- Torah Portion and Tanach
- Shoftim
947
Judges and police - law and order - were to be established in all of the Jewish communities at all times. In most of the period of the long exile from our homeland, the Jewish society was a self-policing one, with or without the benefit of non-Jewish governmental authorization as the case may have been. For most of this long period of time the justice system was entrusted to the rabbis and their courts and decisions. Their verdicts and decisions were enforced by the norms of the society in which they lived. The rabbis respected the law of the land in all cases except where those laws were obviously discriminatory against Jews, opposed Torah laws or were patently unjust and evil. Yet the rabbis opposed having disputes between Jews adjudicated in non-Jewish courts. With the creation of the State of Israel there now exist in our country dual judicial systems - that of the secular court system and of the rabbinic court system. Being courts composed of human beings neither system has proven itself infallible in all instances. Yet for the most part all of us who live in Israel feel that we do live in a country that does aspire to a correct and moral system of law and order in our society. As long as we do not compromise the lofty standards of the Torah regarding true justice we somehow are able to live with our society’s shortcomings vis a vis those standards. The pursuit of true justice will always remain a goal in Jewish life.

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