By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Retired Judge Sol Gothard of Louisiana’s 5th Circuit Court of Appeal told a kiddush luncheon audience at Tifereth Israel Synagogue on Saturday, January 5, that some major tenets of the American legal system are derived from the Torah and the Talmud.
Adding that “justice doesn’t win law cases, truth doesn’t win law cases; evidence wins cases,” Judge Gothard produced citations from the Torah to prove that Jewish concepts permeate the ideals of American jurisprudence.
Deuteronomy 16:18-20 says: “Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your cities – which Hashem, your God, gives you – for your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert judgment, you shall not respect someone’s presence, and you shall not accept a bribe, for the bribe will blind the eyes of the wise and make just words crooked. Righteousness, righteousness shall you pursue, so that you will live and possess the Land that Hashem, your God, gives you.” (This quotation and subsequent quotations from the Torah, are from the ArtScroll Series’ Stone Edition of the Tanach.)
From the above-cited Torah passage are derived such American concepts as 1) a system of courts, appeals, and jury trials; 2) a general concept of justice; and 3) judicial ethics (no bribes), according to Judge Gothard.
In a similar vein, Exodus 23:1-3 commands: “Do not accept a false report, do not extend your hand with the wicked to be a venal witness. Do not be a follower of the majority for evil; and do not respond to a grievance by yielding to the majority to pervert (the law). Do not glorify a destitute person in his grievance.”
Judge Gothard pointed out that to convict someone of a crime, the Torah requires testimony from two reliable witnesses. As Deuteronomy 19: 15-19 phrases it: “A single witness shall not stand up against any man for any iniquity or for any error, regarding any sin that he may commit; according to two witnesses or according to three witnesses shall a matter be confirmed. If a false witness stands against a man to speak up spuriously against him then the two men [and those] who have the grievance shall stand before Hashem, before the Kohanim [priests] and the judges who will be in those days. The judges shall inquire thoroughly, and behold! The testimony was false testimony; he spoke up falsely against his fellow. You shall do to him as he conspired to do to his fellow, and you shall destroy the evil from your midst.”
Similarly, Numbers 35:30, states, if there has been a murder, “Whoever smites a person, according to the testimony of witnesses, shall one kill the murderer, but a single witness shall not testify against a person regarding death.“ Deuteronomy 17:6 reiterates: “By the testimony of two witnesses or three witnesses shall the condemned person be put to death; he shall not be put to death by the testimony of a single witness.”
The Torah also requires there must have been specific intent for a killer to be subject to the death penalty. As it is written in Deuteronomy 19: 4-6 in a discussion about sanctuary cities, “This is the matter of the murderer who shall flee there and live: One who will strike his fellow without knowledge, and he did not hate him from yesterday or before yesterday; or who will come with his fellow into the forest to hew trees, and his hand swings the axe to cut the tree, and the iron slips from the wood and finds his fellow and he dies, he shall flee to one of these cities and live, lest the redeemer of the blood will chase after the murderer, for his heart will be hot, and he will overtake him for the way was long, and he shall strike him mortally—and there is no judgment of death upon him, for he did not hate him from yesterday and before yesterday.”
Judge Gothard’s daughter, forensic psychologist Shayna Kaufmann, introduced him at the luncheon, which was sponsored by Abe and Bea Goldberg in honor of their late parents. As a matter of coincidence, Shayna’s husband, Eric, was honored earlier during morning Shabbat services when the Conservative congregation sang “Happy Birthday” in Hebrew in his honor. Shayna Kaufmann said Judge Gothard had held many positions before becoming a senior judge of Louisiana’s 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, including chief justice of the children’s court, attorney, and social worker, but the title which she considered the finest was “dad.”
A lover of American history, Judge Gothard said the Pilgrims who came to the United States revered the Hebrew language and culture. He quoted Prof. Paul Eidelberg, an American-Israeli scholar who has written books on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, as saying, “No nation has been more profoundly influenced by the ‘Old Testament’ than America. No Christian community in history identified more with the People of the Book than did the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed their own lives to be a literal reenactment of the Biblical drama of the Hebrew nations … America was their Promised Land.”
Gothard pointed out that Biblical place names may be found throughout the United States, including Jerusalem, New York; Bethel, Connecticut; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Jericho, New York; and Dothan, Alabama, the latter the place where the biblical Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. There also is a Mount Pisgah in North Carolina, a reference to the biblical place at the top of Mount Nebo, from which Moses saw before he died the land of Canaan.
The judge noted that some signers of the U.S. Constitution had first names of biblical origin, among them: Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Daniel Carroll of Maryland, Jacob Broom of Delaware, and Abraham Baldwin of Georgia.
Additionally, he noted, the inscription on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia comes straight from Leviticus: “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
Excellent article.
Awesome story, Mr. Harrison.