Yisro 5786 – Rules are Rules

They say delegation is the art of leadership.

The Jewish people have had some truly great leaders throughout our illustrious history, none more so than Moshe Rabeinu. This leads many commentators to be baffled by Moshe’s seeming lack of foresight in this week’s Parsha. Why did he need Yisro’s advice to create a system of judges and delegate simpler cases to lower-ranking circuits? How could he have missed such a basic point?

The Abarbanel quotes “those who say” that Moshe was too caught up in his prophecies to pay attention to mundane matters such as the logistics of a court system. He rejects this suggestion as unacceptably degrading to Moshe.

He proposes a far more sophisticated approach. There has been much debate, from the Gemoro onwards, regarding the chronology of this week’s Parsha. When did Yisro come to the Bnei Yisrael in the desert—before or after Matan Torah? One of the central issues in this discussion is: what laws was Moshe judging the people by? He could not have judged based on Torah law before the Torah was given.

The Abarbanel says that Yisro came before Matan Torah. Moshe was not judging based on Torah laws, but rather on the general commandment to judge fairly, received at Mara. This commandment did not come with strict guidelines, but rather a broad-stroke approach of fairness and equity. Moshe realized that it would be impossible to delegate such a system of laws to lower judges. Who decides what is fair? He understood that any case could simply be deemed legitimate to escalate to the highest authority. When there are no clear guidelines, everything is grey, and every matter is open to dispute.

Yisro saw that this was unsustainable, even in the short term, due to the personal toll on Moshe, and therefore advised an immediate adjustment.

Both Israel and the USA have court systems ultimately headed by a Supreme Court. However, there is a major difference between the two systems. The USA is a relatively older country with a far larger population. Its laws have been written, tested, and refined, and therefore have an extremely solid foundation and systemization. Israel, by contrast, is a young country still developing its systems. The tax code and legal system contain large amounts of ambiguity and interpretation.

This explains why, per capita, Israelis are over seven times more likely to file a petition to the Supreme Court than Americans. One wonders what Yisro would think of this.

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