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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

