Parshat Naso

“The Man Who Could Be King” would make a fitting title for the story of Shimshon HaGibor, a story that begins in the 13th perek of Shoftim, the haftarah for this week. Using the laws of the nazir that are found in our parsha as the connective thread, Chazal chose the story of the birth of Shimshon, the only personality in the Tanach who is clearly identified as a nazir, to be the choice for the haftarah for this week. The story is captivating, exciting and educational.

And it is also tragic.

It is a story of unrealized potential and lost opportunity. It is, historically, the final story in Sefer Shoftim and Shimshon stands as the final shofet in the book. When studying Sefer Shoftim carefully, we may find that, as the generations pass on and as the new judges take their place of leadership, the religious and national levels do not improve and, in fact, weaken. The highlighted personalities go from a prophetess (Devorah) to a God-chosen leader (Gidon) to a rejected outcast (Yiftach) to Shimshon, the leader who started his life with the most potential and yet failed to accomplish what he was chosen to achieve. It is a story of one chosen for leadership from before his birth, prepared for his divinely heralded post by an angel and ended with the hero enslaved, in chains blind and dead, beneath the rubble of the enemy’s pagan temple.

We have, in the past, used these pages to detail the failures of Shimshon and to point out the troubling behavior that marked his years of leadership. But we haven’t discussed some of the causes for that failure, a discussion that will uncover the shortcomings of that entire generation—not simply its leader.

The period of the shoftim was meant to prepare the people for an Israelite dynasty. The Torah commands “Som tasim alecha melech, You must surely place a king upon yourself,” which the Rambam includes as one of the three mitzvot incumbent upon Israel upon their arrival in the land. One would have assumed, therefore, that a king would have been chosen almost immediately following the entry of the nation to our land. But a king was not chosen then. In fact, the first king, Shaul, was appointed almost 400 years after the arrival of Israel to Eretz Yisrael. Why? Firstly, because it required a conquest of the land (“Veyrishta”), something the tribes failed to do after the death of Yehoshua, and secondly, it required fully settling in the land (“veyashavta ba”), which had not yet happened. In fact, we read in Sefer Shoftim how some tribes rejected their chosen portion and chose different areas to settle in. But there is a third factor that, I submit, was equally important, and one that had not yet been achieved either.

There had to be a united people. The nation had to regard themselves as part of one unit. And they had not yet done so. Sefer Shoftim is replete with stories of leaders who attempted—but failed—to unite the tribes in defending the land. Each tribe watched out for their own but not for the whole. The stories of Devorah, Gidon, Yiftach and Shimshon are stories of individual tribal leaders defending their own land and even, at times, the story of the refusal of other tribes to join in a national defense. As long as they didn’t see themselves as one nation they could not agree on having one king. The function of the shofet in preparing the people for an Israelite dynasty was, therefore, to unite the tribes and make them into one nation. And no temporal leader succeeded in doing so.

Despite Hashem’s choice of Shimshon and despite his miraculous birth, the people never rallied behind him. Shimshon never led an army of Israelites and he was even handed over to the Philistine enemy by his Judean brethren! Such a fractured nation could never be ruled by one.

The story of our people is too often defined but its failure to recognize their common ancestry and their common destiny. And until we do so we will have to continue waiting for Melech HaMashiach.

Rabbi Neil Winkler is the rabbi emeritus of the Young Israel Fort Lee and now lives in Israel.