Two Fields, or One?

Finding Faith in the Field — Parshat Shoftim and Chodesh Elul

This Torah thought is dedicated to the memory of our fallen soldiers:

Ephraim ben Liat v’Shmuel; Yosef Malachi ben Dina v’David; Eliyahu Moshe Shlomo ben Sarah v’Shimon; Yosef Chaim ben Rachel v’Eliyahu; Netanel ben Revital v’Elad; Yakir ben Chaya v’Yehoshua; Ron ben Sara v’Kenny; Harel ben Yonat v’Shlomo.

May their memories be a blessing, and may their courage and sacrifice continue to bring light to Am Yisrael.

The King in the Field

I love Elul. While everyone around me seems to hear Elul and immediately get serious—teshuvah, introspection, Rosh Hashanah is coming—I hear Elul and think: birthday! While the nation is preparing for a month of soul-searching, I'm ready for a party.

On my 30th birthday, I got a particularly great gift.

My husband gave me a beautiful gold necklace that I still wear and love. It is the Jewish heart associated with Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, formed from two Hebrew letters—two lameds—that come together to create the shape of a heart.

The two lameds evoke the words of Shir HaShirim, “Ani l’dodi v’dodi li” — “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine,” whose first letters spell Elul. In the image that has stayed with me, one lamed is already facing us, while the other has to turn. God is already there, already facing us. We are invited to turn around and discover that He has been there all along.

That is the Elul I love: inviting, open, waiting. Just turn around.

The Alter Rebbe gives us a beautiful image for this: “HaMelech basadeh” — the King in the field. In Likkutei Torah, he describes a king who, before entering his city and palace, can be found in the field. There, everyone can approach him. He receives each person graciously and shows a welcoming face to all.

The King is accessible. The King is near. He is already in the field.

The Society Shoftim Builds

Parshat Shoftim and Rosh Chodesh Elul often arrive together.

Shoftim is remarkable for the system it asks Am Yisrael to build as they prepare to live independently in Eretz Yisrael. This society will not be governed by might makes right, by family loyalty overriding truth, or by the whims of whoever happens to hold power.

“צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדֹּף” — “Justice, justice shall you pursue”

Judges and officers must be appointed. Judges may not show favoritism or accept bribes. Testimony requires careful investigation. Kings are subject to law and limits. Cities of refuge distinguish between intentional murder and accidental killing. Even warfare is constrained by law.

The Torah is constructing something extraordinary: a society in which justice is stronger than power and structures exist to protect human life.

These structures are meant, in a sense, to make the field safe.

Then, toward the end of the parsha, something breaks down.

A Body in the Field

כי ימצא חלל באדמה אשר ה׳ אלקיך נותן לך לרשתה נופל בשדה לא נודע מי הכהו

“If a slain person is found in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess, lying in the field, and it is not known who struck him.”

There is a body in the field, and no one knows who killed him.

The system of justice so carefully constructed throughout Shoftim did not reach this person. Somewhere beyond the protected structures of the city, a familiar, pre-Torah human reality has reappeared: violence, concealment, abandonment, perhaps the triumph of power over justice.

The Torah sends the guardians of the system out to meet the place where the system failed.

וְיָצְאוּ זִקְנֶיךָ וְשֹׁפְטֶיךָ — “Your elders and your judges shall go out.”

V’yatzu. Go out.

The elders cannot remain safely within the city. The judges cannot remain in the courthouse. The Torah's justice has to reach the field.

The kohanim come as well. Something has ruptured in the moral fabric of the community, and those entrusted with its spiritual and judicial order must face that fracture.

Perhaps that is one of the deepest functions of the sadeh:

The field is the no-man's-land where a society discovers whether the values proclaimed inside its walls are strong enough to survive outside them.

Two Fields?

I find myself thinking about two very different fields.

There is the field of Elul, where the King waits with a welcoming face.

And there is the field of Shoftim, where a human being lies dead because somehow the structures meant to protect life did not include him.

Are these two different fields?

Or could they somehow be one?

That question is not theoretical for me.

After October 7, I found myself entering what I can only call a field of devastation, drawn into the sacred responsibility of helping prepare the fallen and accompany them to their final rest.

There is one image I cannot forget.

Many of those who had been at the Nova festival had quite literally brought the field with them. Their shoes were crusted with mud. Branches and pieces of vegetation remained attached to them. A close friend of mine, an artist working alongside me, noticed the flowers—

extraordinary colors that had somehow traveled with them from the field.

The field had followed them inside.

The beauty of creation and the evidence of its devastation were physically attached to one another.

V’yatzu — Go Out

I went out because my son went out.

He and his fellow soldiers were willing to leave their homes and go toward the killing fields. As a mother, I felt that if our children, our precious soldiers, were willing to confront the devastation and restore safety and justice, then we, too, had to be willing to go out in whatever way we could.

After that experience, v’yatzu sounded different to me.

October 7 forced us as a society into the field. It exposed places where our assumptions of safety collapsed and demanded painful questions about the structures we had trusted.

What did we see? What did we fail to see? Whom did we listen to? Whom did we fail to protect? Where did our systems hold, and where did they fail?

Eglah arufah does not allow leadership to respond to catastrophe only by asking who committed the crime. A society committed to justice must also be willing to look honestly at the places where justice failed.

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

The first murder in human history also takes place in a field:

ויהי בהיותם בשדה — “And it was when they were in the field”

Kayin kills Hevel, and God asks:

אֵי הֶבֶל אָחִיךָ? — “Where is your brother Hevel”

Kayin responds:

הֲשֹׁמֵר אָחִי אָנֹכִי? — “Am I my brother's keeper”

Perhaps eglah arufah is one of Torah's answers to that question.

A brother lies dead in the field. Are you his keeper?

The elders' declaration—“Our hands did not spill this blood, and our eyes did not see”—is understood by Chazal as far more than a denial of murder. They are declaring that this person did not pass through their community and leave without food and accompaniment.

They are accepting responsibility for the kind of society they were charged with maintaining.

Was this person seen? Was he accompanied? Was he protected?

They may never know who committed the murder or why. But they can still ask:

What was ours to do?

Responsibility does not require us to have all the answers.

What I Found in the Field

When I think about what allowed my own encounter with a field of devastation to contain profound spiritual growth alongside the pain, I return to three things.

The first was the encounter with the souls themselves. Death did not erase personhood. We experienced the presence and dignity of the neshamah, the soul.

The second was that we did it together. No one should have to stand alone in such a field. We held one another through work none of us had ever imagined doing.

And the third was that we did it l'shem Shamayim—for the sake of Heaven.

We had no answer for why this had happened.

God was not our explanation. God was our orientation.

The soul before us.

The people beside us.

God toward whom we turn.

Remarkably, all three appear in eglah arufah: the individual whose death cannot be ignored, the community that must take responsibility, and God, before whom the entire act is performed.

What Happens in a Sadeh?

The sadeh in Tanach is exposed space, beyond the walls that normally protect us, and the Torah shows us dramatically different things happening there.

Hevel is murdered in a field. The unidentified victim of Shoftim is found in a field.

But Yitzchak also goes there:

וַיֵּצֵא יִצְחָק לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה — “Yitzchak went out to meditate and pray in the field.”

Later, Yitzchak describes Yaakov's fragrance as “the fragrance of a field that the Lord has blessed,” a fragrance the Sages associate with Gan Eden.

Ruth, vulnerable and alone, also enters a field. There she encounters Boaz, protection, chesed — loving-kindness — and ultimately the beginnings of redemption.

The field does not dictate what will happen there.

It amplifies what we bring into it.

Will it become Kayin's field, where power overwhelms responsibility? The abandoned field of Shoftim? Or can it become Yitzchak's field of prayer, Ruth's field of chesed, a sadeh asher beracho Hashem — a field blessed by God?

I Went Into One Field and Found the Other

HaMelech basadeh now feels different to me.

I once imagined a beautiful, open field, a place where it would be easy to encounter God.

I no longer hear it that way.

I went into one field and found the other.

I entered a field marked by devastation and found souls, people standing beside me, and sacred obligation. Turning toward God did not require me to understand why something terrible had happened.

It required me to ask:

What will I bring into this field?

The Field of Elul

Perhaps that is exactly the question Elul asks us.

We can make teshuvah enormous: What did I do wrong? Whom did I hurt? What did I forget? Why do I keep repeating this pattern? How will I fix it?

Eglah arufah offers a surprisingly calming model.

The elders do not know everything. They cannot reconstruct every detail or control the outcome.

But they can look honestly at what is before them, take responsibility for what is theirs, restore what has broken down, and turn toward God.

Perhaps we can do the same.

My personal sadeh is the place where my values are tested beyond the walls of intention.

When life becomes uncertain, when my structures fail, when I am hurt, frightened or disappointed, what kind of field do I create?

Do I allow the loss of structure around me to become a loss of structure within me?

Or do I bring something different into the field?

Prayer. Kindness. Honesty. Responsibility for myself and for the person beside me. The courage to repair what is mine to repair. And emunah — faith — when I cannot know how everything will turn out.

Emunah and responsibility walk into the field together.

Turn Around

And that brings me back to the little gold heart I wear around my neck.

Two lameds. One already facing us. One that has to turn.

That is the invitation of Elul.

We do not need to solve the entire mystery of ourselves before we begin. We need to enter the field in which we are actually standing, look honestly, take responsibility for what is ours, and turn.

Because the King is not waiting for us once we have repaired the entire field.

He is already there.

There were never two fields after all.

There is one field: the unpredictable place in which human life unfolds. We do not control everything that enters it, but we have tremendous power over what we bring into it.

And sometimes, when we go out, take responsibility, lean into emunah, and turn toward God, we enter one field and discover that the other field was there all along.