Shabbos Parashas Shoftim - 5780

Shabbos Parashas Shoftim - 5780

Rabbi Hal Miller

Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your cities which Hashem your God gives

you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.

[Devarim 16:8]

Most commentators on our verse translate the appointment as "in all your cities", but

the Hebrew is actually "b'chol she'areicha", which more properly translates as "in all

your gates". Further, we see the same word, she'areicha, in 17:2 and 17:8, and again

most translate it as "your cities". Does the word really mean either gate or city, or is

there some other issue here? What does the word give us in these verses more than

the word "ireicha" which everyone would agree means "your cities"?

Rashi comments, "This means b'chol ir v'ir", meaning in each and every city. If so, why

she'areicha instead of 'ireicha"? We see in Sifrei, Sanhedrin, and Yoma that they all

say "upon your gates", and compare it to the commandment of mezuzah, but Rashi

says it would be "absurd" to have judges and officers at the entrance to every building

so that could not be an appropriate comparison. Gur Aryeh also tells us that the verse

cannot be referring to gates because it says, "which Hashem your God gives you", and

He gave cities in various verses, He did not give gates. We can understand from all

these that translating "she'areicha" here as gates is problematic. So where do we go

from here?

The Ba'al HaTurim understands the word to refer to "shiur", meaning a measure. The

verse then is a direction to judges to calculate and assess properly when it comes to

taxes, fines, or charity. But he seems to be alone in this understanding.

Ramban notes that we are required to establish courts wherever in the world we may

live, and says that our verse teaches that in the land, we establish courts for each city,

but outside the land only for each tribal district.

Onkelos translates both "you" and "tribes" in the singular. Sfas Emes picks up on this

and in the name of his grandfather, the Chiddushei HaRim, explains that it refers to

gateways that God gives to each one of us, meaning eyes, ears, etc. He says, "we

must place judges and enforcers at all the points of access to our senses, thus we

should monitor our eyes so that we do not see what we should not see. Similarly we

should monitor our ears so we do not hear what we should not hear." Thus the last

portion of the verse refers to our gaining wisdom and knowledge, i.e., Torah study.

The command is for us to gain Torah by making ourselves judges and police officers

over ourselves.