Shoftim v'Shotrim in Los Angeles

(Aug 2021, Covid)

Dear girls

On my way from the putrid Wingate Hotel (bed and shower were fine) to the Carlyle Hotel on Robertson. Had about 5 solid hours of sleep and there was a little coffee maker in the room for when I woke up, yay!

Dvar Torah for reading over lunch:

Shoftim v'Shotrim in your gates...

Being in Los Angeles definitely reminds me of that pasuk. The airport has people who supervise who are coming in and out of the country, interrogating and judging you. Corona reminds me of the pasuk because we need covers over our face at the moment, both for what we might bring into or out of our bodies. Aeroplanes remind me of the pasuk because you need people who look after you and watch over you and protect you from the moment you step through the doors. Countries remind me of the pasuk because there are people protecting you on the inside.

In all these cases it is completely reasonable. In order to have a free society there always needs to be people with knowledge, experience and skill to look after you. In your own way you girls have also been shoftim v'shotrim for others, because of your very special and unique qualities and capabilities. 

But one of the fundamental elements of the pasuk is "in your gates". Whilst you need shoftim v'shotrim, officers and judges, at your gates, they are only there to protect you. Once they step over those boundaries then this is clearly not something the Torah would want for you. This means that you are and have the right to be your own personal individual inside. When the authorities start to overreach their mandate and control all aspects of your life that would be disconsonant with Torah law. They are only there to protect but not to control you. It is important to respect the authority and their directives but it is just as important to express yourself as an individual. There has to be a mutual relationship and a working together. 

Shoftim, shotrim, the gates, the city and the people all have to work respectfully together with synchronicity, understanding, sympathy, and maturity. One is not more important than the other. God did not create you as mindless automatons, chas v'shalom, but as members of what should be a harmonious society. Every player in that system has a responsibility to act in a reasonable, legal, legitimate and sympathetic manner so there is order. When the parts of that system try to move in on the territory of another part of that system it leads to tohu vavohu, chaos. That is not how our world works. 

Your job is to ensure that every part of your own personal system and the family, community, state, country and world around you are all working for each and not against each other. Even your relationship with Hashem needs to be mutual, because he does not want you to be a robot. He wants you to have a good life in a respectful and respectable way.

I have just arrived at the Carlyle Hotel on Robertson around the corner from Pico. Interestingly, the meaning of the name "Carlyle" is "from the protected city". Clearly I am in exactly the place Hashem wants me to be. I chose to be in a Jewish area and with Jewish people and in a good hotel, where I know I will be protected until I finally finally finally get home to be with you, which I am so looking forward to.

Why does being in Los Angeles remind me of the pasuk? Los Angeles means the City of Angels. Angels are Hashem's emissaries to this world to guide and protect us, but not necessarily to control us. May the Almighty always guide and protect you as he has done for klal Yisrael for countless generations and may he bring us quickly to the time of mashiach.

Now I'm off for a bit of lunch on Pico somewhere. 

Lotsa love & Good Shabbos

Aba