Parshas Shoftim begins with the laws of the Jewish Court. “Judges and policemen you shall place in all your gates, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.” [Devorim 16:18] The judges are prohibited from corrupting justice and showing favoritism. Immediately after these laws directed at the judges, the Torah introduces the prohibition of planting an ashera tree next to the altar of G-d in the courtyard of the Temple.
The incongruousness of this juxtaposition jumps right out at us. What does planting a tree worshipped as idolatry have to do with judges?
The Talmud makes an inference from this juxtaposition: Anyone who appoints an unworthy judge is as if he planted an ashera tree. [Sanhedrin 7b] The sefer Ner Uziel (from Rav Uziel Malevsky, zt”l) explains this message:
The ashera tree represents nature and the god that people make out of nature. Today, we are all familiar with the environmental movement. I am not here to debunk them and to say that everything they say is crazy. We do have to worry about the planet, and we are charged “to work it and to guard it.” [Bereishis 2:15] However, as with all of these movements, it is possible to go too far. There are indeed people who have gone too far and have turned nature into an avodah zarah (foreign worship).
We look at ancient times, and we hear about people who worshipped inanimate objects of nature, and we comment how silly they were. But today we also have people who worship nature and who put a premium on nature even above human life. There are people in Oregon who pound metal stakes into trees so that when loggers attempt to cut them down, they will be killed. How do we refer to these environmentalists who have gone beyond the pale? They are called “tree huggers.” This is because trees are a beautiful example of the perfection of nature.
My wife and I took a little vacation one summer to Yosemite National Park. We saw the Sequoia trees there. Some of these trees are 300 feet tall. They are amazing and they are breathtaking. Some of these trees are 3,000 years old! This is mind boggling. The trees are awe-inspiring. But they are, after all, just trees. They are not G-d.
This is what ashera represents — the laws of nature. One of the most basic laws of nature is survival of the fittest. The animals that survive are the most fit, the mightiest.
The laws of tzeddek [justice] on the other hand, are the polar opposite of that. When two people come before a judge, and one is a powerful man in the city, and the other person is a poor beggar, we do not apply the principle of the survival of the fittest. We say, “Do not show favoritism in judgment.” Even though it might cost the judge in personal terms to rule against the wealthy person, in the eyes of tzeddek, survival of the fittest does not count but rather, the survival of the person who is right counts.
Appointing an inappropriate judge who will show favoritism to the powerful and mighty and wealthy is in effect putting the laws of nature — the laws of the survival of the fittest — into the courtroom. That is why he is equivalent to one who plants an ashera tree. He is corrupting the principle of justice, which is that might is not right; right is right.
