Matos: 5786 - Rabbi Shimon Sonnenfeld - A Torah thought for Parshas Shoftim: "You shall not take a bribe" and "Justice, justice shall you pursue" - what is the connection between them, and how can even a correct ruling end up revealing…

00:00 Please. Yesterday—today we entered the month of Elul, the month of mercy and forgiveness. As the Alter Rebbe says in Likkutei Torah, the King is in the field, and everyone can come to greet Him. The King receives each and every person graciously. And the Rebbe adds that there is only one condition: whoever wants to come must want to. Whoever wants to can greet the King, and then the King receives him and grants his request. On Shabbos we read Parshas Shoftim: “You shall appoint judges and officers in your land.” And the Torah sets out the conditions: “They shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert judgment, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the discerning and twists the words of the righteous. Justice, justice shall you pursue.” There is a Midrash—the Sifrei says something interesting: A judge who has taken a bribe does not depart this world until he rules according to halachah. The question is: What is this, a reward? He gets a reward for taking a bribe, so that in the end he pursues justice? We interpret adjacent verses together: “You shall not take a bribe”; “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” So he gets a reward for taking a bribe? My father, of blessed memory, used to tell a story. There was a Jew in Jerusalem who had no livelihood. He looked for a way to earn a living and opened some kind of business. This was during the Turkish period. A few days later, a Turkish policeman arrived and handed him a summons to court. Why? He had not obtained a license. He needed a license and had to pay something to get it. He had not paid, so he was summoned to court. This Jerusalem Jew had never been to court. What should he do? They told him, “Listen, it’s no problem. When you get to court and the judge is sitting there, slip him half a Napoleon under the table.” That was a gold coin, half a Napoleon. “Give it to him under the table, and everything will work out.” All right, he arrived

02:29 at the courthouse, and the Jew thought to himself: Wait, half a Napoleon was a lot of money. There was a coin called a mejidi, made of copper. It was an ordinary coin, but it was the same size as that half-Napoleon. The Jew thought: Wait, I’m giving it to him under the table. He won’t see what I’m giving him; he’ll put it straight into his pocket. I’ll give him the—this mejidi. And that is what he did. He took out the mejidi and passed it to him under the table. Everything went smoothly; the judge acquitted him. Later, the judge got home, took out the coin and saw how the man had fooled him. The judge said, “Look what a low world this is, what a world of falsehood!” That’s the connection between the verses. Yes, “You shall not take a bribe”; “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” But the Ben Ish Chai gives a beautiful explanation of why those verses appear together, and of this teaching of the Sifrei—that a person does not depart this world until he renders a just judgment. How is it a reward for having taken a bribe? The Ben Ish Chai explains: A judge who takes a bribe does not simply call good evil or evil good, ruling the exact opposite of what he should. Rather, on any halachic question there are different opinions: some are stringent and some are lenient. There are always differences of opinion; on every subject there are those who permit and those who prohibit. But there are rules for deciding halachah, and the ruling follows those rules. There are different opinions, but there are rules for deciding which one is the halachah. So this judge who takes a bribe does not completely distort the law. Instead, he finds an opinion that is not followed in practice, and

04:36 rules according to that opinion because he took a bribe. So the Ben Ish Chai explains: First comes “You shall not take a bribe,” and then “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” Later, a case comes before him like the one in which he took a bribe. In that earlier case, he followed a lenient opinion that is not the halachah. But sometimes the very same issue, the same question, comes before him when he has received nothing. Then he rules according to the halachic authorities—“Justice, justice shall you pursue.” But because he rules that way now, what happened in the first case? Why didn’t you rule that way then? It’s the same question. Why did you rule differently the first time? In other words, it is precisely through “Justice, justice shall you pursue” that it becomes clear his earlier ruling was not according to the law. That is the connection between the verses. That is how the Ben Ish Chai explains it. Read it there; it’s very beautiful. There is a story about a chossid of the Alter Rebbe, Reb Aizik of Homil. A dispute was brought before him for a ruling under Torah law. Two people had a quarrel and came to the rabbi. He was the rabbi of Homil, and he issued his ruling. But one of the litigants would not accept it. It had not gone in his favor, and he would not accept it. Reb Aizik said to him, “In our prayers we say: ‘Good are the luminaries our G-d created. He formed them with knowledge, understanding and wisdom. He gave them the power to rule within the world.’ The luminaries refer to Torah scholars, to judges. What does ‘within the world’ mean? The word for ‘world’ is tevel. If you remove its middle letter, the bet, what remains? Tel—a mound. A rabbi has the power, if someone does not accept his ruling, to hold sway over the middle of tevel.” Meaning, what would happen to the litigant who did not

06:45 accept the ruling. When the man heard that, of course he immediately accepted the ruling. We’ll finish with another interesting story I heard. It was during the period of the Haskalah. There was a maskil who used to come to a rabbi and pester him: “What is the difference between lechatchilah and bedieved? With many things we say that lechatchilah, from the outset, it is forbidden, but bedieved, after the fact, it is permitted. What—what—what is the idea? If it’s forbidden, it’s forbidden, even after the fact. If it’s permitted, it’s permitted from the outset too. What does lechatchilah mean? What does bedieved mean?” He kept pestering him with that question. What did the rabbi do when he came and pestered him? He slapped him across the face. There was a great uproar over what had happened to this maskil. How could the rabbi slap him and shame him in front of everyone? They held a public hearing. A panel of judges considered how he could have done such a thing—shamed the man and slapped him. The judges ruled that he had to pay him five gold coins. “No problem,” said the rabbi. He opened his wallet and paid him five gold coins. After paying him, he said to the maskil, “I’ll give you another five gold coins and slap you again. Are you willing?” The man said, “What? Take a slap in the face for five gold coins?” The rabbi said, “But you just received five gold coins for one. Were you willing to take that slap?” He said, “That was after the fact. But from the outset?” The rabbi said, “Now you understand lechatchilah and bedieved.” May we have a good month and a good year. Amen, indeed.