Jewish Law

Lesson # 530 - Appoint Judges

This lesson is scheduled to appear in the week of SHOFTIM. This begins with the admonition to appoint judges. What kind of a court system does the Torah contemplate?
I thought that I would dedicate this lesson and the next few lessons to try to explain in simple non-legal language some of the highlights of the Torah judicial/legal system.
Since, with one possible exception, the Torah judicial system contemplates that all of the judges will be ordained, a few words about ordination. Ordination or S’MICHA (lit. the laying of the hands) is the title given to a person who is authorized to adjudicate cases. The Talmud in T. Sanhedrin 13b describes the procedure of ordination and traces its origin from the ordination of Yehoshua by his teacher Moshe. The Divine instruction found in Bamidbar 27:18 - “Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is spirit, and lay thy hands upon him” was carried out. “and he laid his hands upon him and gave him a charge. (27:23)
This was the only time that the ordination process actually involved the laying on of the hands. Thereafter the procedure was for an ordained person to designate the designee by the title of “Rabbi” and the person so designated was considered ordained. Ordination may be conferred only in the Land of Israel, but its authorization is universal. Many persons may be ordained at one time. Thus it is reported in the Jerusalem Talmud in the last chapter of Sanhedrin, that King David ordained 90,000 men in one day (It appears from Rambam that the correct reading is 30,000 in one day.) Even for the Beit Din, there were three standards of ordination. Some judges were given authority to adjudicate only monetary cases. Other judges were given authority to adjudicate only in matters of ritual, while others were given authority to declare first-born animals as blemished and thus acceptable for nonsacrificial slaughter. Some judges were authorized to act in two of these areas and some were given authority to act in all three areas. The entire command of ordaining judges lapsed in the fourth century CE. An unsuccessful attempt was made in the middle of the sixteenth century to reinstitute the command based on a statement of Rambam both in his commentary to the Mishna and in his code. Thus since the middle of the fourth century, there has not been any ordination. (This is not to be confused with the current practice of ordaining Rabbis, which is not the type of ordination referred to in halacha.)
As a result of various Rabbinic decrees, the non-ordained judges have jurisdiction over matters that both occur frequently and entail a loss of money for the injured party who could not sue if there had been no Beit Din available. Matters over which non-ordained judges do not exercise jurisdiction are in halacha designated as penalties. In the next lessons there shall IYH be discussed the matters over which the current non-ordained judges do exercise jurisdiction.

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