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as lawyer for the citizens of the
town, and God, as it were, as the
accused. This was the forerun-
ner of a great many such epi-
sodes in Torah and Tanach, in
which the prophets argued the
cause of justice with God and
with the people.
In modern times, Jews
reached prominence as judges in
America: among them Brandeis,
Cardozo and Felix Frankfurter.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was
the first Jewish woman to be
appointed to the Supreme
Court. In Britain, between 1996
and 2008, two of Britain’s three
Lord Chief Justices were Jewish:
Peter Taylor and Harry Woolf.
In Germany in the early 1930s,
though Jews were 0.7% of the
population, they represented
16.6% of lawyers and judges.
One feature of Tanach is
noteworthy in this context.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible
some of the most intense
encounters between the proph-
ets and God are represented as
courtroom dramas. Sometimes,
as in the case of Moses, Jeremiah
and Habakkuk, the plaintiff is
humanity or the Jewish people.
In the case of Job, it is an indi-
vidual who has suffered unfairly.

ACCUSING GOD
The accused is God Himself.
The story is told by Elie Wiesel
of how a case was brought
against God by the Jewish
prisoners in a concentration
camp during the Holocaust
(Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God,
Schocken, 1995). At other times,
it is God who brings a case
against the Children of Israel.
The word the Hebrew Bible
uses for these unique dialogues
between heaven and earth is
riv, which means a lawsuit, and
it derives from the idea that at
the heart of the relationship
between God and humanity —

both in general, and specifically
in relation to the Jewish people
— is covenant, that is, a binding
agreement, a mutual pledge,
based on obedience to God’s
law on the part of humans, and
on God’s promise of loyalty
and love on the part of Heaven.
Thus, either side can, as it were,
bring the other to court on
grounds of failure to fulfill their
undertakings.
Three features mark Judaism
as a distinctive faith.
• First is the radical idea that
when God reveals himself to
humans, He does so in the form
of law.

In the ancient world, God was
power. In Judaism, God is order,
and order presupposes law. In
the natural world of cause and
effect, order takes the form of
scientific law. But in the human
world, where we have free will,
order takes the form of moral
law. Hence the name of the
Mosaic books: Torah, which
means “direction, guidance,
teaching,
” but above all “law.
”
The most basic meaning of the
most fundamental principle of
Judaism, Torah min ha-Shamay-
im, “Torah from Heaven,
” is that
God, not humans, is the source
of binding law.
• Second, we are charged
with being interpreters of the
law. That is our responsibility as
heirs and guardians of the Torah
she-be-al peh, the Oral Tradition.
The phrase in which Moses

describes the voice the people
heard at the revelation at Sinai,
kol gadol velo yasaf, is under-
stood by the commentators in
two seemingly contradictory
ways. On the one hand, it means
“the voice that was never heard
again”; on the other, it means
“the voice that did not cease,
”
that is, the voice that was ever
heard again. There is, though,
no contradiction. The voice that
was never heard again is the
one that represents the Written
Torah. The voice that is ever
heard again is that of the Oral
Torah.
The Written Torah is min

ha-shamayim, “from Heaven,
”
but about the Oral Torah the
Talmud insists Lo ba-shamayim
hi, “It is not in Heaven.
” Hence,
Judaism is a continuing conver-
sation between the Giver of the
law in Heaven and the interpret-
ers of the law on Earth. That is
part of what the Talmud means
when it says that “Every judge
who delivers a true judgment
becomes a partner with the
Holy One, blessed be He, in the
work of creation.
”

KNOWING THE LAW
• Third, fundamental to Judaism
is education, and fundamental
to education is instruction in
Torah, that is, the law. That is
what Isaiah meant when he said,
“Listen to Me, you who know
justice, the people in whose
heart is My law; do not fear the

reproach of men, nor be afraid
of their insults” (Isaiah 51:7).
It is what Jeremiah meant
when he said, “This is the cove-
nant I will make with the house
of Israel after those days, says
the Lord: I will put my law with-
in them, and I will write it on
their hearts; and I will be their
God, and they shall be my peo-
ple” (Jeremiah 31:33). It is what
Josephus meant when he said,
1,900 years ago, “Should any one
of our nation be asked about
our laws, he will repeat them as
readily as his own name.
”
The result of our thorough
education in our laws from the
very dawn of intelligence is that
they are, as it were, engraved on
our souls. To be a Jewish child
is to be, in the British phrase,
“learned in the law.
” We are a
nation of constitutional lawyers.
Why? Because Judaism is not
just about spirituality. It is not
simply a code for the salvation
of the soul. It is a set of instruc-
tions for the creation of what the
late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein
called “societal beatitude.
” It is
about bringing God into the
shared spaces of our collective
life.
That needs law: law that
represents justice, honoring all
humans alike regardless of color
or class, that judges impartially
between rich and poor, powerful
and powerless, even in extremis
between humanity and God, the
law that links God, its Giver, to
us, its interpreters, the law that
alone allows freedom to coexist
with order, so that my freedom
is not bought at the cost of
yours.
Small wonder, then, that there
are so many Jewish lawyers.

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

served as the chief rabbi of the

United Hebrew Congregations of the

Commonwealth, 1991-2013. This piece

was first published in 2015.

“SOME OF THE MOST INTENSE
ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN THE
PROPHETS AND GOD ARE
REPRESENTED AS

COURTROOM DRAMAS.”

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH