Torah Perspective on Power

If a person will make a habit of standing on his head and looking at the world from that vantage point, he'll have a skewed perception of reality. If a person wears glasses with tinted lenses, again he's going to have an artificially colored perception of reality. And if a person adopts a vantage point where his view is partially obstructed, again that will yield an incomplete and therefore perforce distorted perception. Torah can only be correctly, accurately perceived and understood internally. Torah can only be accurately and correctly understood within its divine system of values and axioms and assumptions. If knowingly or unknowingly one uproots a halacha from the Torah system and views it in an alien system with its alien values, axioms, and assumptions, so instead of having something which is Torat Hashem temimah, it can be reduced Rachmana litzlan to a caricature of Torah. Let's try to illustrate and concretize that idea a little bit. There is a chiyuv amidah me-ikar ha-din when edim testify in beit din, there's a chiyuv amidah, ve-amdu shenei ha-anashim. The emes is it's clear in the peshuto shel mikra already and then corroborated for us, accentuated for us, that that chiyuv amidah in beit din is not kevod ha-dayanim, but it's ועמדו שני האנשים אשר להם הריב לפני השם. It's really a chiyuv amidah because of the presence of the Shechinah,

כי המשפט לאלוקים הוא. אלוקים נצב בעדת קל. מניין לשלושה שיושבים בדין ששכינה עמהם שנאמר בקרב אלוקים ישפוט.

Reading from the Rav's Shiurim on Pirkei Avot, yet there is a central motif in both... Man wielding power over his fellow man is a usurper of an exclusively divine prerogative. He must always be aware that power is intrinsically divine and its exercise by humans sinful. That's what it means כי המשפט לאלקים הוא. There's no such thing as one person judging another person. A person can only do so as an appointed representative, as an appointed emissary of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

אלקים נצב בעדת אל כי המשפט לאלקים הוא. לעולם יראה דיין עצמו,

shach Chazal,

כאילו חרב מונחת לו בין ירכותיו וגיהנום פתוחה לו מתחתיו. רב כי הוה אזיל לבי דינא אמר הכי.

When Rav would be walking in the direction of the Beis Din he would say as follows: ברעות נפשיה לקטלא נפיק. He, referring to himself, is willingly going out lektala, for death.

וצבי ביתיה לא עביד וריקן לביתיה עייל ולוואי שתהא ביאה כיציאה.

He's not attending to his own need ולוואי שתהא ביאה כיציאה. Asur l'dayan, writes the Rambam, לנהוג בשררה על הציבור ובגסות רוח אלא בענווה ויראה. And the yesod is not just one which expresses itself in the context of din. The same is true in terms of malchus. Rav Pinkus in his Kuntres Shabbos Malkusa has occasion to talk about what the concept of melucha of malchus is. So he cites the following two sources. The Gemara Nedarim: לאו מלכא אנא דמהנינא לך ואת לא מהנית לי. What, do you think I'm a melech that the relationship should be one-sided that I should be mehaneh you and you shouldn't be mehaneh me? The zkeinim said to Rechavam ben Shlomo the pasuk in Melachim, im hayom, speaking of his assuming the monarchy, אם היום תהיה עבד לעם. So malchus means that a person is eved la'am. He gives up all his personal prerogatives and personal ambitions and is totally meshubad to the tzorkei am. כדרך שחלק לו הכתוב הכבוד הגדול וחיייב הכל בכבודו, writes the Rambam,

כך ציווה להיות ליבו בקרבו שפל וחלל. שנאמר ולבי חלל בקרבי.

Skipping a little bit in that halacha,

לעולם ינהג בענווה יתירה. אין לנו גדול ממשה רבינו והרי הוא אומר ונחנו מה.

Authority grants no prerogatives. On the contrary, in many respects it limits the personal rights of the individual. Therefore the king was enjoined from possessing a large stable or great wealth while the private person may increase his material possessions to his heart's delight. The sin of the king is atoned by a different kind of sacrifice. The king is duty-bound to write two Torahs. Two Torah scrolls and one must be worn on his arm the way we wear our tefillin. That's the hashkafas olam in which the Rambam's Sifrei appears.

אין מעמידין אשה במלכות שנאמר מלך ולא מלכה וכן כל משימות שבישראל אין מעמידין בהם אלא איש אין מעמידין בהם אלא איש.

The Torah doesn't know of power. Melucha, appointment doesn't mean power. It's not a concept that exists within the Torah's system of values and axioms. כי המשפט לאלוקים הוא. There's only Hakadosh Baruch Hu who is Ba'al hakochos kulam. A person is ve-nachnu mah. A person is nothing, pashuto kemashma'o. The Torah knows of responsibility. The Torah knows of assignments. The Torah doesn't know of power. Libi chalal bekirbi says Dovid Hamelech. Nachnu mah says Moshe Rabbeinu. The Western world with its orientation sees everything in terms of power, in terms of prestige, in terms of kovod medumeh. When one uproots a halacha from its Torah context, when one separates the halacha from the Torah values and axioms which frame and contextualize the halacha, so obviously one has a distorted perspective of the halacha and its implications and what it means. משפטי השם אמת צדקו יחדיו. If one wants to glimpse the tzedek of mishpetei Hashem, so mishpetei Hashem have to be seen yachdav. But when one artificially separates and uproots, so then one projects into the halacha all kinds of alien insinuations and has all kinds of off-base associations. There's no such thing as power. It's not a Torah-dikke concept. Not a Torah-dikke concept. If there's one unequivocal posul for carrying out such a responsibility, if a person sees it as power and a person is attracted to it for that reason, there's no bigger posul than that because it represents just the wholesale misunderstanding of what Torah's about, of what our emunah, of ein od milvado is. It's another aspect, another element of what we spoke about last time of Torah chasuma nitna. And it's why it's just so indispensable to be receptive to truth and then to learn as much as possible so that one comes closer and closer to that perspective of משפטי ה' אמת צדקו יחדו. Chaim Volozhiner comments in in his shiur in Pirkei Avos on the first mishnah משה קיבל תורה מסיני ומסרה ליהושע ויהושע לזקנים. He says at every stage, at every link in the shalsheles hamesorah, the defining characteristic of the chachmei hamesorah is their anavah. More than anything, the reason משה קיבל תורה מסיני is because

והאיש משה ענו מאד מכל האדם אשר על פני האדם.

More than anything, the reason umesara li-Yehoshua is because of the complete hisbatlus that Yehoshua had. יהושע בן נון נער. What do you mean na'ar? Na'ar means he was a young, he was a young lad, he was a he was a zayde, he was a what do you mean? Complete, complete hisbatlus. Chazal say he used to be mesader the safsalim. Yehoshua was the was the janitor. He used to set up the the benches for Moshe Rabbeinu's Moshe Rabbeinu's shiurim. We need to learn Torah as much as possible and be able to appreciate the fact that when one has a very limited vision, so one can't hope to understand what a halachah really represents and what a halachah really signifies. And it's only with that bechinah of yachdav that one can come close to the appreciation of tzodku as well.