This week we read the double parsha of Acharey Mot and Kedoshim.  Acharey Mot deals mostly with the laws of Yom Kippur and forbidden sexual relations and Kidoshim is filled with a wide variety of laws, both ritual and interpersonal.  In Kedoshim the Torah states: “You shall not be unfair in judgment, do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; with justice shall you judge your people.  Do not go about as a talebearer among your people, do not stand idly by the blood of your fellow, I am God.”

The Torah was iconoclastic for its time.  Ancient codes of law prefer the wealthy over the poor, the citizen over the stranger, the free man over the slave.   The Torah comes to fight against these mores of the ancient world.  It professes a universe in which everyone is made in the image of God, a shocking idea for its time, and  whose repercussions are radical and miriad.  Humans are not just animals who live and die, they are something more, inherently and ultimately, valuable.  They can thus possess inalienable rights, and must be treated equally under the law.   These ideas sound familiar to us, not just from the Torah and this week’s parsha, but from humanistic western thought which emerges from a Biblical worldview.

But are all humans to be treated equally?  In fact, Rashi says that when it comes to tzedakah, charity, halachically we have a greater obligation to our family and to the city and country we live in, than to others.  We must help those who are close before we support those who are far.   Obviously we can make a valid distinction between charity and justice.   To pervert justice is not just to treat one person more favorably than another, in fact, we are allowed to do that outside of the courtroom, but when it comes to justice, to truth, this is something which in Judaism, is sanctified.   To pervert justice is to damage truth, and in Judaism God is truth.   The Sanhedrin, the source of authority and  justice for all the lower courts, sat on the Temple mount not far from the altar, for, as the Talmud says, Truth is God’s signet.

In our parsha the command to do justice equally and fairly for all, is immediately followed by a verse that seems unconnected-the command not to speak lashon hara, slander and not to stand idly by the blood of another. What does lashon hara and standing idly by the blood of another have to do with judging fairly?  If we hear lashon hara we may see one of the litigants in a bad light and pervert justice based on prejudicial things we assume about them.  This will lead to favoring one person over another in court and in the end this perversion of justice leads to murder and facilitates bloodshed.  To allow our prejudices to pervert justice, the Torah is saying,  is tantamount to standing idly by the spilt blood of another.