Tzedek tzedek tirdof. Justice, justice you shall pursue. 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 universal, the ideal principles that should govern all human relations, while the second represents the particular, the lived reality of judgment applied to specific circumstances with specific people facing specific challenges.
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.
What happens next reveals something unsettling about how judgment works. The philosopher offers the universal tzedek — elegant principles and a systematic ethics that could apply to any rational being anywhere. But these 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?
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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 in specific encounters between the divine and particular people in particular moments. This should have been rhetorically suicidal. Universal claims typically persuade better than particular ones.
The king converts to Judaism.
Halevi’s argument is that Jewish wisdom emerges from particular historical experience. 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.
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.
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. He was willing to be transformed rather than merely informed, to enter into practices whose ultimate justification exceeded his ability to systematize.
Perhaps this is what 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.
Parashat Shoftim is always 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 Jew thrown into the world with a roadmap — and a tonic for restless sleep.
The repetition of tzedek tzedek tirdof suggests that we pursue justice through 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 even when we can’t fully justify that commitment in advance. During this season of turning, that might be exactly the kind of judgment — and the kind of courage — that leads to transformation.
This article initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on August 30, 2025. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here.
