Shoftim: Are you an 'Anywhere' or a 'Somewhere'?

Are you an “Anywhere” or a “Somewhere”?

David Goodhart articulated this dichotomy in his 2017 book, “The Road to Somewhere,” a book written in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. He drew a distinction

between those who come from "Somewhere" – people rooted in a specific place or community, usually a small town or in the countryside, socially conservative, often less educated – and those who could be "Anywhere" - wherever there is wi-fi they can work and fit in, they are portable, footloose, often cosmopolitan, socially liberal and university educated.

The “Somewheres” are characterised by an unease with the modern world, a nostalgic sense that “change is loss” and the strong belief of putting British interests first. “Anywheres”, meanwhile, are more likely to be free of nostalgia; egalitarian and meritocratic in their attitude to race, sexuality and gender; and light in their attachments “to larger group identities, including national ones; they value autonomy and self-realisation before stability, community and tradition”.

And it is certainly interesting that in the Brexit vote, it was the cities, the Anywheres, who wanted to reman part of Europe; whereas the villagers and farmers of middle Britain, the Somewheres, wanted to leave the EU and cultivate a distinct British identity. This is a distinction, generalized as it certainly is, that may be also made in the US between Red states and Blue states, between the Midwest on the one hand, and the large cities on the East and West Coasts on the other.

I relate to this contrast between rootedness and mobility, as it is expressed in a stunning essay published in 1978 by Rav Soloveitchik – “Majesty and Humility” – in which he draws upon an iconic phrase in our parasha, celebrated in ecological circles: כי האדם עץ השדה – “Man is the tree of the field”.

Rabbi Soloveitchik mines this rich analogy, expanding and exploring its significance, presenting two diverse and contrasting readings that highlight dual dimensions of the human experience:

“Man belongs everywhere. He is no stranger to any part of the universe. The native son of the sleepy little town is, at the same time, a son of parts distant and unknown. In short, man is a cosmic being.…He, in person, wants to be everywhere… to experience it. Explorer and adventurer, he feels bored by the monotony and the routine of familiar surroundings. He is out to "see the world." …He wishes to move, with the velocity of light, into a world of the unknown. Man wants to experience and to enjoy vastness.

…The verse in Deuteronomy: כי האדם עץ השדה contains a rhetorical question: "Is man like the tree of the field?" Is the tree as mobile as man? Certainly not! Man's greatness and distinctiveness find expression in his ceaseless mobility. The tree is inseparable from the soil. Man can, and does, move away from home.”

And in contrast:

“Man is committed to one locus. …Man is not cosmic; he is here-minded. He is a rooted being, not cosmopolitan but provincial, a villager who belongs to the soil that fed him as a child and to the little world into which he was born. …Yes, man may roam along the charted and uncharted lanes of the universe, he may reach for the skies. Yet the traveller, the adventurer out to conquer infinity, will surely return home. The home for which man yearns attracts him like a powerful magnet. …If this homecoming did not occur during his lifetime, because he was too preoccupied with motion and exploration, it will certainly take place posthumously when his body will be brought home, to the quiet, lonely graveyard which had long been expecting him.

The man is indeed like the tree in the field. In this context, the verse should be interpreted as an affirmative statement, not a rhetorical question. כי האדם עץ השדה - Man is indeed a rooted being, attached and committed to a homestead - no matter how far he may have travelled.”

So, in each and every one of us is the tug to the global, the universal, to exploration, mobility – the pull to “anywhere”; and then, there is the pull to “Somewhere” – to the streets I grew up in, the local park, my childhood home, to the familiar, the mesh of primal associations and memories that define me.

I find this tension - the dialectical duality between the local, the territorial, on the one hand, and the boundless broad tendency, on the other - reflected elsewhere in the parasha.

Parashat Shoftim is intriguing in its sophisticated two-tier court system. On the one hand, local courts: “You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all your settlements”.

On the other hand, a Supreme Court in the nations capital city, for cases that exceed the reach of the provincial court: “If a case is too baffling for you to decide.. you shall promptly repair to the place that God will choose and appear before the levites, priests, or the magistrate in charge at the time, and present your problem.” This court became known as the Beit Mishpat HaGadol or the Sanhedrin, a central legislative body.

What do we make of such a system?

I would suggest that this system addresses an inherent tension in our society – the tug and pull between the local and the national, the parochial and the universal, the tribe and the federal, between Anywhere and Somewhere.

Sometimes courts are required to take local considerations into account, must understand the particular lifestyle, habits and mores of this tribe or that, this village or that town. On the other hand, the law must apply to all, it should be equal, not offering preferences to one ethnicity or identity, one tribe or sub-sector; “You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality…justice, justice shall you pursue!”

The two-tier system allows a balance between the particular and the collective, between “Somewhere” and “Anywhere” and provides a balance that gives each group in society a voice and a fair hearing, so that no sub-group will feel unjustifiably silenced or trammeled, and yet, a central body that can aspire to align all into a coherent collective.

Questions

• Are you an "Anywhere" or a "Somewhere"?

• How does that affect your life? Do you ever feel a tension in encountering the alternative paradigm?

• When do you enjoy the local, the communal?

• When do you enjoy the universal, the national?

• In 2023 Israel, there was a huge national debate about "democracy". How do our governments balance local needs vs. national needs? Do we get it right?