Dvar Torah on Parshat Kedoshim

 Hello, all. This week we are going to approach the parshat hashavua [weekly portion] - actually a double one, Acharey Mot and Kedoshim (we will just look at Kedoshim) - a bit differently than usual. First, we will begin with a bonus: an op-ed from the NY Times which, at no little personal expense, and through the magic of the internet, I have made available to you, right here. Just click, read (or skim, it's not that complicated), and then please don't forget to close the article and come back to me!

OPINION   | April 28, 2009
Op-Ed Contributors:  Fund Government With Dirty Money
By CHARLES A. INTRIAGO and ROBERT A. BUTTERWORTH
The government should enforce asset forfeiture laws and take back the wealth that criminals have stolen from taxpayers.
You back yet? You didn't click to some other stuff in the Times and forget about me and, more importantly, the parsha, did you? Good. Now, here are some verses from Kedoshim, which, by the way, is a beautiful portion, containing, among many greatest hits, "Love thy neighbor as thyself", and other important moral-ethical principles. Look at this:When you gather in the harvest of your land, you must not completely harvest the corner of your field, and you must not gather up the gleanings of your harvest. You must not pick your vineyard bare, and you must not gather up the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You must leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. You must not steal, you must not tell lies, and you must not deal falsely with your fellow citizen.  You must not swear falsely in my name, so that you do not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.  You must not oppress your neighbor or commit robbery against him. You must not withhold the wages of the hired laborer overnight until morning.  You must not curse a deaf person or put a stumbling block in front of a blind person. You must fear your God; I am the Lord.

We have here an interesting mix of socially conscious commandments, starting with the act of charity which the landowner must do by leaving some food behind for the poor when he harvests his field, prohibitions against stealing, lying, swearing falsely, robbery, withholding wages, cursing or tricking the afflicted, etc. Frankly, if the entire Torah was reduced to this, and we managed to obey it, we would be living in paradise, but that's another story.  What I want to point out is this: the Torah includes prohibitions against stealing and robbing (there is a difference, cf. The Beatles, Abbey Road; She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, but we will not go into it), together with other mitzvot dealing with our behavior towards our fellow man, all of which demand of us to be truthful, charitable, sensitive, fair, and honest with one another, especially with society's victims: the poor, the stranger, the handicapped. By placing the prohibitions against stealing and robbing here, the Torah is teaching us that theft is, first and foremost, a crime against my neighbor, a social crime, akin to lying, withholding wages, cheating or hurting someone; it is a social crime. 

In line with this thinking, the Torah, in a number of places, mandates basically one punishment for crimes of theft: restitution. The thief must return what he stole. In certain circumstances he is also fined, and must pay the victim more than the value of the stolen item, usually double, but in some cases as much as four or five times its worth. These fines serve as both deterrence and full restitution: in many cases - for example, if the stolen item is a farm animal, or a tool - the victim incurs a loss during the absence of the stolen item, and the fine pays him or her back for that. 

Clearly, the Torah, by including theft together with lying, cursing, and other crimes against the individual, and by mandating restitution rather than incarceration or some other punishment, is telling us that  theft is, first and foremost, a crime against the victim, and, accordingly, what you must do is repair the damage done to him or her. With this in mind,  I found the article from the Times especially interesting, in that the US justice system seems to have a totally different approach, one in which deterrence and punishment are the only goals, and restitution is not really a concern. In addition, there is no real attempt to, at the very least, not allow the thief to enjoy his ill-gotten gains, which, to my mind, weakens tremendously any deterrence which a jail sentence might achieve.

It seems to me that the Torah's focus on the wrong which the criminal has done to his victim, and the Torah's determination to force the criminal,  before anything else, to right that wrong, correctly places our personal obligations to one another at the center of the criminal justice system, making for a healthier, more just society. By making restitution to the victim the focus of  our concern, rather than concentrating on punishing the thief for having broken the law, a somewhat more amorphous concept, we reaffirm the importance of our relationship to and responsibility for the other, the person we have harmed,  rather than our obligations to "the law",  thereby reinforcing our personal responsibility to care for and give justice to all.

Shabbat Shalom,

Shimon