Laying down the law – Shof’tim
The sidra Shoftim, “judges”, symbolises the fact that of all the areas of human endeavour to which Jews have contributed, the most characteristic and pre-eminent is the law.
Over and above the great Jewish lawyers whose names shine in the history of many lands including Australia are the legal ideas, norms and institutions which derive from the Biblical and Jewish tradition.
Some Jewish contributions are spelled out in the books of legal history; others are in the form of fundamental attitudes that have their origin in Biblical thinking, such as equality before the law and the impartiality of the judiciary.
Another great Jewish contribution has, however, received little recognition, even within the Jewish world. This is the traditional yeshiva system, whereby from an early age Jewish children studied, debated and were moulded by the halachic texts.
Beginning Bava Metzia, for instance, they encountered sh’nayim ochazin b’tallit, the problem of what happens if two people lay claim to the same object. Elsewhere they learned that there are four categories of bailee, that if your animal gets out and injures person or property it may cost you heavily, that if witnesses conspire to give false testimony there are severe penalties, and so on.
What yeshiva study did for Jewish youngsters was to train them to think automatically as law-abiding citizens. It was as if every member of a society went to law school, not in order to become a lawyer but in order to be imbued with the rule of law.
What a remarkable educational achievement!
