Not Discriminating Against Outsiders?
I charged your magistrates at that time as follows, “Hear out your fellow men, and decide justly between any man and a fellow Israelite or a stranger.
Throughout the ancient world, every people had one law for natives, and a different law for strangers or outsiders. Preferring your own kind is, after all, only natural.
But the Torah takes a different approach. It repeatedly says that we must apply the law regardless of whether a person is a Jew or not.
Why is this such an important principle? What underlying lesson is the Torah trying to teach us through this repeated commandment?
Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, do not behave this way. We treat people quite differently based on how much we perceive we have in common with them. In other words, we follow our instinctive, natural inclination. Is that inclination actually counter to the Torah?
Is there a difference between the commandment of how justice must be blind, versus how we personally choose to treat others outside of a judicial arena?
If we justify treating others differently (except in law), what is the basis we use? In other words, are courts supposed to be the rule or the exception for how we treat outsiders?
What is Justice?
If we go with the assumption that the equal treatment of others through justice is meant to be unique, then is there a way to understand what “justice,” Tzedek, actually means?
Here are the first uses of Tzedek in the Torah:
Noah was a tzedek man; … Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, with all your household, for you alone have I found tzedek before Me in this generation. … And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High. … And because [Avram] put his trust in the LORD, He reckoned it to his Tzedek..
Might the common understanding of each of the examples above translate tzedek as “someone who listens”? After all, the only thing we know about Noah is that he was able to hear G-d!
And we similarly know that Malchi-tzedek was perceptive enough to see Avram’s victory as a divinely-gifted miracle. Similarly Avram’s Tzedek added to his relationship with G-d.
So might Tzedek, at least in part, refer to a person’s ability to listen, to internalize, to hear someone else?! Isn’t that part of the meaning of the verse quoted above: Hear out your fellow men ? That justice requires hearing?
And if so, might we suggest that the reason we should treat strangers with the same Tzedek as we treat Jews because the Torah is telling us that justice’s prerequisite, is that each person feels heard?
If this is right, then does it somewhat limit the commandment that we should treat everyone the same with Tzedek: that instead of treating everyone the same, we are instead commanded to always be attentive to everyone, and to be open to hearing what they have to say?
Is this a plausible explanation of an underlying meaning of Tzedek, and of how we are to treat both insiders and outsiders?
The Rights of Victims?
You will be passing through the territory of your kin, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. … I will not give you of their land so much as a foot can tread on; I have given the hill country of Seir as a possession to Esau. (Deut. 2:4-5)
Why does Esau get this special treatment? Might it be because he was rejected by his brother, Jacob?
Esau took his wives, his sons and daughters, and all the members of his household, his cattle and all his livestock, and all the property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan, and went to another land because of his brother Jacob. For their possessions were too many for them to dwell together, and the land where they sojourned could not support them because of their livestock. So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir—Esau being Edom. (Gen. 36:6)
Is the text telling us that if Jacob had wanted to accommodate Esau alongside him he had that option? But we know that Jacob chose not to do it.
Is the Torah really saying that if we expel our family, we lose the right to take anything more from them ever again?
Is Lot a parallel case? The language seems quite similar:
You will then be close to the Ammonites; do not harass them or start a fight with them. For I will not give any part of the land of the Ammonites to you as a possession; I have assigned it as a possession to the descendants of Lot. (Deut. 2:19)
Do not harass the Moabites or provoke them to war. For I will not give you any of their land as a possession; I have assigned Ar as a possession to the descendants of Lot. (Deut. 2:9)
Were both Lot and Esau rejected, and perhaps even victimized, by their family member who sent them to another land?
The Torah tells us that we cannot – must not – take any of the land that the rejected family members settled in after they were sent away. By expelling our family from us, did we lose the right to harass or take anything more from them ever again?
And we should ask: why did Avraham and Yaakov reject Lot and Esau? The Torah seems to say that possessions trumped the relationships – can that be right? Is that what the text says?
Is there a mirrored consequence: do Avraham’s and Yaakov’s prioritization of property over familial ties lead directly to the Torah telling us that the property of the other person must be considered inviolate? If we are going to consider our own property to be that important, then we have to extend the same courtesy to the property of those we wronged?
Does this all tie back into giving equal justice to Jew and stranger alike?