“Rav Shimon ben Gamliel said: The world stand on three things – on judgment, truth and peace” (Avos 1:18).
Rav Ovadia Yosef used to illustrate the judgment and justice in our Mishna using the following stories:
There once came before Rav Eliyohu Chaim Meisel and his court two women who were neighbors and had a dispute. They had both laundered their families’ respective clothing and hung out the wash to dry in the yard. Thieves passed by and stole all the laundry hanging on the line from one family and left the wash on the second laundry line untouched. It so happened that the laundry was white and basically identical, so that each neighbor claimed that hers had been spared and the other’s stolen!
“Your clothes were stolen and mine have been left behind!”
“No, it’s yours that were stolen and mine that were spared!”
Rav Eliyohu Chaim asked that the clothes be brought before him. When the laundry was brought in, he asked the ladies to leave the room. Once the neighbors had departed, he called in his own wife and asked her to add some of their own white laundry identical to the clothes laid out. He then called in one of the ladies and asked her, “Can you recognize which articles of clothing are yours among this pile of whites?”
“Yes, Rebbe, I can,” answered the woman.
“Be careful to select only your clothing and not to make a mistake,” he warned her.
She began to select from the laundry. “This one is mine, and this, this other one, no, that’s not mine.” And so she selected all her laundry and left the Rav’s on the other pile. The Rav thanked her, asked her to step out again, called the other neighbor and asked her to do the same.
“This is mine, and this, and this one, in fact they are all mine!” the second lady declared.
The Rav rebuked her sharply. “You are not telling the truth – this laundry belongs to your neighbor!”
