Divrei Menachem

Divrei Menachem for Parashat Sho-f'tim

Parshat Shoftim, as its name indicates, informs us of the necessity of keeping law and order in society through a system of judges (and officers). Needless to say the Torah qualifies this command by insisting that these very judges judge the people with righteous judgment.

When we contemplate this injunction perhaps what comes to mind is the void created when there is no court or when the court itself is crooked. We might even conjure up pictures of cowboys running wildly through the West taking the law into their own hands or of states, so-called national- socialist, or of empires, so-called holy and Roman, that were nothing but perversions of what they purported to be.

Of course, in addition to protecting the dry law, courts are set up to resolve disputes. We often tend to view disputes as a necessary evil in a world where differences among people naturally produce tension and conflict.

However, as R. Shlomo Aviner remarks, debate and disputation are at the core of creativity and change; argument is the anchor that induces logical reasoning and clarification. Indeed for centuries until the 2nd century BCE, the Talmud resolved all of the multifarious examples of “Machloket” found in its thousands of pages. O that we could replicate that feat today!

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