Rabbi Yitzchak Yechiel Yaakovovitz z”l (1930–2019) served for 66 years as the chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Herzliya. A Haredi rabbi with deeply held convictions, he also understood that his sacred responsibility extended across the civic life of a diverse city. He was obligated not only to those who believed as he did, but also to those who did not.

That model feels especially important now. Too often, communities respond to people at their edges by confirming their alienation: You are not us. Yet the way forward, for the Jewish people and perhaps for every society, cannot be built through exclusion. We need ways to bring values and learning of the center to the margins, and to recognize that the voices at the margins also belong within the whole. This is not an endorsement of every belief. It is a commitment to the possibility that Torah wisdom can hold us together even when we disagree.

Parashat Shoftim asks what it takes to build a society that is just, worthy, and beautiful. Its teachings about judges, law, authority, and power are not abstract. They address the moral architecture of communal life. Among them is the Torah’s teaching about appointing a king:

“When you enter the land  that God your God is giving you,  and you possess it and settle in it,  should........

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