Shoftim
We need protection
Of the gates into our soul (1)
Shoftim VeShotrim
Bribes will blind your eyes
And the world is filled with them (2)
Beware subtle bribes
Seek justice justice
For Jewish brothers, others
Mayor Koch's pshat (3)
This dead man will die
Already gone long ago
As some dead men live (4)
Two or three eidim
The third counts like the second
For better or worse (5)
Listen to the judge
When he says that right is right
Or that left is left (6)
(1) The Sefer Yetzirah and others explain in a mystical/metaphorical way that the command to defend our gates applies not only to our cities but tour bodies. Our orifices are our gates and we must protect our souls by defending what we allow inside us. When the Torah speaks of social justice there is also an element of treating ourselves justly and wisely as well.
(2) Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman explains that the world can to some extent offer bribes of a variety of material forms. We must be on guard to adhere to the truth and not be swayed by the bribes of this world. Along these lines Rav Chaim Schmuelewitz said "there are no doubts, only desires." We must be on guard to do what is good and right and to try to be as objective as possible, staying as free as we can from vested interests, which can be viewed as forms of bribes as well.
(3) When Koch was hosting his Ask The Mayor radio program one evening years ago, a man called up and said that Hatzalah – an ambulance corps under Jewish auspices - wouldn't take him because he wasn't Jewish. Koch said flatly that he didn't believe the man because a rabbi had taught him this traditional Jewish understanding of the seemingly redundant wording of “justice, justice shall you seek.
(4) The Torah states that via testimony of valid witnesses "yumat hameit" – “the dead man shall die.” The rabbis explain that an immoral person is like dead when alive. The rabbis add that righteous people live on after they die, through the ripple effect of the just acts which filled their lives.
(5) The rabbis say that the Torah says two or three people count as valid witnesses to teach us that if the two witnesses are found to be con artists, the third person is held accountable too for having latched onto them. The lesson, developed in the Talmud’s Tractate Makkot, is that it is a positive thing to connect to good people. Just as we are held accountable for associating with people that are cold or unjust, so too we are credited for supporting and associating with those who are righteous and courageous.
(6) See Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein’s Torah Temimah. The statement rabbis of the Talmud that says that we must listen even if leading rabbis say left is right is often quoted in certain Orthodox circles. The Torah Temimah quotes a statement from the Talmudic scholars that state outright the sensible reverse: that we should only listen when they say right is right or left is left. But when what we are told is clearly wrong then we must not obey.
