If a case is too baffling for you to decide, be it a controversy over homicide, civil law, or assault—matters of dispute in your courts—you shall promptly repair to the place that your God the Lord will have chosen, and appear before the levitical priests, or the magistrate in charge at the time, and present your problem. When they have announced to you the verdict in the case, you shall carry out the verdict that is announced to you from that place that the Lord chose, observing scrupulously all their instructions to you. You shall act in accordance with the instructions given you and the ruling handed down to you; you must not deviate from the verdict that they announce to you either to the right or to the left. (Deuteronomy 17:8-11)
Zedek tzedek tirdof. Justice, justice you shall pursue. (Deuteronomy 16:20).
The famous double imperative that opens Parashat Shoftim does more than merely emphasize the centrality of justice. The repetition of tzedek marks a fundamental tension between two aspects of justice: the first tzedek represents the l’hatchila—what is right in theory, the universal ideal principles that should govern all human relations; the second represents b'di eved—what is right in the messy reality of lived experience, the particular judgment applied to specific circumstances with specific people facing specific challenges.
The Torah’s approach to baffling cases demonstrates the power of this dialectic. When faced with matters “too baffling for you to decide,” the text points us toward those who must render decisions while living under conditions of uncertainty. The case too baffling to decide isn't an exceptional moment requiring special procedures but paradigmatic of life itself, the very condition of existing in history rather than in the realm of abstract principles.
Despite operating with incomplete knowledge in the b'di eved realm of limited understanding, the decision-makers are granted ultimate authority. “You must not deviate from the verdict that they announce to you either to the right or to the left.” The Torah transforms the b'di eved (ex post facto, right) into l'hatchila (ex ante, right)—not by transcending historical limitation, but by locating divine authority precisely within it.
This tension echoes through one of medieval philosophy's strangest books, the Kuzari, written in the 12th century by the Spanish-Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi. The king of the Khazars has a dream where an angel tells him his intentions are good but his actions are wrong. Desperate to understand how to live correctly, the king invites representatives of the world’s major traditions to make their case. Philosophy, Christianity, Islam, Judaism — let them compete for the right to guide a human life.
The philosopher offers the universal tzedek, the l’hatchila approach—elegant a priori principles and systematic ethics that could apply to any rational being anywhere. But these first principles, however logically perfect, leave the king’s existential question unanswered. The philosopher’s God embodies pure universality while remaining utterly indifferent to particular human choices. Universal justice without particular care.
The Christian and Muslim scholars both offer divine command and moral guidance, but Halevi notices something curious: Both trace their authority back to Jewish revelation. If you want the source of moral judgment, why not go directly to Sinai?
When the Jewish scholar speaks, he abandons systematic argumentation entirely. Instead of universal proofs, he offers radical particularity: “I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who brought Israel out of Egypt with signs and wonders…” He presents the second tzedek—justice rooted not in a priori reasoning but in a posteriori encounter, specific moments when the divine entered history and transformed particular people in particular circumstances. This should have been rhetorically suicidal. Universal claims typically persuade better than particular ones.
The king converts to Judaism.
Halevi’s revolutionary argument is that history isn’t a diminishment of the ideal but where we find it. Jewish wisdom emerges through history and apparent contingency, not the neat application of first principles against a static backdrop. The book’s hero is a convert, someone who lacked that particular experience and yet still chose to join. The king recognizes that certain forms of wisdom are available only through sustained engagement with specific practices, and that such engagement remains open to anyone willing to commit to the search even when they cannot fully justify that commitment in advance.
This speaks directly to the deepest insight of Parashat Shoftim. Universal tzedek demands consistent principles that apply to all, while particular tzedek requires discernment that responds to the unique circumstances before us. We cannot collapse this tension into either pure universalism or mere particularism. We must pursue both—l'hatchila and b'di eved, first principles and historical reality, the ideal and the actual conditions under which we must make decisions.
This is why Halevi wrote not just philosophy, but poetry and liturgy, and structured his philosophical work as dialogue rather than treatise. He understood that some truths require multiple modes of engagement—aesthetic, ritual, conversational—that exceed what systematic argument alone can provide. His method embodied his message: the most important forms of wisdom emerge through encounter, not demonstration. The Khazar king chose Judaism because he recognized that Jewish practice could address what abstract reasoning alone could not: the question of how to live in relationship with ultimate reality while embedded in the messiness of historical existence.
Tzedek tzedek tirdof demands not the security of systematic approaches that solve our intellectual problems while leaving existential ones untouched, but the courage to engage with traditions that have proven to be generative of wisdom through sustained practice. Some forms of justice, like some forms of truth, might be accessible only to those willing to be shaped by the pursuit itself—to those who understand that the b'di eved realm of historical limitation is not a falling away from divine truth but the very place where divine authority makes itself known. Not the always valid, but the here and now.
Parashat Shoftim is read early in Elul, the Hebrew month of turning, when we prepare for the Days of Awe by examining not just what we’ve done wrong, but how we’ve been thinking about right and wrong altogether. During Elul, we become both judge and judged, examining our actions while questioning our criteria for judgment. This month asks us to hold the same tension that runs through Shoftim and the Kuzari: the judgment of the anxious king compelled to consider all possible paths and the judgment of the committed practitioner thrown into the world with a roadmap, and a remedy for restless sleep.
Our world is not a closed system, so there is always something new, and something to be anxious about. Heidegger and Kierkegaard say Angst is structural to life. But viewed through the lens of Halevi, this angst can be remedied by Teshuva; the king—overwhelmed by a need to justify his life—can find peace through commitment to it.
The repetition of tzedek tzedek tirdof suggests that we pursue justice not by applying predetermined principles, but by allowing the practice of judgment to refine our understanding of what justice means. Like the convert in Halevi’s story, we discover what we’re seeking only by committing to the search. Like the judges who must render verdicts on baffling cases, we find that our limited, historically situated decisions can become vessels for ultimate authority. During this season of turning, that might be exactly the kind of judgment—and the kind of courage—that leads to transformation.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins
P.S.—Note that this d’var is an emendation of an essay I published this week at myjewishlearning.com — there I focus on particularism vs. universalism; here, I try to show how that dialectic fits and is brought to life by the tension between the l’hatchila and the b’di eved.
I have been pursuing this strategy very fruitfully with my son by listening to Mike Duncan's history podcasts with him: first History of Rome, now Revolutions. We go back and forth between asking: what should this specific person, be it Marius or Aurelian or Cromwell or Washington or Danton, have done in this specific situation? do you think they made a bad or good choice? why? and: what are the big overarching historical principles that this new episode is illustrating, or complicating? So it can work with a variety of domains, not just law or theology.