Shoftim: Appointing Yourself Judge

(Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9)

One senses that a lot is going to change for the Israelites when they enter the promised land.  Among other things, with the loss of Moses, the greatest prophet and closest confidant to God that we have ever had in our midst, God will inevitably be a little more distant from the people.  Without Moses to act as such a faithful intermediary, the people may have to live without regular statements, commands and advice from God.  Thus it’s no accident that Parashat Shof’tim begins with the line You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice.  The people – all grown up now and ready to take possession of their inheritance – will need to find wisdom among themselves.  The nineteenth-century Torah teacher Sfat Emet wrote that this line was, in part, “a promise to the Jew, saying: ‘You will be able to make yourself into your own judge and officer.’”  In other words, as we make this seismic shift, we are not only finding people in our community to help guide us – we are being empowered to, in fact, guide ourselves. 

Here we have crucial wisdom for the artist, and particularly the beginning artist.  It’s natural, as we start out, to be heavily or even totally dependent on the feedback of others in judging our work.  After all, we probably lack confidence, experience, clear knowledge of our own strengths and weaknesses.  Filmmaker Woody Allen said, “When I was first making films, I used to have many screenings.  And I would sneak into the back of the cinema and listen to the reactions and make my changes and cuts according to that.”  Yet these were just the early films.  Allen naturally became “more self-reliant over the years,” so that his process of reworking things changed over the years: “Then I had less screenings.  I had like maybe two big screenings.  Then I started to screen the films in my screening-room.  And now that’s pretty much all I do.  When I’ve finished a film, I screen it five, six times in my screening-room.  I invite my sister and some friends.  And when it’s over I say to them, “Is there anything you want to tell me about this?  Anything you don’t understand or anything I should know?”  And they might say that they liked it or didn’t like it, or that there might be some scenes which were unclear or misunderstood.  And then I take that into consideration.  But basically, when I show a film to them, it’s 99 per cent finished.”  Over time, he has become confident enough to know when he’s doing well and when he’s not.

One way or another, most successful artists come to this place of self-reliance.  Visual artist Judy Chicago once wrote, “I know that I’m really doing good work.”  Songwriter Bob Dylan said, “I kind of know myself well enough to know that the line might be good.”  Allowing himself to trust his judgment on that line has led him in productive directions: “It is the first line that gives you inspiration and then it’s just like riding a bull.”  Appointing oneself a judge of one’s material allows you to go further into the work – and to do it well.  According to literary scholar Joseph Cohen, the fact that novelist Amos Oz is such “an excellent judge of his material” makes Oz especially “accomplished in determining which literary structure is best suited to its exploitation.”

Of course, this self-reliance doesn’t have to be completely inflexible.  After all, the Israelites aren’t just going to rely on individual judgment – they’re also going to appoint those officials that God is calling for.  Allen, for one, has continued to take in advice from others: “On the set, when I am filming the movie, everybody tells me how to do it – the script girl, the assistant director, the focus-puller.  Everyone contributes with their comments.  ‘That joke is not funny, you should do this joke instead.’  Or, ‘That doesn’t look real!’  I mean, everybody has opinions.  And I listen to all of them, and sometimes they are right and sometimes not.  But nobody ever comes around in a serious way with suggestions or changes in the script.  People feel I’ve made enough movies to know what I am doing.”  More importantly, he feels that way, too.  Having a trusted inner voice means having a crucial ally in your work, an ally that will challenge you, push you, and tell you when you’re on the right track.  Painter Ben Shahn described this collaborative-feeling experience like this: “The inward critic is ever at hand, perpetually advising and casting doubt.  Here the work is overstated; there it is thin; in another place, muddiness is threatened; somewhere else it has lost connection with the whole; here it looks like an exercise in paint alone; there an area should be preserved; thus the critics, sometimes staying the hand of the painter, sometimes demanding a fresh approach, sometimes demanding that a whole work be abandoned – and sometimes not succeeding, for the will may be stubborn enough to override such advice.”

God’s call to the Israelites in the beginning of this parasha is really a daunting call for them to take responsibility for their own community.  Imagine what that must have felt like for a people that had so recently been entirely dependent on God in getting out of Egypt.  Well, those lines also call on us as individuals, call on each one of us to take responsibility for ourselves.  As artists of course we turn to others for fresh perspectives.  In the end, though, only one person can – and should – act as the final judge on the matter.  Luckily for us, that person, given a little training, patience, and self-awareness, is eminently qualified for the job.