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Monday, August 09, 2021

"Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue" is one of the most Zionist verses in the Torah

In this week's Torah portion, we see one of the verses that Israel haters love to quote: "Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof" - "Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue." (Deuteronomy 16:20)

It is all over the place, as the haters love to pretend that the verse shows that Israel is violating the tenets of the Torah that they don't believe in to begin with.

You will never hear them quote the entire verse.


The verse is a promise by God to give the entire land of Israel to the Jews. 

It is generally understood to mean that the Jewish nation must establish a functioning, moral legal system as a fundamental part of the nation's ethos.

Even though the modern State of Israel is not a religious state, it has an excellent legal system. People who want to denigrate Israel try not to attack Israel's justice system directly because they know that they cannot argue with their meticulous rulings that run circles around their own pathetic interpretation of the law. (All of the Sheikh Jarrah criticism boils down to "It's not fair!" Because they know that the rulings have been legal.) 

By the standards of this verse, no one deserves to live on the entire land of Israel more than the Jews who have brought there the best legal system it has seen since the last time Jews lived there.

"Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof" is a most quintessentially Zionist verse. Which is why the haters will never want to discuss the second half of it.