Exodus 21:1-24:18

A One-Man Court

Anyone who witnessed the mass protest in Jerusalem this week could not but be impressed. An estimated 100,000 people turned out to express their opposition to the Netanyahu government’s plan to fundamentally change the role of the country’s judiciary. If the proposed law passes, Israel’s Supreme Court will no longer have the power to declare a measure in violation of one of Israel’s “Basic Laws” (the equivalent of the country’s constitution). The legislators would, in this case and all that may follow, simply overrule the Court’s objections and proceed unimpeded.

You might be wondering what this has to do with the Bible. There certainly was no “Supreme Court” in biblical times—except for the king himself—and attempts to assert that biblical Israel was a kind of democracy-in-the-making are for the most part wishful thinking. But look a little closer and you can find at least one important element uniting past and present: the recognition that what we might call a separate judiciary has been around for quite a long time.

In last week’s Torah reading, we saw Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, advising him to stop acting like a one-man court. “You’ll wear yourself out,” Jethro says (Exodus 18:18). This may indeed have started as a matter of expediency, but in effect, Moses’ appointing a cadre of newly minted judges—“men of valor who fear God, men of truth who despise filthy lucre” (Exod 18:21)—put an end to the idea of having one supreme judge or judiciary do everything. Later, there seems to be an established court system to handle routine matters, though Moses adds, “Any matter that is too difficult for you to decide—bring it to me and I will hear it.” In subsequent centuries, it came to be a fundamental principle that “one man alone may not act as a judge” (B. Sanh. 5a), and so it has been ever since.

So, whether consciously or otherwise, what those 100,000 protestors were defending was nothing less than a legal principle that has been around since Israel’s very beginnings. Knowing this may not convince the present government to change its ways, but perhaps it will help inspire future protestors to fill the streets again and again, until they return the crown to its previous glory.

Shabbat shalom!