A.
שפטים ושטרים תתן לך בכל שעריך אשר ד' אלקיך נתן לך לשבטיך ושפטו את העם משפט צדק: לא תטה משפט לא תכיר פנים ולא תקח שחד כי השחד יעור עיני חכמים ויסלף דברי צדיקים: (“Judges and enforcers shall you place for yourself in all your gates which Ha-Shem your G-d is giving you for your tribes, and they will judge the people [with] a just judgment. You will not pervert judgment, you will not recognize faces, you will not take a bribe [shohad], for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and falsifies the words of tzaddiqim”.) So begins our parasha.
What is very striking about the above passage is the unrelenting singularity of the pronouns used in it. Even though it appears to address communal and national institutions, ones which affect the nation or city as a whole, it is nonetheless worded entirely in the second person singular. Why should that be?
The second verse is also remarkable for its warning about bribery blinding the eyes of “the wise” and falsifying the words of tzaddiqim. In what way can the Torah consider anyone who would even contemplate taking a bribe a tzaddiq?
B.
Let us consider our second question first. The Talmud (כתובות ק"ה.) begins its discussion of the matter by asking what, precisely, the Torah is concerned about in the case of shohad: מה ת"ל אם ללמד שלא לזכות את החייב ושלא לחייב את הזכאי הרי כבר נאמר "לא תטה משפט" אלא אפי' לזכות את הזכאי ולחייב את החייב אמרה תורה "ושוחד לא תקח" (“What is the teaching to say? If it is to teach not to acquit the guilty and not to convict the innocent, it is already said, ‘You shall not pervert justice’! Rather, even to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty, the Torah has said, ‘you will not take a bribe’”).
Returning to the above passage from our parasha, Rashi explains: משקבל שוחד ממנו אי אפשר שלא יטה את לבבו אצלו להפך בזכותו (“From [the moment the judge] accepted the bribe from [one of the parties] it was impossible that he would not incline his heart toward him and overturn [the judgment] in his favor”). Hence, even if the bribe itself was unnecessary, in that the case should have been decided as it was, the fact of the bribe has the effect of casting a pall on the proceedings and rendering false even דברים המצודקים משפטי אמת (“words which are justified [dëvarim ha-mëtzuddaqim], true judgments”), i.e. words which, in any event, would have issued from a judge who was a great hacham and tzaddiq.
The Talmud concludes (שם ע"ב) that the very word shohad indicates its effect, and treats it as though it is a compound word, she—hu’ had, “that he is one” with one of the parties of the lawsuit. Applying our theory of primal roots, we confirm the Talmud’s judgment, since the meaning of the basic root חו"ד refers to something sharply pointed, reduced to a single point, and the radical prefix shin can be shown to have a causative sense (on the strength of the shaf‘él conjugation); thus, shohad is soemething intended to cause or force a false narrowing or convergence of views.
C.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein זצ"ל takes up the relentless singularity of our passage in his Darash Moshe. He notes that באוה"ח עמד בזה ונראה שבא להורות שהאדם צריך להיות שופט על עצמו לראות אם מעשיו מתוקנים וגם שוטר לעצמו לראות שיקיים מה ששפט עליו לעשות כו' (“In the Or ha-Hayyim [q.v.] he hit upon it, and it seems that a person must be a judge of himself, to see whether his deeds are correct, and also to be an enforcer on himself, to see that he carries out what he has judged for himself to do....”).
In other words, it is the individual who is able to judge and police himself at all times, even when no one else is watching. Indeed, it is only the individual who is capable of judging his true situation with perfect clarity and accuracy. Hence, the individual serious about serving the Al-Mighty must conduct a running self-audit.
Such an audit requires brutal honesty, and that is why our passage continues in the singular: Lo’ thatte mishpat, “you shall not pervert justice” and make excuses for yourself; lo’ thakkir panim, you will not look at your accomplishments in learning and count yourself a great man, incapable of error; vë-lo’ thiqqah shohad, you will not “bribe” yourself with inducements to look the other way, to give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Concerning yourself, there should be no doubt.
But that is not necessarily so with the society at large, and we find allusion to this difference in the first two paragraphs of the Shëma‘ (Deuteronomy VI, 4-9 and XI, 13-21). A careful reading of the first paragraph reveals that it, too, is couched entirely in the second person singular, whilst the second paragraph is primarily in the second person plural. Bearing this in mind, we note that there is no reference at all in the first paragraph to reward or punishment as a consequence of doing mitzvoth or not doing them; the passage simply tells us what we are to do. The second paragraph, however, is quite graphic in its depiction of what happens when the nation of Israel is obedient, and what happens when it is not.
This is because the first paragraph is addressed to the Jew as an individual. As an individual, he is, as we have seen, perfectly capable of assessing himself and knowing where he is on the continuum of righteousness. The second paragraph addresses the nation as a whole, the aggregate sum total of all those individual souls. Since it is impossible for the rabbinical leadership to know what is in the depths of each of those souls, some more or less objective criteria are provided, so that one can tell how the nation as a whole is faring.
D.
With this in mind, we turn to the end of our parasha, and the peculiar and unique sacrifice known as the ‘egla ‘arufa, the “broken-necked calf.”
A human corpse is found in open country, outside the jurisdiction of any town. No one knows anything of the circumstances of this poor person’s death. Careful measurements are taken, and the elders of the court of the town which is nearest have to perform this sacrifice. They carry it out, וענו ואמרו ידינו לא שפכה את הדם הזה ועינינו לא ראו (“And they answer and say, 'Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see'”; XXI, 7).
The Talmud is led to exclaim: וכי על דעתנו עלתה שזקני ב"ד שופכי דמים הן אלא "ידינו לא שפכו", לא בא לידינו ופטרנוהו בלא מזונות, ולא ראינוהו והנחנוהו בלא לוי' (“And did it enter our minds that elders of the court are shedders of blood?! Rather, ‘our hands did not shed’ – he did not come to us, and we took our leave of him without [giving him] food; we did not see him, and leave him without an escort”; סוטה מ"ה: במשנה, ועיי' הגהות הב"ח ורש"י שם). (Incidentally, the sharp-eyed reader with a living sense of the Hebrew language will already have noted the anomalous spelling of the word shafëchu, “shed” in our verse, with a hé’ instead of a vav. The Ém la-Miqra’ vëla-Massoreth offers amongst the proposed explanations of this anomaly the observation that the words ל"א שפכ"ה [“did not shed”] as written in our verse are composed of the initial letters of לוי' אכילה שתי' פרנסת כל הדרך, i.e. “escort, eating, drinking, provisions for the whole journey”).
Why do they make this declaration?
The Maharal mi-Prag, commenting on the passage from the Talmud, says: כי כל אשר הניחוהו ולא השגיחו עליו כאילו אין לו חלק בכלל והרי מוציאין אותו מן הכלל בני אדם, ודבר זה נקרא שפיכת דמים כאשר היו מבטלין כחו ואתרע מזלי' (“For to the extent that they left him and did not watch over him, it is as though he has no part in the community [këlal]; they are exclud-ing him from the këlal of human beings, and this thing is called bloodshed, in that they were negating his strength, and his luck went bad....”; חידושי אגדות למהר"ל על סוטה שם, וע"ע אורה אמימה על פסוקנו סי' נ"ג שגם הוא כתב כעין זה).
The Maharal’s point relates directly to what we have been discussing. An individual, alone with himself, is caught in the pitiless glare of a stark spotlight. All of his qualities, good and bad, stand out in sharp relief. Some people, of course, may be tzaddiqim gëmurim, so perfect in their righteousness that the spotlight reveals no warts or blemishes at all. But few of us indeed are in that category.
When one is part of a këlal, a member of a community, it has the effect of mitigating his blemishes somewhat, since there are doubtless others in the community more accomplished than he in those places which need work, and those areas in which he himself shines can serve, perhaps, to help others. The accumulated merits of the community at large are counted together, and each individual may benefit from them.
When our unfortunate traveler had stayed in the town, he was automatically a part of that town. When he left, he broke that connexion. Had the people of the town noticed his presence, noticed that he was about to leave, and given him food for the journey, accompanied him part way out of the town and into the open country, he would have retained that connection, and the collective merits of the community would have stood by him in his hour of need. This is why the elders of the nearest town are obliged to testify that it was not so, and that the community had not callously, uncaringly sent him away. Rather, he had not turned to them, they had not known of him.
It is precisely for this reason that we strive to pray with a minyan, to be part of a qëhilla qëdosha, a holy congregation.
The month of Elul is now upon us, and we are in the approach to Rosh ha-Shana and a new year. We must all consider ourselves “travelers” in this world, and as such, we must reflect: In one month’s time, if each of us stays only within his little space, he will be caught and judged in the pitiless glare of his own qualities alone. However, if we join as members of a serious congregation, consisting of people who in the main are striving to be bënei Torah, consciously trying to subject themselves to Rabbi Feinstein’s self-examination, we and they will benefit from our collective merits, and we shall enjoy an inscription in the book of life for health, happiness, and all good things.
May it only be so.
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