Pearls of Wisdom from the Parshah
You shall come... to the judge who will be in those days. (Devarim 17:9)
Even if he is not like the other judges who were before him, you must listen to him. You have only the judge who is in your days. (Rashi)
The Torah tells us to go to the judge who is our days and to obey him although he may not be as great as those of former generations. This sounds like a bedi’eved. It seems like the Torah is telling us to make do with what we have, even if it is not ideal.
However, we find a similar interpretation of Chazal a little later on, on the verse of “You shall come to the kohen who will be in those days.” Chazal say on this, “You have only the kohen who is in your days.”
And what do we say to this kohen? “I declare this day to Hashem your G-d.”1
R. Yerucham of Mir points out that the expression “Hashem your G-d” is addressed only to exceptionally great people. Yaakov said this to his father Yitzchak: כי הקרה ה' אלקיך לפני. And the people said ה' אלקיך to Shmuel Hanavi. The expression implies that Hashem’s Name is particularly associated with that individual, as we say in Tefilah: אלקי אברהם אלקי יצחק ואלקי יעקב.
If this is what we say to the kohen “who will be in those days,” then it’s not just because we can’t find another kohen. It’s because the kohen of the whole generation is someone about whom it can be said ה' אלקיך. Hashem’s Name is upon him, in every generation.
This idea applies also to the halachah of going to “the judge who will be in those days.” It’s not just because we can’t find another judge to go to. It’s because he is in fact Hashem’s representative on earth. The word of Hashem is in his mouth. About him Chazal say, “Whoever accepts from the mouth of his rabbi is like he accepted from the mouth of the Shechinah.”2
