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Judges
and executive officers shall you appoint for yourselves in all the gates
which God your God gives you for your tribes and they shall judge the people
with just judgment.
Deuteronomy 16:18
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The
essence of “just judgment” is equality of all people. The Torah warns the
judges to favor neither the wealthy nor the poor, all are to be treated alike. The later part of the parasha deals with going to war, and the parasha ends with the law of egla
arufa.
There
is an approach among the traditional commentators that often a parasha ends with the topic with which
it begins.
If a
body is found murdered and there is no evidence to help apprehend the murderer,
the elders of the nearest city must take a heifer and kill it by cutting its
neck. Part of the ceremony requires measuring the distance to the nearest city.
Even if the body is found just outside the city limits and the next city is
miles away, the distance must still be measured. As my father explained, the
ceremony itself was important. The ceremonial measuring of the distance to the
nearest city impresses upon the people the importance of an individual life. By
requiring the elders to go out and measure the distance to the nearest city,
the Torah wishes to teach that any act of murder is a terrible crime.
My
father commented that this lesson is the reason the law of egla arufa follows the Torah’s presentation of war. Naturally, many
people are killed in wars, with the resulting cheapening of life. We tend to
become accustomed to loss of life and immune to the moral pain of an act of
murder. We begin to take murder for granted and accept it casually as a fact of
life.
Therefore
the Torah follows war with the law of egla
arufa, to teach the sanctity of every human life. Each life is of utmost
importance, of infinite value. It is not the number of victims which is
significant, but the very act of murder.
Thus,
the parasha ends with the theme with
which it began: the ultimate equality of each person as a human being.
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