Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
4 Justice without Judgment: Pure Procedural Justice and the Divine Courtroom in Sifre Deuteronomy
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Halberstam, Chaya |
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | The book of Job, one of the most famous protests against cosmic injustice in world literature, imagines a path out of despair: a fair trial. “O that I had someone to give me a hearing; / O that Shaddai would reply to my writ, / Or my accuser draw up a true bill! / I would carry it on my shoulder; / Tie it around me for a wreath” (Job 31:35–36).1 While a trial will not necessarily restore Job’s family, health, and fortune (one takes one’s chances), it may provide outcomes of considerable significance: it may “preserve the honor of both parties [to the dispute]”; it may establish truth and “get the story right”; and it may “restore a possible sense of agency to Job,” who feels persecuted and powerless before the omnipotent deity.2 The “happy ending” of the book of Job, in which God reinstates Job to his prior position of wealth and comfort rings hollow, because God does so by fiat; God is still an autocrat, only now a benevolent one. A trial, however, would feel different. In the courtroom, “God . . . could conceivably be envisioned as . . . provisionally setting aside the terrifying overwhelmingness of his own power in order to allow his opponent at law to speak.”3 Job’s hypothetical trial with God emerges, essentially, as a fantasy of procedural justice. One place in which the rabbis wrestle with such a fantasy of procedural justice is in the tannaitic commentary to the last book of the Torah, Sifre Deuteronomy. There the rabbis offer us almost comical depictions of the divine courtroom, discovering in heaven an adherence to formal or even bureaucratic procedures. Despite the otherworldly setting, and despite the presumption of divine omniscience and omnipotence, rabbinic authors dispense with splendour and ministering angels flanking the divine throne and instead concentrate on procedural details like numbers of witnesses and their fitness to testify. While it may appear that the rabbis simply attempt to correlate worldly justice and heavenly justice, there is a fundamental absurdity to the formalism in |
| Starting Page | 49 |
| Ending Page | 68 |
| Page Count | 20 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1163/9789004281646_005 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://brill.com/previewpdf/book/edcoll/9789004281646/B9789004281646_005.xml |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004281646_005 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
