Shoftim: 5785 - "For a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous": Why is this stated twice? A timely message for our times, when the justice system…

00:03 Speaker 1 The weekly parsha, Parshas Shoftim. One of the Alter Rebbe’s well-known sayings is that we must “live with the times.” The chassidim didn’t understand what it meant to live with the times, because that can have a negative meaning too. What does it mean—follow the fashion? The Alter Rebbe explained that it means living with the weekly parsha. That is called living with the times. We can see it plainly today: what is happening here today is right there in the weekly parsha. We are living with the times. The Torah, in this week’s parsha, teaches us what kind of judges and officers to choose: “You shall appoint judges and officers for yourself in all your gates that Hashem your G-d gives you for your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.” This is so relevant today, when we see selective enforcement and distortions of justice. It is right there in the weekly parsha. We are living with the times. The Torah tells us what judges should be like. And one of the things it says is: “Do not pervert justice, and do not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and distorts the words of the righteous.” Why the double expression, “blinds the eyes of the wise and distorts the words of the righteous”? They say that even if a person remains righteous, the bribe still distorts his judgment. They tell of one of the great figures of Chassidus who was once sitting as a judge in a din Torah, and someone slipped a bribe into his pocket. He didn’t even know it was there, but he felt that his judgment, which had previously gone the other way, was suddenly leaning in a certain direction. He couldn’t understand why. He said, “I’m not going to rule right now.” Eventually, he discovered that someone had put a bribe in his pocket. In other words, he remained righteous. He hadn’t taken a bribe or intended to take one. But the mere fact that it was put in his pocket had already affected him, affected his judgment. That shows just how much

02:09 Speaker 1 power a bribe has—even to sway a righteous person. And the Torah says, “You shall appoint judges and officers for yourself in all your gates.” We need to choose a judge, a rav, a dayan. What kind of judge and dayan should we choose? People we trust, communal activists? No—the verse says, “You shall appoint judges and officers for yourself in all your gates.” What kind of judges should we choose? “That Hashem your G-d gives you”—ones who bring you to recognize that Hashem is your G-d, who instill a sense of holiness in you. Those are the judges we need to choose. My father used to tell a story. There was once a Jew in Jerusalem who needed a livelihood and had no income. People told him to open a store and go into business, and then he would have an income. So he opened a store. This was still in the time of the Turks. A few days after he opened the store and started trading, a Turkish policeman came and handed him a summons to court. What had happened? A court summons. The policeman told him, “Listen, you don’t have a license. You didn’t get one. You have to pay for a license, and you opened a business without one. You have a court case.” This Jerusalem Jew had never been in a courtroom in his life and didn’t know what to do, so he asked around. People told him, “No problem. Go to court. Before the hearing starts, take a coin”—there was a gold coin called a Napoleon—“and pass it to the judge under the table. Everything will work out just fine.” All right, that was what he would do. The day of the hearing arrived. The Jerusalem Jew thought to himself, “When I hand the coin to the judge under the table, the judge can’t see what I’m giving him or what kind of coin it is.” There was another coin the same size as a Napoleon, but made of copper and worth only a pittance. It was called a mejidi. “He won’t

04:13 Speaker 1 see what I’m giving him. It’ll be under the table. Why waste a Napoleon? You could live for a whole month on a Napoleon. I’ll give him the mejidi. He won’t see it; he’ll put it straight into his pocket, and everything will work out.” So that’s what he did. He passed the coin to the judge under the table, and the judge put it in his pocket. Everything worked out just fine. Later, the judge took the coin out of his pocket and saw how the man had fooled him by giving him a copper coin. The judge said, “Look what a lowly world this is, what a world of falsehood!” Yes. He didn’t even sense that the entire judgment, everything he was doing, was based on bribery and falsehood. But when the man deceived him with the coin—what a world of falsehood! That is the power of a bribe. The commentators explain that a bribe doesn’t have to come from someone else. A person can bribe himself too. He is biased in his own favor because he loves himself, and so he can bribe himself. That is why it must be “You shall appoint judges and officers for yourself in all your gates,” as we said earlier, “that Hashem your G-d gives you.” Judges and officers who instill a sense of holiness in you, who bring you to recognize that Hashem is your G-d—those are the judges and officers we must appoint. They tell another story, an interesting one to finish with. The rav of a town passed away, and they needed to appoint a new rav. Whom would they appoint? There was a young married man there who was a genuine Torah scholar. He had studied under the Noda BiYehudah and was fit to be rav. But the wealthy man of the town had a son-in-law, and he decided that his son-in-law should be the town’s rav. So there was a dispute in the town. The local landowner, who controlled

06:09 Speaker 1 that town, decided, “I’ll determine who the rav will be. I’m in charge, so I’ll decide.” How would he decide? He would test them. He brought in the two candidates and was going to examine them. But how could the landowner examine them? So he asked Mushke, who worked for him, “Tell me, which book is most important to the Jews?” Mushke told him, “The siddur.” “Bring me a siddur.” He brought a siddur, and the landowner went to test them. First he called in the wealthy man’s son-in-law, opened the siddur, and said, “Start reading.” It opened to “Ashrei yoshvei veisecha.” Every Jew knows “Ashrei yoshvei veisecha” by heart and can say it from memory. He read it properly. Then he called in the Torah scholar, that young man, opened the siddur, and said, “Start reading.” This time it opened to a section of yotzros recited on Shabbos Zachor. It has very difficult, unfamiliar words. Those yotzros are said only once a year, so they aren’t so familiar, and he didn’t read them quite right. Whom did the landowner rule should be rav?

07:20 Speaker 2 The son-in-law.

07:20 Speaker 1 The rav’s son-in-law. The Torah scholar, that young man, came to his teacher and said, “Why did Hashem do this? Surely Hakadosh Boruch Hu knows the truth.” And he told him the story. His teacher said, “Because you really can’t be a rav.” That astonished him even more. Why? He really was a Torah scholar. His teacher told him, “When the landowner opened to that yotzer, why didn’t you just keep saying Ashrei? The landowner doesn’t understand a word you’re reading. You could have kept going. If that didn’t occur to you, you can’t be a rav. A rav sometimes needs to know the fifth section of the Shulchan Aruch too. It didn’t occur to you? Then you really can’t be a rav.” May we have a good year, and may we have judges and officers as the Torah says.

08:01 Speaker 2 May there be only good.