A Court Without Prejudice

The Torah, “Leviticus” 19:15: Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor favor the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor. The Torah warns us not to corrupt our feelings and that we must not treat people as the unmerciful ego dictates.

Each of us is a judge. You should judge a person without prejudice and without looking at him. He can be black or yellow, ugly or handsome, or he may speak in an amazing manner and move you to tears and so on.

How can a judge make sure that he can conduct a trial without prejudice? In order to do so, he has to judge himself. After all, if you judge another person according to a perspective that is free of prejudice, which means that you dress into the Creator on their level, and the verdict is wrong, then you must assume the guilt for the accused and pay for his debt to all of society, to the whole general soul.

If you send a thief to prison and after serving his time he is free and steals again, it means that you have to be imprisoned instead of him because this sentence was incorrect. If he didn’t reform for different reasons while in prison and steals again, it means that you are to blame, not him, since you and society should have corrected him and you did not do so.

Thus when he goes free, you face the problem of what to do with him, while we know exactly what to do with you: we put you in prison or resort to other forms of correction.

Comment: If we followed this principle, all the judges would be in prison by now, but as we all know, prison does not reform.

Answer: There is no mention of prisons in the Torah. Indeed, prison doesn’t reform and we see that according to what happens today. The sages knew this 5,000 years ago.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/2/14