The Ignorant Historian
Now, if we’ll seek an illustration of how our people practiced this principle of fearing Hashem baseiser, we don’t have to go far. We find an especial book of the Tanach devoted to that subject, an entire sefer called the Sefer Shoftim. It’s a sefer that has been greatly misunderstood, but if we study it properly we’ll see that this book is a history of the innate loyalty of the Am Yisroel. About how the Am Yisroel served Hakadosh Baruch Hu out of their own conviction with true and genuine piety, even when not in the public eye.
When we study this sefer of Shoftim, we note a recurrent phrase and it’s exactly this phrase that has misled people and has caused them to misunderstand the entire sefer. The phrase goes as follows: ל≈‡ָר¿ׂ ̆ƒי¿ּב¿ך∆ל∆מ ין≈‡ ם≈הָה יםƒמָּיַּב – In those days there was no king in Yisroel, ה∆ׂ ֲ̆ﬠַי יוָינ≈ﬠ¿ּב רָׁ ָּ̆יַה ׁ ̆יƒ‡ – every man did what was right in his own eyes (17:6).
And so here is one historian—I won’t say his name—he wrote a thirteen volume Jewish history and he said like this: “The generation of the Shoftim was one of the lowest eras of our people; like it states openly, ‘Every man did what was right in his eyes.’”
This writer learned pshat like this: He said that in those days there was no king in Yisroel, no one to enforce the Torah laws, and therefore each man did whatever he wanted. “Every man did what was right in his own eyes!” So here you have it black and white, he says; they were a lawless people and the entire era is therefore stamped as a most disorderly era.
A Book of Righteousness
However, daas Torah is not so. Now when we say daas Torah, it doesn’t necessarily mean the daas of the lamdanim because there aren’t many Torah scholars today who are informed on the subject. Actually many are severely misinformed because they followed the simple meaning of a number of statements which they learned in their childhood and they came to the same conclusion as this no good historian who said that it was a very low generation.
And therefore instead of making our own opinions which could mislead us, we ought to listen to the words of the Chachomim about this statement ה∆ׂ ֲ̆ﬠַי יוָינ≈ﬠ¿ּב רָׁ ָּ̆יַה ׁ ̆יƒ‡. After all, the Sages of the Talmud were much closer than the modern historians to these events. And besides, the Chachomim are the only ones who are truly capable of assessing, gauging and explaining these events. So let’s see that era through their eyes.
There’s a possuk in Shmuel Beis (1:18) that states, רָׁ ָּ̆יַה ר∆פ≈ס לַﬠ הָבּו ̇¿כ הּ≈נƒה – It is written in Sefer HaYashar, The Book of Righteousness. Now we’re not going to discuss what he’s saying there, but what interests us is what exactly is this Book of Righteousness that Shmuel Hanavi is talking about? And the Gemara (Avodah Zarah 25a) says יםƒט¿פֹוׁ ̆ ר∆פ≈ס ה∆ז רָׁ ָּ̆יַה ר∆פ≈ס – The Righteous Book is the book of Shoftim. And why is it called The Righteous Book? Because it says there הׂ∆ ֲ̆ﬠַי יוָינ≈ﬠּ¿ב רָׁ ָּ̆יַה לָּכ ׁ ̆יƒ‡ – every man did what was righteous in his eyes.
So it’s an upside-down world! Here is a verse that people cite as a proof of the lawlessness of that generation—“Each one did what is right in his own eyes”—and the Gemara tells us, “No! That exact verse is the one that tells us that it was the most righteous era because every man did what was right in his eyes!”
That changes everything. It’s an eye-opener because now we have to read the possuk all over again. This time we read it the way the Sages read it: ל≈‡ָרׂ¿ ̆ƒיּ¿ב¿ך∆ל∆מ ין≈‡ ם≈הָה יםƒמָּיַּב – In those days the Jewish people did not need a king. They wouldn’t stand for a king who would force them to do certain things because they didn’t require it! יוָינ≈ﬠּ¿ב רָׁ ָּ̆יַה לָּכ ׁ ̆יƒ‡ הׂ∆ ֲ̆ﬠַי – Every man was loyal to the real King, Hashem, and everyone did what he considered right!
Your Stomach’s Eyes
The historian, when he read that verse he put in his own meaning. He thought it means like people say today, “I’ll do what’s right in my eyes;” even though he knows it’s wrong but he wants to do it anyhow. But that’s all wrong. The verse is saying “each man did what is right in his eyes” because he used his conscience. He didn’t follow his passions, his desires, his inclination. No! That’s not what’s right in his eyes! That’s right in his stomach. “Right in his eyes” means that each man did what his conscience told him is right. Each man did what in his eyes was right in the Eyes of Hashem.
That was the greatness of that era. It was 369 years, more or less the era of the Shoftim, and throughout that time ל≈‡ָרׂ¿ ̆ƒיּ¿ב¿ך∆ל∆מ ין≈‡, they didn’t have a king because they didn’t need one; not because they weren’t developed enough to have a king. That’s how some people, strangers to the Torah, try to explain the subject. “They were still a nomadic people or an agricultural people in the first stage of development and therefore they hadn’t yet arrived at the stage of monarchy.”
But if you look at what the Torah tells us and what’s written elsewhere in Tanach, we see that all around them, everybody had kings. Individual cities had kings. There were tens of kings in Canaan, every little town had a king. Monarchy was a firmly established institution and our people lived among them for four hundred years. So if the Am Yisroel was without a king it wasn’t because they weren’t developed enough. It was because they were so super-developed that they didn’t want and didn’t require a king.
Nation of Kings
Why did Sedom need a king? Why did Yericho need a king? Because ּ̇כו¿לַמ לׁ∆ ּ̆הָ‡ָרֹמו ‡≈לָמ¿לƒ‡ – if not for the fear of a government, ֹעוָלּ¿ב יםּƒיַחּהו≈ﬠ≈ר ̇∆‡ ׁ ̆יƒ‡ – a man would devour his fellow man alive (Avos 3:2). If there’s no king, no strong authority, people go wild.
You know, in some countries in the olden days, when the king died they had to choose a new king—they didn’t have a law that the children inherited—and sometimes it took months before a new king was chosen. That’s how it used to be in Poland once upon a time. What happened? In the times of interregnum, it means the period between the kings, there was all kinds of disorder, all kinds of crime and tzaros. When the king was finally elected, Baruch Hashem! Finally! Shalom!
It’s a blessing to have law and order. You see what happens today when the government is weak and the streets are frequented by criminals. That’s why we like policemen who carry billy clubs. We like that they should build big jails. We like the electric chair. We want the electric chairs to be working day and night; there are so many customers that deserve it. That’s the function of a king, of a government.
And therefore, since the function of a king was to maintain and to enforce the Torah, in the times of the Shoftim, the Bnei Yisroel didn’t need it because everybody strove to do what he thought was right in the Eyes of Hashem. They were a great nation, capable of governing themselves. It would have been an insult to them to have a king. “I’m on the job!” That’s what every individual was thinking—he was king of his own behavior. He was a government who enforced Torah righteousness on himself.
Studying Law
The Torah was their Constitution; I say “Constitution” – lehavdil elef havdalos. The American Constitution is not a document that people study and obey. Did you ever see people getting together in America, chaburos, shiurim studying the Constitution l’shem mitzvah? Sometimes you must study it to pass a high school test perhaps, but to get together to study the Constitution in order to fulfill the Constitution? Such a thing is unheard of.
The Constitution is studied so that lawyers can find ways and means of getting around it. Wicked judges use the Constitution in order to take their own filthy ideas and find ways of twisting and stretching and finagling until they find things in there that nobody intended.
But our Constitution, lehavdil, the Torah, Jews get together and study it because that’s our life; ki heim chayeinu. The Torah, that’s our way of living—both outside and in our homes too.
Now, that era of the Shoftim was the time when the character of our nation was hammered out—a nation that would serve Hashem even when out of the public eye. Because eventually they would go out into exile and they’d have to live among gentiles where they’d be subject to every kind of temptation and blandishment and coercion. And in the privacy of your own home, hiding within your four walls, who’s going to know what you’re doing there?
The Emperor Has No Clout
We should never forget that illustration in the Gemara when a certain sage, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, was speaking to the Emperor and he was praising the loyalty of the Jewish people to their G-d.
“Today is Shabbos,” he said. “Come up on the roof of the palace and we’ll view the Jewish quarter. You’ll see that no Jew is cooking in his home.” And from the palace roof they looked at the Jewish section of the city and they looked at all the roofs and all the chimneys and there wasn’t a single place where fire or smoke was issuing from a chimney in the Jewish quarter.
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya told the king, “Make a decree that tomorrow nobody should light a fire in the city of Rome.” The emperor issued a decree and it was promulgated all throughout Rome by public criers that tomorrow there shouldn’t be a fire in any stove, in any furnace in all of Rome.
The next day when the decree was already in force the Emperor went up on the roof again with Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya and they surveyed the rooftops, the chimneys, and they saw there were a few places in Rome where smoke was coming out of the chimney. They saw here and there, there were some chimneys smoking.
Now it became clear that the Jewish nation lives differently. In their homes they’re living according to the Torah. In the Jewish quarter in Rome on Shabbos there was no smoke because the Jewish people don’t need a government. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is their Government.
Living By His Word
That’s how it used to be. The Am Yisroel meticulously kept the Torah. Everybody did. We have to get it into our heads. It wasn’t so long ago. Up until a hundred and fifty years ago, all over Europe, wherever Jews dwelt, the Torah was observed punctiliously. I’m not talking about shmiras haloshon or inyanim of bein adam l’chaveiro, things of middos, character. Humans are humans –
