This was our final week of summer vacation. All in all, I think Camp Mommy was a success. Other than the anchor points of swim lessons 3x per week, we built in a ton of wide open free-time, and found ourselves thriving in last minute land. We had so much flexibility, so much rest. That was all I really wanted for the children, and myself. A really restful summer. I can’t even begin to count the number of summer days, where everyone stayed in PJ’s through lunch, and just… slept in, played, read, ate, napped, made forts in the living room, 9am lemonade popsicles, spent time outside with the hose. And yet, we still managed to fill in our time with playgrounds, playdates, museums, indoor play-places, and a handful of baseball games. I’m already nostalgic for this past summer, it was really great.
As for this week’s parsha, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired. This week was all about law and order, and all of the nuances of specific steps to take in the event of a homicide, accidental or not. I really love the particular details God lays out in the various events of homicide. And I do wonder, where our country has gone so wrong. Did you know only 27 states have the death penalty? The Torah takes killing incredibly seriously, but it also distinguishes between intentional murder and accidental death and builds an entire system around that distinction.
Preserving & Protecting
I think what unsettled me most about Shoftim this year wasn’t any particular law. It was the underlying assumption that a functioning society requires people to agree that the law matters. There is an understanding throughout this parsha that a society needs order, boundaries, justice, and a shared set of rules in order to function. And I couldn’t help but think about how increasingly difficult that seems to be in Western societies today. We are wrestling with questions of immigration, assimilation, religious law, national identity, and, perhaps most fundamentally, whether there are still boundaries around what we are willing to preserve and protect. At what point does a society become so unwilling to defend its own laws, customs, and values that it begins to lose the very thing that made it a cohesive society in the first place?
Be sure to set a as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, on who is not your kinsman (17:15)
It’s tough to read Shoftim and not feel enraged at the current state of affairs of our country, as well as what’s happening in Europe, which is almost unrecognizable today. All I could think about while reading this weeks parsha was about the invasion of Islam in American, England, France, and in Spain.
However, for the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on what’s happening in our own home country. Watching the primaries unfold a few weeks back in Michigan was beyond shocking, and brings up a multitude of questions about where we will be heading as a country. If we keep going at this rate, will anyone be surprised when sharia law takes effect around the country? And who can we blame but ourselves? Moreover, we are taxpaying American citizens, and we are essentially funding this, welcoming this, and I simply have a hard time wrapping my head around this. Not only have some parts of our own country become unrecognizable (Detroit, Chicago, New York City, Minneapolis, etc.), but we are actively allowing foreign-born people to take office and hold positions of political power. Which, tying this back to shoftim, I can understand why God would not want someone foreigner to reign over you — incompatible values. When running a healthy, thriving, functioning society, I’m sorry, but aligned values matter. Sharia law is not compatible with Western values. There, I said it.
I’m just going to leave this here, it’s worth a watch:
Every American, regardless of race, color, creed, ethnicity, state, political party or church, should watch this clip and watch it all.
— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) August 5, 2026
We have been warned! pic.twitter.com/ELZoY9bvxw