Zacharia's vision of this king, which is optimized, I would say, for lack of a better word, to get around all of the negative problems that we just described. in Zecharia 9 it says "Rejoice greatly fair Zion, raise a shout for Jerusalem. Lo your king is coming to you. He is victorious, triumphant, yet humble, riding on an ass on a donkey foaled by a she ass. He shall banish chariots from Ephraim and horses from Jerusalem. The Warrior's bow shall be banished, he shall call on the nations to surrender and his rule shall extend from sea to sea and from ocean to Lands End." And sure enough, that's the vision of Melech Hamashiach the king anointed the Messiah, who doesn't ride on a horse put on a donkey is not haughty, but is humble, and calls for the nations of the world to have peace. So I think as you look through our tradition, one of the answers to this problem of the rejected monarchy is the acceptance of another more enlightened monarchy. Do you see Rabbi a kind contiguity between this negative aspect of the political King, and the acceptance embrace of a redeemer King?

Adam Mintz 

I absolutely do. And it's great that you bring those verses, let's take the first point, the idea that Meshiach, the Messiah, is the anointed one. You know, it's not only in Jewish culture, that we appoint a king by anointing him, that seems to be the way in the ancient world that they used to appoint a king by anointing, which is interesting in itself, which means that other religions, other cultures may also have had a messiah type of figure, an anointed one. But clearly in those verses, what you see is, that kingship is not automatically bad. kingship is problematic, because it's political, because it's self serving. But if you have kingship that is religious, then there is no problem with that kingship. That point is a very important point. And that's what the Messiah leads to. You know, there's a question... Maimonides  writes, that when the Messiah comes, the world is going to be exactly the way it is, it's just the Jews will not be subjugated by another nation. So what you see is that the Messiah is not going to change a lot of realities. He's going to change only the fact that the Jews are not subjugated. So even the role of the Messiah, vis a vis the role of the king is kind of interesting to consider.

 

Geoffrey Stern 

So I prefaced my comment by saying, this is a direction that the commentators take it. It's not necessarily the one I believe in or I embrace. And those of you who know me know that I'm not a big fan of the concept of the Messiah. So what I would like to do as we move forward, is to say, yes, one way to fix this distasteful concept of a political King is to create a more spiritual King. But there's also another way out of this. And I think what I would like to explore is a comment made by one of the modern scholars that I was reading, who says, you know, the truth is, until you get to this moment, in Deuteronomy, God is never referred to as King. God is referred to as a father figure, as a spouse, as a parent, as a shepherd, but the truth is not very much referred to as a king. And the the commentator brings this in the context of our Rosh Hashanah,  Yom Kippur holiday season, where those of you who have attended know, especially on Rosh Hashanah, it's all about making God, anointing God, the king. We take prayers that we say every day of the year, the formula for a blessing is Baruch Atah Hashem... Melech Haolam"  King of the universe. And we make it even more impactful, we change words. In our prayers to say King instead of God, but at the end of the day, it's all because we lived in a world that was full of kings. And even though God did not embrace this formula, once the Jews came into the land and asked for a king, he or she had to back into it. And the modern-day historians and academics all say that the New Year holiday, whether it occurred in the Fall or the Spring, that was rampant in Babylonia, in Egypt, all were variations on making the king of flesh and blood, renewing his lease, so to speak, anointing him from God, and praying for the future (of himself and his people). And in a sense, if any of those Babylonians or Egyptians were to walk into our service, where we were making a kingship rite as well, they would be baffled, because there was no king to be found. Because what we were doing was making God the king. And so in a sense, one of the strategies, the most profound strategy that we have in our religion, to get around the corrupt notion and the corrupting notion of a political King, a king that rules over us, is to make God the king, replace the human King with the godly King, not necessarily a role that God asked for, or wants but a way of saying that no man rules us, only God rules us. And I think that's the best context for looking at our high holiday services, that we again, are taking an institution that was out there, this kingship, and we are turning it on its head, it's a major paradigm shift. How does that resonate with with all of you,

 

Michael Stern 

That resonates really well, that we are creating a new concept and that fits in with my understanding that God is within and we have a choice within and I have to find the path that aligns with my higher power, that King of my domain, and I have many citizens inside of me, I call it the captain, not with the ship of fools. And so it really fits in well. And I think this equality among people, and that the Jews won't be demoralized and killed, and homosexuals that was over 40 years, and that it was illegal and considered a crime. And the Blacks and there are so many that we could meet in a new place. So a new inner sovereignty. Sounds good.

 

Adam Mintz 

I like it. Also, Michael, I love kind of the rethinking of what King means and what Messiah means. I think your real issue is not so much in King. It's in the Messiah. And I just wonder just for a minute to think about what the relationship is between the Messiah. And the king as described in this week's parsha. You know, Geoffrey, you made a jump, you jump to Zacharia where King and Messiah seem to be interchangeable ideas. Actually, when you look in this week's Torah portion, though, the word Messiah doesn't come up. I know that the king is anointed. But like I said before, all kings are anointed. What's interesting is the idea of the fact that I think in today, in the Torah, reading tomorrow, there's no idea of a religious Messiah, there really is an idea of a king. what the people want, when they say, Asima alay melech...  place upon us as a king. They want a political King. They're not so worried about the religious King. They've had Moses as their religious King from the beginning. That's not so exciting. What they want is they want a political king. Asima alai melech.

Geoffrey Stern 

So I would agree with you to a degree. clearly one of the fixes is to have this king read the tTorah all the time and hold the Torah all the time. And that, again, is a concession. What I'm trying to say is, and I think that Erich Fromm said it the best, he said "obedience to God is also the negation of submission to man." In other words, when Samuel told God that they wanted a king, God said, You don't understand. They're rejecting me. And if you look at it, and you flip it, you can say the opposite as well, that by accepting God, you're rejecting any sort of leadership role or subservience to man. And it's almost as if, and this is the the feeling that I have on lRosh Hashanah when I say Ain lanu Melach ela atah", there is no king other than you. What I'm saying is I am radically free, that there is no power besides a God that I need to answer to. And you can just as easily do that. Almost from a secular point of view, you can say that the message of Rosh Hashanah is that we are radically free. You know, there's something that we do on Rosh Hashanah, we talk about the Malchiyut which is the kingship of God. And then we talk about this strange thing of blowing of the shofar, and remembering the blowing of that shofar. And a lot of commentaries go to great ends to try to figure out what the connection is between making God King and blowing the shofar. And I'm just going to let out what my theory is. My theory is that we are approaching a sabbatical year. And in the sabbatical year, every seven years, slaves are released, and they are released when the shofar is blown. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia is a bell but the verse on it says, and you shall cry out, freedom throughout  the land. What ultimately happened, according to the Talmud, is that on the first day of the Rosh Hashanah, all of the slaves that were indentured servants were freed. And on the 10th day, the shofar was blown. And they literally walked out free. And I think ultimately, what Rosh Hashanah then becomes, is, yes, we're making God King. But the takeaway, the impact on us is that we are all those indentured servants who are listening to the sound of this so far, and being freed. And there's a responsibility clearly with that freedom. But ultimately, at the end of the day, that is the radical message of Rosh Hashanah. And I believe it's the radical message that the Jews in our parsha are rejecting. They want to go back to Egypt, they want a ruler they want somebody to serve, so to speak.

Adam Mintz 

First of all, that's a fascinating explanation. But it's interesting, Geoffrey, that when they say "asima alai melech"  "place upon us a king". They don't say we want to go back to Egypt. The Jews know how to say we want to go back to Egypt. They say it and they say it again. And they say it again. But here, they don't say it. Isn't that interesting? They just say we want a king. It doesn't seem to be related to Egypt.

 

Geoffrey Stern 

It doesn't. But it relates to the whole project, in a sense. I mean I think it's obviously much more flagrant when they say, you know, we used to have watermelons and good meat in in the fleshpots of Egypt. But here, if you really think about it, so much of the Exodus story from Egypt, was about rejecting the rule of the Pharaoh and his priests. And in a sense,here, as I said, before, a God is being ultimately rejected by this request. And the way I see it, because you asked about what I see is the connection to the Messiah. I think that even the Messiah is still saying that we need something we need somebody. In our tradition, the first four books of Moses God never refers to him or herself as a king, never needed that modality. And in a sense by asking for this political King, and embracing it, and getting Jerusalem and getting the monarchy and all that, we've gone on a very long detour, which includes having a humble king that can ride on a donkey and can solve our problems. But at the end of the day, this is where I stand, I stand that we're better off having no king at all, having this radical freedom and looking at our spiritual inner life, as Michael describes it, or as a godhead as that paternal maternal love-mate, child even. And ultimately we don't need a boss.  And this is the beautiful story of that indentured slave who after seven years says to his master, I don't want to go free. I like it here in my little Egypt, so to speak. And you take him according to the Torah to the doorposts and you pierce his ear. And Yohanan Ben zakkai says, Why do do you pierce his ears and inKedushin it says, "the Holy One blessed be he said, from a voice on Mount Sinai, that for me, the children of Israel are slaves, which indicates that they should not be slaves to slaves. And yet this man went and willingly acquired a master for himself, therefore, let his ear be pierced, "lo avadim l'avadim", ultimately, at the end of the day, if we accept God, as our only power, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are free. And if we don't, we are slaves to some sort of slave. And I think that is ultimately the message of the rejection of the monarchy. And the acceptance of the message of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Adam Mintz 

That beautiful I'd say we're slaves to a slave, even if that slave happens to be a king. That the last irony of the whole thing, that we're slaves to a slave even if that slave happens to be a king,

Geoffrey Stern 

or a Messiah maybe

Adam Mintz 

or a Messiah. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Geoffrey. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy Shoftim. Have a Shabbat Shalom and we look forward to seeing everybody next week.

Geoffrey Stern 

Shabbat Shalom