Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on what Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9 has to teach us today.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln addressed American Congress:

'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.'

This quote was cited in the long running American TV series, The West Wing, which ran from 1999 to 2006 and has been voted by many to be the best TV series ever. On second viewing, once you have got over the joy of the wonderful music and quick repartee of the never-stationary employees of the White House, you realize that the series also has much to teach on issues which still haunt us today, maybe as never before.

But the overriding lesson of government, so well exemplified by the ideals of The West Wing, situated at the heart of the world's most powerful democracy is this: what exactly does our recent Shabbat reading from Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9) teach us moderns? 'Justice justice you shall pursue', exhorts Moses, but why does he have to repeat the Hebrew word tzedek? The problem of course, as so often, lies in the translation.

Most of the Hebrew Bible is mistranslated and therefore Judaism is misunderstood. Justice is a concept that simply does not completely encompass the fullness of the Hebrew tzedek. So why the repetition of the word? Is it simply a scribal error? An example of the fact that our greatest Moses had a stammer? A matter of poetic exaggeration? Emphasis? A reminder not to forget? Or, one of the most popular explanations, tzedek is actually justice tempered by mercy. True, but the Hebrew speaker would know that already. Why would he or she need to be reminded of this if the meanings are already there in the psyche. Obviously tzedek can't mean 'revenge'. There is another word for revenge and revenge is absolutely not what is meant by the exhortation.

So, some have argued that the double mention refers to both ends and means. Not only the goal of justice has to be righteous, but the way we get there as well. Justice is both process and goal. And as everyone in government knows, this is very hard to achieve. And this is one of the main themes of the West Wing.

So, just recently in our own country, we now have a new government. Things could not get any worse, we thought. But .... They say that we need to mend the economy. But how to do it? If it were me, I would tax the very, very rich, fine bloated water companies, charge a windfall tax on exhorbitant utility companies and work out new solutions to the mental health crisis among teenagers and workers alike, which is preventing millions of able-bodied people from joining the workforce.

Sadly, I'm not an MP or a government adviser. It is true that I was consulted in Israel over our own British constitution, based on the tripartite division which I will come to later. But that is because in Israel people appreciate brains. Sadly in this country, they appreciate only power - yes folks, in the wonderful old United Kingdom, might has proved to be right. The new Prime Minister has stated as much, and his actions have followed his words.

Let me explain.This is how it goes in his mind. We are in thrall to the unions. Doesn't matter whether they are doctors or train drivers. We don't need to look at the rightness of their case. They are striking. Therefore they are right. Although they earn a fortune already, they want more and we will give it them.

We have to help working people and we will get non-working people to help them. Not the lazy, and not the work-shy, because they vote for us. Who else doesn't work? All those oldies who are growing apace, getting rich in their uber large houses, often paying lower council tax because they are alone. They are not in unions. Therefore they can't strike. In addition, many are old and feeble, and want to pop their clogs in any case. Therefore, let's help them along the way. Then, our young, Labour-voting workers and those who, quite understandably, don't want to work, can take over the homes of the non-unionized old and widowed, and they'll be happy and we won't have to tax our lot more than we already do. And they will vote for us again, and we'll carry on in power for as long as it takes. And by the way, we should really accelerate the assisted dying bill, so that the oldies can be got out of the way as quickly as possible in order to fulfil all our goals as swiftly and as efficiently as we can.

From the age of 85, most old people have dementia in any case, so they won't know what's going on. Why didn't we mention this in our manifesto, before people voted for us? Well, why should we, might is right, as I'm sure you know and in any case I'm a human rights lawyer, so can't make any mistakes, can I? And just try and sue me ....

Oh, and there's another group we can target as well. They never work as a team. We don't even know who their real leadership are. They are always squabbling among themselves. For some reason, they are the butt of envy and are heartily disliked and/or hated in any case - by many in the Churches, the Muslim community, the universities, schools and the BBC. In addition, they are also despised by the have-nots, and the international commuity. Nobody likes them, and there's not many of them left, and, incidentally, statistically many of them are also pensioners in any case. Two birds with one stone. Let's target them as well, by removing even more of their rights on the streets, in airports and in their own country, Israel. Yes, I know that we purchase far more from Israel than sell to them, but Israel is in any case on its way out, so let's just accelerate their demise.

Let's start with a token gesture. That's what Hitler did, just to gauge the reaction. Clever sod. Let's just start with stopping 10% of the arms that we currently sell them. We'll use international law as our excuse. I'm an expert on that. After all, we originally told the pensioners that we didn't want to remove their winter fuel payments. It was all the fault of the previous government, as we all know. In this case too, we'll simply state that we are following the law. After all, the Tories 'followed the science', didn't they? And see where that led them ... We simply don't take responsibility ourselves and blame everything on outside sources and Bob's your uncle. Actually think about it, isn't that rather a Tory expression?

So, back to reality. As my own daughters, new granddaughter and son-in-law stood together in Jerusalem, paying their last respects to their neighbour and executed Hamas hostage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli originally from California, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced with glee and jubilation that this country was punishing Israel for the execution of their hostages by withholding UK arms, in compliance with international law, basically in order to prevent Israel from defending herself against certain death.

This is the way of the new government, led by a PM who is the first in history to declare that he doesn't believe in G-d and doesn't follow any religion. And it really shows. And as for Lammy, he wouldn't even be Foreign Secretary if not for the fact that, as he stated recently in order to ingratiate himself with Americans, three American Jews sponsored him through Harvard Law School. So what's new?

So the message from our government now is, if you are powerless, weak, pensioners, say, or Jews, or Christians against abortion, or people worried about the takeover by Islamists, watch out, because we are coming for you. Slowly, but surely, you will be erased, and we will instead stay in power by appeasing our supporters, who are young, unionized and anti-Semitic.

In other words, Deuteronomy is old hat, and 'justice justice you shall pursue' is for the birds. Expediency is the new name of the game. Whatever works - the powerful will win and we will no longer remember the sacrifices of even young pensioners who lived through post-War rationing, making do, learning to darn, knit and sew, surviving on berries, and cultivating home-grown produce to save money.

And funnily enough, in those days, obesity was very rare. People were thin and fit; they knew there was a greater power beyond themselves, and that loyalty and truth mattered. Grandparents were revered and no-one would have thought of penalizing them for no longer being able to work, for growing old, and for sometimes losing their faculties as well. Communities looked after each other and fecklessness was discouraged. And the ends justifying the means was very much frowned upon by civic society.

For what Deuteronomy and its prophetic Haftorah counterpart, Isaiah 51:12-52:12 make clear is that rites, rituals and ceremonies are anathema to G-d if they don't go hand in hand with care for the widow, the old, the poor, the orphan and the different.

The Haftorah reading to accompany the Deuteronomic parsha of Shoftim (Judges) is taken from Isaiah 51:12-52:12. There is a particularly evocative line, (52:7) 'How beautiful ascending the mountains are the footsteps of the herald....' I couldn't help thinking of my daughters, baby granddaughter and son-in-law, attending the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the young hostages shot several times in the back of the head after unspeakable acts of torture, and learning that his brave and extraordinary parents, who live next door to my younger daughter, are davenning daily at the Shul opposite, also attended by my son-in-law. And my family also attended their shiva house on Saturday night. The Haftorah was all about G-d comforting the Jewish people, as nobody else cares about us, it seems.

But for one small moment, I actually thought on Wednesday, when the House of Lords sat for six hours to discuss the Holocaust Memorial Bill, that G-d who was working to comfort the grieving of Israel in their terrible losses, was also working through the House of Lords that afternoon and evening, when the Bishops joined with a number of other Lords, including very many who were Jewish and extraordinarily distinguished in their many and varied contributions to this country, often from Holocaust backgrounds, to try to forestall one of the worst insults to the Jewish community and to this country which it has ever been man's folly to devise - the plans for a Holocaust Learning Centre in Victoria Tower Gardens next to the House of Lords.

Despite his Republican views, Abraham Lincoln would have been proud of the Lords that day. So would the 120 Jewish people from Holocaust background, including educators, historians, academics, psychiatrists, architects, tree experts, medical practitioners, philanthropists and others, who signed an open letter to the Jewish Chronicle, thoroughly objecting to the whole project.

Then there are the eight senior Anglican ministers, led by former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, himself once a Lord, and quite an expert on the Holocaust, and other Anglican clergy who have been intimately involved with the Jewish community for decades. All of these signed a separate letter to the Jewish Chronicle, also distancing themselves from this ill thought-out project.

This weekend's upcoming Sedra states (Deuteronomy 24:18), 'You shall not cheat a poor or destitute person of what is rightfully theirs....You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt....'

But successive governments are not aware of these words, or have certainly disregarded them, such that now it is deemed perfectly right to dispossess the dispossessed even more than was thought possible before, and this present government has gone much further than its predecessors in its appeasement of the rich and powerful, whether in disregarding the view of ordinary Jewish people, including Holocaust survivors, on the subject of the disgraced project they plan to implement in our name, or in disregarding the well-being of the very many, 10 million, pensioners who may well either starve or freeze to death this winter.

But, counterintuitively, and by a very strange irony, the House of Lords, which is regarded by many as an irrelevance, appears to understand far more fully than our so-called 'elected representatives' in the Commons that might isn't right and that expediency inevitably comes at a price. If Labour gets its way, without prior notice or warning, if widows die of hunger and cold; if Islamism increases; if the aged are encouraged to commit suicide, and if this pernicious, antisemitic so-called 'Holocaust' project comes to fruition, our country will truly become a laughing stock, and at worst, a global pariah, whose time has come.

The message to government must be: 'Don't take the Holocaust in vain. Don't disrespect the old and the infirm. For you will surely reap the consequences.' Or, in Lincoln's words, 'We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we will save our country.'