Dear Friends,
Oddly, the Torah this week devotes over twenty verses to instructions for careful protection and adjudication of one who is charged with having killed another. Torah carefully assigns tasks from considering witnesses, determining intent, and separating the unintentional death from the murderous or intentional killing of another. Then, it allows that the manslayer—the one who accidentally commits manslaughter—may retreat to a city of refuge where he can live out his life, unmolested, though culpable for an accidental death. The murderer, however, was to be executed.
Reviewing this lengthy text and description of circumstances, a midrash (a commentary on the Torah text) teaches, “If God made sure that killers were treated with equity, how much more so will God take care of the righteous!” (Numbers Rabba 23:13)
Indeed, a hallmark of both Jewish law and, ideally American law, is the concern for the fair treatment of the accused. Of course, this was not always the case. Those from TBJ who traveled to Alabama this spring learned too graphically about the horrific and ugly history of lynching across America and even in Orange County, where mobs would bypass due process and brutally murder those whom they summarily deemed perpetrators. Moreover, we celebrate the Innocence Project, a nonprofit endeavor founded with New York’s Cardozo School of Law to advocate on behalf of the wrongly convicted and secure their release, which calculates that there may be as many as 20,000 wrongly convicted persons in jail in America today.
Yet, despite both the tragic stories of those who were denied fair treatment, and those who have been redeemed from unfair judgement, on the whole, our respective systems are predicated on the values of fair treatment of all who are accused. We can be rightly proud of the track records. In America in recent years, brutal, unfair policing has been exposed, with violent officers incarcerated. In Israel, hundreds of thousands marched in the streets, week after week, to protect against hostile takeovers of the judiciary.
Even today, we saw the release of Americans wrongly held in captivity abroad, with the State Department even agreeing to release terrible international offenders, for the privilege of securing the fair release of Americans wrongly detained.
Essential to our civilization is fair treatment of the accused—both innocent and guilty—and providing for a judicial system that can be trusted.
Indeed: “If God made sure that killers were treated with equity, how much more so will God take care of the righteous!”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Doug Kohn
Oddly, the Torah this week devotes over twenty verses to instructions for careful protection and adjudication of one who is charged with having killed another. Torah carefully assigns tasks from considering witnesses, determining intent, and separating the unintentional death from the murderous or intentional killing of another. Then, it allows that the manslayer—the one who accidentally commits manslaughter—may retreat to a city of refuge where he can live out his life, unmolested, though culpable for an accidental death. The murderer, however, was to be executed.
Reviewing this lengthy text and description of circumstances, a midrash (a commentary on the Torah text) teaches, “If God made sure that killers were treated with equity, how much more so will God take care of the righteous!” (Numbers Rabba 23:13)
Indeed, a hallmark of both Jewish law and, ideally American law, is the concern for the fair treatment of the accused. Of course, this was not always the case. Those from TBJ who traveled to Alabama this spring learned too graphically about the horrific and ugly history of lynching across America and even in Orange County, where mobs would bypass due process and brutally murder those whom they summarily deemed perpetrators. Moreover, we celebrate the Innocence Project, a nonprofit endeavor founded with New York’s Cardozo School of Law to advocate on behalf of the wrongly convicted and secure their release, which calculates that there may be as many as 20,000 wrongly convicted persons in jail in America today.
Yet, despite both the tragic stories of those who were denied fair treatment, and those who have been redeemed from unfair judgement, on the whole, our respective systems are predicated on the values of fair treatment of all who are accused. We can be rightly proud of the track records. In America in recent years, brutal, unfair policing has been exposed, with violent officers incarcerated. In Israel, hundreds of thousands marched in the streets, week after week, to protect against hostile takeovers of the judiciary.
Even today, we saw the release of Americans wrongly held in captivity abroad, with the State Department even agreeing to release terrible international offenders, for the privilege of securing the fair release of Americans wrongly detained.
Essential to our civilization is fair treatment of the accused—both innocent and guilty—and providing for a judicial system that can be trusted.
Indeed: “If God made sure that killers were treated with equity, how much more so will God take care of the righteous!”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Doug Kohn