When the Chauvin verdict came out, I saw a few rabbinic colleagues post quoting Deut 16:20, Tzedek tzedek tirdof— justice, justice you shall pursue approvingly, noting that they felt that the verdict had achieved that measure.

Thread on what I think they missed.

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When you look at the context of the verse, you see the lines just before it talk not about basic accountability for one racist cop whose lynching video went viral, whose act of murder ignited the world and forced the most baseline measures of accountability to be taken.

The verses talk about setting up just systems. Appointing magistrates and officials who govern all the people with due justice.

Not judging unfairly— ever. Showing no partiality, no bias, whether implicit or explicit, ever. Taking no bribes—and, presumably, planting no toy guns on slain children, planting no drugs on people in traffic stops.

Not shooting children who have their hands up in the air, complying with orders. Not shooting children in distress who call for help. Not shooting people reaching for their car registration. Not shooting disabled people. No extrajudicial murders of any kind, ever.

The verses in Deuteronomy command us not only to issue a verdict when the bar for accountability is on the floor, in the basement, deep in the molten core of the earth, but to set up systems of justice, that are just for everybody, all the time.

We must eradicate white supremacy from every corner of our society.

We must set up systems that include calling domestic violence specialists to address domestic violence. Calling those with training in deescalation, to deescalate. Creating a sea-change in how we think about and address addiction, mental illness, so many other issues.

Asking, what is a whole society in which people are protected—actually protected. In which their needs are served, actually served.

We know that all of our broken systems are intertwined, and they’re all poisoned by white supremacy: policing, incarceration, an education system that feeds the school to prison pipeline, health care, even clean drinking water.

At @NCJW, we fight for the safety, rights and flourishing of women, children and families—who should move through the world in wholeness, not in terror.

We must not rest until we create not only systems that periodically offer up appropriate measures of baseline accountability, but systems that are truly just.

There are so many ways to do this work. Donate, march, call elected officials, become elected officials, remember that this has to happen on every level of society, in every institution, in every way.

This is a board of ed issue, a city issue, a state issue, a national issue. There are so many places to have a voice, to demand that we face the urgency of this moment with not incremental tweaks and small concessions, but with the work that can move us towards real justice.