ARE YOU A KIND JUDGE?

On a pleasant April morning in Jerusalem several years ago, a 20-something young guy crossed an intersection at a red light. A police officer who happens to be standing there stops him. Another officer suddenly shows up, this one running. So, the young guy loses his cool and bolts. The two officers give chase and catch him. 

Now, our young hero has no criminal background. But for whatever reason, he made the mistake of fleeing from a police officer. He later says that when the second officer suddenly rushed up to him, he panicked and ran perhaps because he had just started a new job. He didn’t know why he had fled. 

Well, the police slap him with “interference of a police officer discharging duties.” The young man, for his part, comes from a family of seven kids and has already been kicked out of several schools. He’s also never served in the IDF. He works at a pizza shop, trying to find himself. 

So now he’s taken to Jerusalem municipal court. He first steps into the corridor to find an attorney, but when he finds someone willing to represent him, he’s asked to pay 450 shekels upfront money he doesn’t have. So, he ultimately decides to represent himself. He admits in court that he had fled the police officer. 

The young guy is now convicted of committing the crime, and considering the plaintiff’s request, he’s sentenced to one month of conditional incarceration and a 400-shekel fine. 

The verdict is already printed, and our young hero is already imagining that here he is, starting his life with a criminal conviction. But moments before he’s led out of the courthouse, the judge intercedes. “Wait!” she calls out. “I’m not finished with this decision.” 

So now, the judge has him brought back before the court and to his surprise, she says, “There’s no way you’re leaving here with a conviction,” despite it being after the verdict and the deliberations with the police plaintiff. The judge looks at him and asks, “Do you understand what a conviction means for a person your age? You’re a child! There are a ton of careers you won’t be able to work in!” 

“Do you want to study anything?” she then asks him. The young man lifts his head. “Yes! I thought about taking media. I want to be a reporter.” 

“Well, you can’t become a reporter with a conviction!” she sharply retorts. 

From that moment on, he doesn’t say a word. He just stares in the direction of his friend who had accompanied him to court. But now, at the judge’s instruction, the police officer edits the charges. Where he had previously been charged with “interference of a police officer discharging duties,” he’s now charged with an excessively light sentence: “disorderly conduct in a public place.” 

The judge orders the court stenographer to add to the record: “Upon hearing the court’s comments and after the record has been sealed, we have arrived at an oral agreement with the defendant, who will now receive a modified sentence. The defendant has confessed, will not be charged, and will sign on his obligations.” The judge then ordered, “Defendant: Write that you consent!” 

Well, the young man doesn’t utter a word, but just stands there, bewildered at the rare occurrence. The judge then establishes the new agreement as the verdict: tossing the conviction and requiring the defendant to abstain from any such violation for the duration of the entire coming year. “I’m prepared to commit to that for my entire life!” he says. The judge takes the documentation with the initial verdict, which had been conviction, incarceration, and fine, and hands it to him. “You can make paper airplanes out of this,” she says. “You’re leaving here with no fine. I don’t want to ever see you here again! You’re young. Don’t commit crimes!” 

But before he goes, she gets in a barb at journalism: “And learn something useful!” 

The young man leaves court with his friend. “She saved me!” he says. 

As for the judge, without anyone having asked her, she had looked at the person behind the explosive words on the charge sheet interfering with a police officer and decided, why confront him when I could support him? Why destroy his life just because he crossed a red light and forced a police officer to run after him? 

And that takes us right to this week’s Torah portion. 

In this week's Torah portion of Mishpatim, the Torah lays out the laws that pertain to interpersonal behavior, the laws of society.

The Torah wants to teach us here that it’s impossible to leave the Torah somewhere in the celestial realms of spirituality that the Torah must express herself in our daily lives, in the give and take between people. 

 It is not just that judges and referees should be deliberate and alert in court, but that all of us should be, too. We all engage in judgment without any investigation or inquiry. We hear or see something in the media and immediately rush to conclusions, without any knowledge of the details, without clarifying anything, and it generally doesn’t turn out too well. 

Before we chalk up a verdict about anything, we need to be deliberate to stop for a minute and put ourselves in the shoes of the other person whom we are otherwise so quick to judge. And in doing so, we’ll suddenly discover that we might even take his side!

Considering the state of the world and seeing what trials everyone has nowadays, instead of getting angry over why someone didn’t act right and judging them guilty, let us marvel at those people who do act right despite all the impulses and temptations out there. 

Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky