Every Jew is obligated to write a Torah Scroll (Sefer Torah). If so, why does the Torah give a separate mitzvah in Parshas Shoftim for a king to do so?
The Talmud explains that the Torah is instructing the Jewish leader to write not one, but two Torah Scrolls. One travels with him wherever he goes, and one remains permanently at home, in his private treasury.
But why? What’s the point of the king having two Sifrei Torah?
Timeless and Timely
There is, perhaps, a profound message here. The Leader must hold on to two Torahs, as it were. One remains in his treasure chest; the other travels with him wherever he goes, in the words of the Mishnah: “He goes to battle, and it goes with him; he enters the palace and it enters with him; he sits in judgement, and it sits with him. He sits down to eat, and the Torah is there with him.”
There are two elements to Torah: On one hand Torah represents the unwavering truth that remains unchangeable, unbendable, un-phased by the flux of time, space and history. Shabbos never changes. teffilin, matzah, shofar, sukkah, mikvah, mezuzah, the text of Torah, the bris milah—these are eternal, unchangeable, Divine laws and truths. The same delicious or horrible “stale” matzah we ate 3300 years ago in the desert we still eat in the 21st century in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. The same ram’s horn we blew two millennia ago is still blown today the world over. The same tzitzis, the same Shabbos, the same Yom Kippur, the same kosher laws, the same conversion laws, the same Torah.
But there is another element to Torah—its ability to give perspective and guidance to each generation according to its unique needs, challenges, struggles and experiences. Each generation is different. The issues that plagues us a half century ago are the not the issues we confront today, and conversely: today we have dilemmas never experienced before in history. Our bodies, psyches, souls, sensitivities, and environments are different. Our world has changed in significant ways. Torah must also be a blueprint and luminary to the unique journeys of each milieu, to the climate of each generation, to the ambiance of every era, to the sensitivities of each age, to the yearnings of every epoch.
A Jewish leader – and every one of us is a leader in our own individual way – must have two Torahs. One Torah remains immune to change. One pristine Torah Scroll never leaves the ivory tower of the king’s treasury house. It speaks of truths of life and of G-d that are timeless. It transcends borders of time, geography, and people.
This is the error some make with Torah. You can’t just keep on adjusting Torah to your predefined positions and desires. If Torah is truth, it is true in all times and in all places. If it is not true, who needs it all together?
But it is not enough to just teach a timeless Torah. a leader must also find in Torah the language of Hashem to this particular generation, to this individual person, to this unique situation, to this singular struggle, to this mindset and weltanschauung. Torah has the capacity to speak to the timely as much as to the timeless, to the modern as much as to the ancient, to the future as much as to the past, to the things that are always in flux as much as to those that remain unchangeable.
Rabbi YY Jacobson
