Breathing New Life into Ancient Teaching

By Rabbi Shira Milgrom

One of the joys of Jewish life in the Land of Israel is the way ancient texts can be used in ordinary moments of daily life. A rabbinic colleague tells the story of a Jerusalem traffic jam: traffic had come to a complete halt, and drivers were leaning on their horns in frustration. The taxi driver (who was driving my colleague) finally stepped out of his car and reprimanded the driver behind him, with a full, verbatim quote of Exodus 14:15, in its original Hebrew:

“Why are you yelling at me? Speak to the people of Israel and tell them to move!” (The translation here is meant to reflect the use of the text.) Never mind that in the original context it is God speaking to Moses at the Sea of Reeds.

At another moment of Israel’s story—a moment neither joyous nor quotidian—members of Israel’s judiciary community brought a different Torah text to bear on Israeli society. It was 1982. Israel was in control of southern Lebanon when Lebanese Christian Phalangists attacked the predominately Muslim refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and many were killed. Huge protests in Israel against the killings forced the government to take action, resulting in its convening a commission to assess the responsibility of the Israeli government and army. The Kahan Commission, established by the Israeli government, was chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel’s Supreme Court. It concluded that the Gemayel Phalangists bore direct responsibility for the massacres in the refugee camps, and that Israel was to be held indirectly responsible. It is to this second charge, that of indirect responsibility, that we turn our attention.

The Kahan Commission used as the basis of its argument an esoteric text from this week’s parashah:

“If, in the land that the Eternal your God is assigning you to possess, someone slain is found lying in the open, the identity of the slayer not being known, your elders and magistrates shall go out and measure the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns. The elders of the town nearest to the corpse shall then take a heifer which has never been worked, which has never pulled in a yoke, and the elders of the town shall bring the heifer down to an everflowing wadi, which is not tilled or sown. There, in the wadi, they shall break the heifer’s neck. The priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward; for the Eternal your God has chosen them for divine service and to pronounce a blessing in the name of the Eternal, and every lawsuit and case of assault is subject to their ruling. Then all the elders of the town nearest to the corpse shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi. And they shall make this declaration: ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Absolve, Eternal One, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel.’ And they will be absolved of bloodguilt. Thus you will remove from your midst guilt for the blood of the innocent, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of the Eternal” (Deuteronomy 21:1–9).

Why must the elders and magistrates of the town nearest to the corpse go through this strange ritual and ask for absolution? Because they are presumed guilty. They bear indirect responsibility for the murder, because it occurred under their jurisdiction, on their watch, in their territory. Quoting directly from the Kahan Commission:

“A basis for such responsibility may be found in the outlook of our ancestors, which was expressed in things that were said about the moral significance of the biblical portion concerning the ‘beheaded heifer’ (in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 21). It is said in Deuteronomy (21:6-7) that the elders of the city who were near the slain victim who has been found (and it is not known who struck him down) ‘will wash their hands over the beheaded heifer in the valley and reply: our hands did not shed this blood and our eyes did not see.’ Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says of this verse (Babylonian Talmud,Sota 38b):

“The necessity for the heifer whose neck is to be broken only arises on account of the niggardliness of spirit, as it is said, ‘Our hands have not shed this blood.’ But can it enter our minds that the elders of a Court of Justice are shedders of blood! The meaning is, [the man found dead] did not come to us for help and we dismissed him, we did not see him and let him go—i.e., he did not come to us for help and we dismissed him without supplying him with food, we did not see him and let him go without escort.’. . . . When we are dealing with the issue of indirect responsibility, it should also not be forgotten that the Jews in various lands of exile, and also in the Land of Israel when it was under foreign rule, suffered greatly from pogroms perpetrated by various hooligans; and the danger of disturbances against Jews in various lands, it seems evident, has not yet passed. The Jewish public’s stand has always been that the responsibility for such deeds falls not only on those who rioted and committed the atrocities, but also on those who were responsible for safety and public order, who could have prevented the disturbances and did not fulfill their obligations in this respect.”

The Kahan Commission honored the Torah, breathed new life into ancient text, and held the Israeli government to moral standards that its citizens expected: a brilliant—and all too rare—moment.

For more information on the events leading to the establishment of the Kahan Commission, click here.

Milgrom, Shira. "Shof'tim: Breathing New Life into Ancient Teaching." ReformJudaism.org. (Viewed on August 30, 2014). http://www.reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/shoftim/shof%E2%80%99tim-breathing-new-life-ancient-teaching

D’var Tzedek

By Rabbi Joshua Rabin

On December 16, 2012, 23-year old Jyoti Singh was raped by six men while riding on a bus in New Delhi, India. The attack reportedly lasted over two and a half hours, and Singh died two weeks later in Singapore from her injuries. Four of her attackers were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

Although Singh’s rapists were convicted for their horrific crime, the sad reality is that most cases of violence against women in India go unpunished. According to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), only 40 percent of rapes in India are reported and only 26 percent of rape cases tried in court result in convictions. The CFR notes that India’s slow, underfunded and corrupt criminal justice system “exacerbated the plight of rape and sexual assault victims” rather than helping them achieve justice. Furthermore, the CFR reports that political and religious leaders promote a “culture of complicity” around violence against women, pressuring women and their families not to report these crimes or blaming the assaults on women themselves. Although we should find a small degree of comfort in knowing that Singh’s attackers were brought to justice, there is no doubt that there are countless women who will never receive the justice they deserve.

Parashat Shoftim, which begins with the Israelites standing on the precipice of entering the land of Canaan, recognizes that the emerging Israelite society must have a mechanism for justice to be served, and so dictates that a court system be constructed. However, our parashah is not content simply to command the Israelites to appoint judges upon entering the land of Canaan. Instead, the Torah specifies a code of morality that the judges must abide by: “You shall not judge unfairly; you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just.”

While our parashah could have stated the importance of impartial and ethical leaders in general, it is particularly prescient in singling out the judicial system as an area of society that must be free of corruption. In a report by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), judicial corruption is described as a serious impediment towards international development, for when the institution charged with enforcing the rule of law is compromised, “anti-corruption strategies are deprived of essential measures that are needed to increase the risks and reduce the benefits of corruption and to punish corrupt acts.” As a result, when our parashah tells us that upright judges must be chosen, God is providing the Israelites with a roadmap for an entire society to be guided by justice.

In taking a closer look at the language of Parashat Shoftim, we see that the challenge of creating just judicial systems lies in the human fallibility of the judges. Contemporary biblical scholar Jeffrey Tigay notes that by empowering all Israelites to “resist and protest abuses of authority,” this mitzvah from our parashah makes a striking distinction between what God will provide for the Israelites, and what the Israelites must create for themselves.

The 13th-century legal work, Sefer Ha-Hinukh, states that God commands the Israelites to prevent corrupt behavior “until the commands of the Torah cease to be dependent on the trustworthiness of each individual.” Explaining this interpretation, biblical scholar Nehama Leibowitz argues that by creating honorable systems of justice, the Israelites will “habituate the public to the rule of law and equity which will become second nature.” By insisting upon a just system of governance, the Torah is teaching us that we are the only obstacle to fully actualizing the potential of all human beings, and that creating institutions guided by justice is the first step in teaching an entire society what it means to pursue justice within the reality of daily living.

Contemporary philosopher Lenn Goodman writes that the Torah wants to show “how just institutions can create the good life it envisions,” commanding the Israelites to create societal structures that enable people to feel protected and valued. The situation in India supports Goodman’s claim, as Professor Mrinal Satish of the National Law University in Delhi argues that the way “the legal system deals with rape cases” results in the proliferation of violence against women in India. This is a clear instance of how a society’s ineffective and indifferent pursuit of justice not only fails to protect and value its citizens but condemns them to live lives of violence and fear.

American Jewish World Service continues to advocate for the passage of the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) as a part of the We Believe campaign. We have the opportunity to send a clear message to our legislators that all countries must implement legal systems that support women in their pursuit to achieve justice. After all, ensuring that society’s most vulnerable people are treated justly is the only way to ensure that society will promote justice for all.

Rabin, Joshua. "Parshat Shoftim 5774: Dvar Tzedek." American Jewish World Service. (Viewed on August 30, 2014). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5774/shoftim.html?autologin=true&utm_source=education&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20140825-E-DT