Judaism proposes laws that are considered the bare minimum of society. They are called the Noahide laws – or the seven laws of the sons of Noah. Among them are laws against theft and murder of course, but also the demand to set up a system of courts.
In ancient times, law was vengeance. What you did to me I would do to you, or your family. The institutionalization of grudges or claims was a great advance of humanity. No longer could I take the law into my own hands. Judaism understood that a society that works is one that is governed by courts, not by whims or emotional response. That is why we have seen Israel incarcerate its own people, including soldiers, for violations of their code of conduct. Even more strikingly, both a President and a Prime Minister have been jailed for crimes against the nation’s laws. Believing the law should be sovereign over all is a legacy of the Torah.
No system of justice is perfect, but no society can endure without the attempt to have an established order and prosecute it. Even those whom we dislike must be given due process and there must be one law, as the Torah reminds us, for rich and poor alike. In a famous passage in “A Man for all Seasons,” playwright Robert Bolt puts it this way:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
There is a great temptation in the face of barbarism to dispense with the laws. Yet the Torah understood that the law protects us all in the end. It is difficult for Israel to maintain courts in a neighborhood where lawlessness often prevails, but the legacy of the Torah and the crucial place of justice remind us even in these extraordinarily difficult times – “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” Why is justice repeated twice? As our sages remind us, one must pursue just ends by just means.
