* Translated by Janine Muller Sherr
This week’s parasha opens with the command: “You shall set up judges and law enforcement officers for yourself.”
The simple meaning of this verse is that we are commanded to establish a judicial system and police force that will operate with integrity. But this command is also addressed to us as individuals, urging us to appoint “judges and law enforcement officers” on ourselves, i.e. a system of self-evaluation and critique.
Rav Mordechai Sheinberger expands on this idea in a beautiful way.
(We studied his explanation yesterday in our weekly class for the “Mitchadshot” program.)
He writes: “Each one of us has several gateways to the world: the gateway of seeing, which are the eyes; the gateway of hearing, which are the ears; the gateway of speech, which is the mouth; the gateway of smell, which is the nose; and the gateway of touch, which are the hands and feet.
Each of us needs to set up judges and police that will safeguard each one of these gates—that will purify and sanctify them so that we utilize them appropriately.
For example, every time I look at something, I need to ask myself this question: “Will this lead to a positive or negative outcome?” And regarding hearing, we can use our ears to sin by listening to lashon hara (evil speech) and gossip, or we can use them to listen to Torah lessons. The same concept is true regarding the mouth— we can speak harmful words or words that bring blessing to the world.”
May we merit paying closer attention to all of our gates and to watch over them carefully.
