This weeks Torah reading, Shoftim (trans: Judges), opens with one of the Torah’s most famous commands: “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). But what follows is more interesting than the slogan. Moses does not simply tell Israel to find good people and put them in charge. He builds a system designed around a less flattering assumption: people with power are dangerous when nobody can tell them “no.”

Judges must not accept bribes or show partiality. Courts have procedures. Priests possess authority but are denied the ordinary territorial inheritance that might allow religious authority to become landed power. And then comes the Torah’s remarkable description of the king. He may rule, but he may not accumulate too many horses, too much silver and gold, or too many wives. He must keep a copy of the Torah beside him and read it continually so that “his heart not be exalted above his fellows” (Deuteronomy 17:16–20).

The Torah’s insight is not that power corrupts only bad men. It is that power changes the psychological environment around any man. People laugh........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)