The Dangerous Myth of a World Without Boundaries: Shoftim
- Dr Tanya White
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
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What happens when a world loses its boundaries?
We're watching it in real time. The images of migrants storming the borders between Morocco and Spain shocked even the most liberal commentators. But those scenes were not an anomaly. They were the physical manifestation of a cultural revolution that began decades ago—the slow erosion of every kind of limit. First the boundaries of truth became "perspectives." Then the boundaries of identity became "fluid." Then the boundaries of family, of gender, of authority, of morality. The border fence was simply the last boundary to fall, the most visible symbol of a world that had already dismantled its invisible ones.
Our postmodern, post-identity world is John Lennon's "Imagine" incarnated. No religion, no heaven, nothing to live or die for, no borders. What began as a philosophical critique in the academies of Paris—Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard—has become lived reality on the beaches of Ceuta. A world without boundaries—of self, of nations, of moral discipline, of character—is precisely the world unravelling before us.
But here is what the postmodern critics missed: boundaries are not the problem. The abuse of boundaries is the problem. Identity implies a boundary between self and other; within that boundary, I can form. There is something that distinguishes me from you. We are not the same. In the same way, my country is different from yours. In the same way, I have a fence around my home to define my property from others. Boundaries are not walls of exclusion; they are the conditions for existence itself.
Boundaries are also central to Torah. The boundaries of the camp while the people travelled in the wilderness. The ordinances that exiled someone beyond the camp's perimeter when they broke a boundary of relationship between God or the people. The boundaries around Sinai in preparation for the greatest epiphany. The boundaries of holiness. The boundaries of ethical law. The boundaries of relationships and the careful dance we perform to ensure they function as they should.
Boundaries, it seems, are the effervescent colours that make human existence possible. In fact, they make humans possible. Boundaries protect our humanity.
That is why, as the Israelites prepare to enter the land, Moshe doesn't simply elucidate its geographic borders. He reminds them of the importance of boundaries in general. And perhaps the most important boundary of all is the boundary on power.
It is hard for us—so steeped in liberal enlightened consciousness—to imagine that a mere two hundred years ago, the world was ruled and governed, decisions made, only by a strong elite who possessed power. The king, the bishops, the governing class. Unelected, unchecked, unaccountable. There were no boundaries on power, and because of this, those in power were more often than not corrupt.
Centuries before the revolt against tyranny that erupted in the French Revolution, the Torah warned of its danger. There is an explicit reservation in the Torah about monarchy and centralised power. The human proclivity to the corrosive elements of power was known by God and articulated by Moshe. And yet we also know from the book of Judges what happens when there is no centralised power at all: when everyone does what they want, when there are no boundaries and no self-discipline and no definitive identity—"every man does what is right in his own eyes"—anarchy reigns.
So we are caught between a rock and a hard place. We need boundaries, discipline, rules, centralised leadership, command. And at the same time, we need to protect those who impose the boundaries from becoming intoxicated by power and using it to repress, coerce, and corrupt.
This is why the Torah's relationship to kingship is ambivalent. Kingship is a concession to human fallibility, but for that very reason it is also a dangerous endeavour.
The Torah's answer is the first check and balance on power. Rabbi Sacks argues that the prophet serves as the conscience of the king. When a king oversteps his boundaries, the prophet confronts him. Nathan before David. Elijah before Ahab. The prophet speaks truth to power, holding rulers accountable to a law they did not write and cannot revoke.
But there is another check, more intimate and perhaps more radical.
A few weeks ago I was in Venice, touring the old Jewish ghetto. The guide said something that stopped me: the reason the authorities were so suspicious of Jews was that they were the only people who could read and write. Literacy was power. It gave them access the ruling elite didn't have.
And then I thought about this week's parsha. The king is commanded to write a Torah scroll. In a world where literacy was power, the Torah does something radical—it commands the most powerful person in the nation to write. But not to consolidate his power. To limit it. He writes so that "his heart not be lifted above his brothers" (Deut 17:20). Literacy for humility, not domination.
The boundary on power isn't only external—prophets confronting kings, institutions checking rulers. It is also internal. The king carries his Torah with him always. He is never free from the reminder that he rules under the law, not above it. The scroll he writes is his boundary.
Emmanuel Levinas titled an essay "Loving the Torah More Than God," after a line from the first piece of Holocaust literature, "Yossl Rakover Speaks to God." I think of this phrase often. We are very much a God-intoxicated people. But we are perhaps even more so a Torah-intoxicated people. Because Torah has always been that boundary—the boundary that distinguishes us from others, that maintains our particularity in a world that worships universalism and openness, that creates identity and belonging. It is also the boundary that reins us in, that gives us guiding principles to navigate the perilous waters of a morally uncertain world.
In a boundaryless age, the Torah remains our border. It teaches us, through limit, what it means to have an identity, a home, a purpose. Not walls, but frames — the structure that lets us become who we are called to be, in a world unravelling for want of one.
Shabbat Shalom
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