This week’s reading from the Torah is one of the most important from a legal point of view. Like the Doomsday Book or indeed the American Constitution, it is the basis of Jewish law in terms of principles and foundations. Of course, over thousands of years like all other systems it has changed, advanced and developed. The first principle (Deut.16.18)…
Parsha Shoftim
Rabbinic Authority
This week the Torah contains the main elements of the Jewish Judicial process. It includes the important proviso that if there is anything unclear in Jewish law, any unresolved disputes or new issues that have to be decided upon, one approaches the Judicial authorities for a binding “learned opinion.” It is, in its way, like having a Supreme Court. The…
Judges
The Torah insists that a just society should have a system of judges and policemen. Judges establish the law and policemen enforce it. It then goes on to asset that the criteria for both should be that they are committed to justice and do not take bribes or give preference to the rich and powerful over the poor and weak.…
Forms of Government
The Torah seems to at first to favor the idea of one powerful leader, Moses, who has direct contact with God. In the ancient world of the Middle East, the King tended to be the god. He combined temporal with religious authority. But despite Moses’s special relationship it was Aaron who became the High Priest and divided the roles. After…
War
The Torah gives us a series of commands relating to wars. After the Torah the rabbis introduced a differentiation between an optional war, Milhemet Reshut, and an obligatory, self-defense war, Milhemet Mitzvah. When going out to war a special priest, Mashiah Milhama, anointed to lead them into war, would get up and give them a pep talk about fighting for…
Communal Responsibility
The Torah reading this week includes a great deal about forms of government and leadership. It ends with the law of what happens when you find a corpse and no one can find any evidence to convict the killer or killers. In our world that is the end of the story, no evidence, no case and no conviction. But the…