I learned something very interesting yesterday at synagogue about the origins of the police.
I was reading a commentary on the weekly Torah portion, which I had written about (drawing attention to the theme of "justice" in the text). The commentary pointed out that while the emphasis in the Torah is on judges, it also mentions the importance of "law enforcement officials" in Deuteronomy 16:18: "You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment."
The commentary noted that while in the Messianic age, people would not need police officers to enforce the law, in todays age we do. (My rabbi noted that the Biblical ideal was to have "counselors," not police, to assist in the administration of justice, in the perfect world in which human beings never sought to flout the law.)
The relevance of Deuteronomy 16:18 was not lost on the congregants. We have been told for more than a year by the luminaries of Black Lives Matter -- in the streets, on cable news, and in the editorial pages -- that modern-day policing is a legacy of slavery, somehow tracing its origins to the officers who were dispatched to catch slaves that had escaped. It always came across as complete garbage, but it was spoken with great confidence and with an air of high dudgeon.
The reality: anyone who has a Bible can learn that police have existed for thousands of years. Moreover, the people Moses were addressing (or their parents) had just emerged from slavery themselves. The Bible recognizes that police are essential to the protection of freedom.
Think of Deuteronomy 16:18 the next time you encounter BLM.
This week'd portion begins the book of Numbers. Interestingly, the Hebrew name for the book is "In the Desert," not "Numbers." The portion, which happens to be my bar mitzvah portion, focuses almost as much on the names of the princes of each tribe as the number of soldiers it fielded. It also focuses on the configuration of the tribal camps around the central Tabernacle and the Levites.
So why "Numbers" instead of "Names" or "Places"? The numbers are, to be sure, a unique feature of the opening of this Biblical book -- but they are not the focus of the rest of the narrative. The Hebrew focuses on the place where the events in the book take place, because essentially this is the narrative of the Israelites' wanderings from Egypt to Israel, across 40 years. We move from the giving of the Torah and the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, to the final valediction of Moses in Deuteronomy -- Bamidbar is the story of wandering that happened in between.
The question of ...
This week's portion begins with the laws of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year that restores all land to its original (tribal) owners. It also explores laws of property and labor that will apply in the Land of Israel, and the laws of vows and inheritance.
The Israelites are presented -- not for the last time -- with the essential moral choice that they must face, and the rewards for choosing well, along with the consequences for choosing poorly.
We learn that doing good things will earn God's protection from enemies. That does not mean that victims of terror, God forbid, were sinful. But it does mean that we can respond to evil by committing ourselves to a higher path.
This week's portion describes the major sacrifices that are to be offered by the Jewish people, including those that are offered only by the priestly Kohen class, and physical requirements of the people (men) who serve in that role.
Inter alia, there are interesting commandments -- such as an injection to treat animals with respect and care, first, by letting a mother animal nurse her offspring for a week before being offered in any sacrifice; and second, by refraining from slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day.
The commandments regarding animals remind us of the purpose of those regarding human beings: to uphold a divine connection, through ritual.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm
