Are You Really Impartial?
By: Rabbi Binny Freedman
Can a person ever truly be impartial? Is it even possible to come to decisions without ulterior motives in life?
The opening verse of Shoftim (Devarim 16:18) tells us:
“You shall appoint judges and guards in all your gates that Hashem gives you… who must judge Israel righteously.”
And the Torah continues with an injunction to the appointed judges:
“You shall not pervert judgment, nor be partial to a litigant’s presence and you shall not take a bribe, for bribery will blind the eyes of the wise, and make crooked the words of the righteous.” (ibid. 19)
Shoftim speaks of the importance of appointing judges and a court system designed to ensure a society of law and order as well as moral clarity.
One of the seven Noachide laws requires every human to live within a system of courts and judges. And it is notable that one of the perversions to occur under Hitler’s Nazi rule after he became Chancellor in 1933, was the subversion of the courts and judges in Germany. Both the courts and the police (Gestapo) operated according to Nazi doctrine and Hitler’s demands.
But why does the Torah take the time to list a series of injunctions addressed to judges and the courts? How many of us will ever sit on the bench and judge a case?
Rav Dessler, in his Michtav Me’Eliyahu, points out that we all sit in judgment, every day.
Imagine that a person wants to see what halacha has to say about whether one can play Monopoly on Shabbat. Yet, when exploring Jewish law one must remain impartial and follow what the halacha says. However, isn’t the reason he is looking up the halacha because he wants to play Monopoly on Shabbat? So he was never really impartial.
The Torah is not just speaking to court judges; it is speaking to everyone as we strive to apply good judgment in our daily lives.
The first stage of teshuvah or repentance is ‘hakarat hachet’. Before we can hope to correct the errors of our ways, we need to recognize our mistakes and take ownership of them. Bribery is insidious because often we do not recognize we are being bribed. We have been impacted by the way we see the world; it becomes almost impossible to see it any other way.
Interestingly, in the verse concerning bribery, Rashi offers a fascinating comment (ibid. 19): A judge is not allowed to receive a bribe, favor, or even a smile from the litigant to rule justly! This is because the instant we receive anything objectivity is impossible. We can never be impartial on anything that impacts us, and as we are usually making decisions about things that affect us, how can we ever resolve this?
Maimonides in Hilchot Deot (2:1) suggests a simple response: a person has to have chachamim to call upon: balanced individuals who can be more objective about their realities than we are. It is debatable whether true impartiality even exists, but at least we can gain advice from those who are more likely to be less partial than we are about the things that concern us.
As Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur approach it behooves us to be cognizant of the biases through which we see the world and more diligent in finding ways to invite other more objective, and even sometimes opposed, sources with which to balance those perspectives.
Rabbi Binny Freedman is Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Orayta. He is a member of the Mizrachi Speakers Bureau (www.mizrachi.org/speakers).
