Loving Righteousness and Fairness

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We enter the new year of 2017. Every new year elicits retrospective thoughts about what has gone before, along with renewed resolve, concern or hope for our next steps into the unknown future. Such feelings are even more pressing this month, as a new President and administration will begin their term of office for the United States, also called, in view of the current partisan split in our society, the “Divided States.”

The divisions in our nation are acknowledged by so many of us – a rare case of unanimity! – to be sharper and more pervasive than they have been for a long time. There is practically nothing in our collective experience that we can discuss together with an expectation of common understanding, let alone agreement. Every issue, every figure, every event that we look at or contemplate – we see differently. Each side even has its lenses, its own metrics, its own priorities. Each side has its own facts.

With a new President taking office, the issue of leadership is one primary issue of contention. It is fitting that, as we move on in our monthly survey of our prayers, the blessing for this month’s column is a prayer about leadership and justice set within our consciousness of the passage of time. It reads:

“Restore our judges, as at the beginning, and our advisers, as at the start. And remove from us anguish and sighs. Reign over us , You, Eternal One, alone – in love and in compassion, and justify us in fairness. You abound in blessings, Eternal One, the Sovereign Who loves righteousness and fairness.”

This blessing opens with a phrase inspired by the prophet Isaiah. We can pray that God “restore our judges as at the beginning,” because this is God’s promise to us through the mouth of Isaiah: “I will restore your judges as at the beginning and your advisors as at the start.” (Isa. 1:26) So we are asking God to fulfill that ancient pledge.

Some understood that this restoration would only occur at the messianic end of time. Thus this prayer is a roundabout way of wishing for that redemptive time. But the question we must then confront is – what do we do until that blissful conclusion of history? What does our redemption actually depend on? Do we have any role to play? Or are we off the hook until then? How much do we need to take responsibility for our own destiny? And if we have such a responsibility, what shall we do to meet it?

We may gain greater insight into this blessing’s meaning for us if we examine the context surrounding Isaiah’s statement. Isaiah’s report of God’s promise is placed in juxtaposition with the prophet’s bitter excoriation of the state of Jewish society in his time.

Isaiah says, in God’s Name: “Your princes are unruly, and entirely a pack of thieves, loving bribery, chasing emoluments; they refuse to give fair justice to an orphan and the case of a widow never reaches them.” (Isaiah 1:23) Isaiah expresses God’s disgust at the corruption of the political and legal order of the time. If God promises to restore just leaders, this promise is not about creating some new reality, but about restoring a reality that we started with, but that we, ourselves, have ruined. The evils of history that we suffer, making history a time in urgent need of redemption, are specifically laid at our own door. The pain and suffering that God is outraged over is not the result of the misdeeds of others. The Jewish people are not responsible for the hatred or hypocrisy of anyone else. Rather, what outrages God is the failure of the Jewish people to strive to fix their own behavior – to insure that the downtrodden are heard and taken care of in fairness and justice. Only after God purges us of our corruption will we be restored to God’s good graces. “After that it will be appropriate to call you ‘a City of Righteousness, a Faithful Metropolis. Zion shall be redeemed through fair justice and those who return to her, with righteousness.” (vv. 27 – 28)

The redemption of the Jewish people is dependent on our own heeding of the prophetic message to take ownership of our moral mission. That moral mission is explicitly tied with concern for the less fortunate and the disempowered. If we create a system of justice and authority that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the downtrodden to be heard, to “get their day in court,” then we have replicated the social corruption that so enraged and disgusted God in the times of Isaiah.
Our blessing closes with a locution just as hard-hitting as its beginning. The blessing surprisingly applies the feeling of love to the seemingly abstract concepts of righteousness and fairness. We praise God as a Sovereign Whose power is most especially expressed in the fact that God loves justice and fairness. These are not simply values that we must work toward or protect. We are meant to imitate God – not only in acting justly, but in loving justice and fairness. We are meant to inculcate into our emotions a visceral desire for what is just, righteous and fair. So that unfairness will not leave us unmoved and blasé, but sick at heart, outraged and nauseous. And any instance of doing justly and expanding fairness will make us beam with joy and glow with gratitude, like someone who has just found their one true love.

This is the standard by which we should be judging our leaders and advisors. This is our daily prayer.

 

Image(s): “And justice for all”  ©  Ze Valdi used with permission via Creative Commons License

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One thought on “Loving Righteousness and Fairness

  1. As always, Rabbi, you have once again brought the words of the prophets down to our own day and our own community. Beyond ensuring my own son’s future, I have not yet made a firm decision about exactly how to implement Isaiah’s and your exhortation in a concrete way. But by the grace of God I had a productive conversation yesterday with a former student (my age and Jewish) who is a leader in a couple of local initiatives that embody Isaiah’s teaching. I am striving to embrace the mantra, “Think globally, act locally.” Todah rabbah and Happy New Year.

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