PARASHAT SHOFTIM

Saturday 7th September                             4th Elul 5784

PARASHAT SHOFTIM

Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9; Isaiah 51:12-52:12; Titus 3:1-7

Much of the ancient wisdom of the Torah has been distilled into principles of life and ethical behavior and compiled by our sages in the work known as Pirkei Avot – Ethics of our Fathers. This manual for living a meaningful and principled life was completed about two thousand years ago and the wisdom contained within is quite timeless. Pirkei Avot is part of the Torah known as Mishna, which forms much of the basis of the “Oral Law.”

Pirkei Avot begins with a brief overview of the provenance of the Oral Law from Moses receiving the Torah until the time of the Anshei Knesset Hagdolah or the “Men of the Great Assembly.” This executive and legislative body was formally assembled after the destruction of the First Temple to organize rituals and give structure to daily Jewish life. After the destruction of the First Temple and the forced exile of most Jews from the Land of Israel, it became clear that an overarching structure had to be put in place to maintain the integrity Jewish life and ritual – wherever they may come to live.

TheAnshei Knesset Hagdolah was composed of the 120 greatest leaders, some of whom were prophets, including “Ezra the Scribe” (this body is sometimes referred to “Ezra and his court”), Nehemiah, Mordechai, Zechariah, Malachi, and others. The modern-day Israeli legislative branch is called the Knesset (Knesset is the Hebrew word for “Assembly”), after the Anshei Knesset Hagdolah and also has 120 members. Sadly, that is where the comparison ends.

The impact of the Anshei Knesset Hagdolah on Judaism as a whole and the rituals that define much of it, is simply impossible to overstate. Here are just some of their most important enactments which, in hindsight, reveal a depth of understanding of the challenges the Jewish nation would face in the next two millennia:

• They sealed the Biblical Canon – they chose the 24 books to include in the Written Law – since it was the end of the prophetic era, henceforth no one could claim Divine inspiration.

• They created a universal prayer service. They edited, formulated, and organized the prayers that would stand in place of daily service in the Temple.

• They developed a permanent calendar that would come to be utilized by Jewish communities all over the world in the post Temple period.

The first teaching in Pirkei Avot is from the Men of the Great Assembly; “Be deliberate in judgement.” I have often wondered why this is the opening statement of the work that is primarily meant to be a collection of the principles of life and ethical behavior. First of all, this teaching seems to be directed specifically at judges; why is it imparted to the Jewish people at large? Secondly, this hardly seems to warrant its place as the opening lesson of a book on ethical behavior.

The genius of this statement may, in fact, be pointed advice for judges; when litigants come in front of you, even when the claims seem familiar to prior cases on which you have already ruled, you must reopen your thought process and begin deliberating the facts anew. The litigants in front of you deserve that you judge the case in front of you not in context of earlier decisions.

It is only in the last several years that I have begun to understand the brilliance of this teaching and its required application to our daily lives.

Dr. Peter H. Ditto, a clinical psychologist who, for the past several decades, has studied how motivation and emotion influence judgement, explains our current political divide: “We now live in a world where there are red facts and blue facts, and I believe these biased motivated-reasoning processes fuel political conflict. If someone firmly believes some fact to be true that you just as firmly believe to be false, it is hard for either of you not to see that other person as stupid, disingenuous, or both.”

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people ignore the brilliant teaching of the Anshei Knesset Hagdolah to carefully examine current facts with deliberation analysis. Instead, they prefer to live in an echo chamber that gives them the facts in a way that they want to believe; what psychologists Daniel Kahaneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky call “confirmation bias.”

Several years ago, some readers sent me the following story from an online news source – so please take it with a large grain of salt. In general, online “news outlets” are obviously not the most credible sources and though I tried, I never was able to independently verify the authenticity of the article. Still, whether or not the story is 100% true it is still instructive (I have also added some translations to the original article for ease of comprehension).

In a small town just outside Tel Aviv someone decided to open up a nightclub right across from a Chassidic shteibel (in general, a shteibel refers to a small synagogue popular with a variety of Chassidic sects). You could imagine the uproar and outrage, the riffraff that would be loitering, the atmosphere in the neighborhood, etc. The shteibel and its congregation started a campaign to block the club from opening with petitions, government lobbying, and even a daily vigil where they gathered for extra prayer, reciting Tehillim (Psalms), etc. All to no avail. Work progressed.

Three days before opening there was a huge storm, lightning struck, and the night club burned to the ground. The club owner sued the shteibel and its members on the grounds that the shteibel, through its praying, was ultimately responsible for the ill-fated end of his dream project, “either through direct or indirect actions or means.” In its reply to the court, the shteibel vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection between their prayers and the club burning down.

As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the different motions at the hearing and commented: “I don’t know how I’m going to decide this case, but it appears from the paperwork, we have a nightclub owner who believes in the power of prayer and we have an entire congregation that does not.”

This week’s Torah portion has an important insight on this very topic. This week’s portion is called “Shoftim – Judges” and in it we find:

“You shall not pervert judgement, you shall not show favoritism, and you shall not take a bribe because bribery blinds the eyes of the wise and makes righteous words crooked” (16:19).

This portion exhorts judges to repudiate bribes. We are forced to ask; for whom exactly was this prohibition written? It would seem kind of pointless to tell a crooked judge, “by the way, you shouldn’t take bribes.” The great medieval commentator known as Rashi is bothered by the same question. Rashi (ad loc) makes a curious comment: A judge is forbidden to take a bribe “even to adjudicate the case honestly.”

What exactly is the case Rashi is referring to? If he is judging the case properly, what exactly is the issue? Perhaps even more puzzling: Why would someone even want to pay a judge to rule properly, what would be a compelling reason to offer a judge money in such a situation?

Rashi is alluding to a remarkable and fairly tempting situation. Imagine if one of the litigants approached the judge with the following request: “Your honor, I am an honest person and I want you to adjudicate this case properly. Of course, I feel that I am in the right and I am entitled to monies from the other party. But I fully recognize that I may be biased and that my claim may be wrong. In such a situation I would NEVER want the other party’s money.”

He continues, “I know that you have a lot of stress in your life, and that you need to make more money in order to make ends meet. I also know that you drive Uber shifts at night to earn extra cash. My concern is that you might be tired from all those extra hours working and it is likely that you may not have the peace of mind to give this case the proper attention it deserves.

“Under no circumstances would I, heaven forbid, want money that does not belong to me. So please allow me to give you enough money so that you can focus solely on this case and not have to take on another job. But I am reiterating that I am only doing this so that you can give it the proper attention and adjudicate this properly.”

This is such a sinister form of bribery because it is so cleverly subtle and a desperate judge, even an honest one, might consider such an offer. It almost seems on the up and up. As we have seen above, a person tends to see facts based on preconceived notions and biases, and judges are no exception to this rule. The Torah is therefore cautioning even honest judges not to be taken in by someone who is trying to manipulate the reality of how the judge perceives him.

The reason Rashi’s case is so deceptive is that even if the judge turns it down, in reality the litigant has already accomplished proving to the judge what a “good guy” he is and that his heart is in the right place. That alone can affect the outcome of the case because the judge now has a preconceived notion that this litigant is an honest person. Therefore, the Torah instructs judges to repudiate all types of bribery. This is the valuable life lesson taught two thousand years ago by the Men of the Great Assembly: preconceived perceptions are a dangerous way to judge current realities.