(2011/5771)

In this week’s Parashah, the Torah discusses the Mitzvah of hanging a convicted sinner’s body after his prescribed form of death is implemented. Immediately after the commandment is recorded, the Torah continues to explain that the body must not be left hanging on the gallows overnight; rather, it should be taken down and buried before nightfall, so that the hanging body does not desecrate Hashem’s name. This Halachah, however, raises a serious moral and logical controversy: if the avoidance of hanging the body overnight is practiced out of consideration for the sanctity of Hashem’s name, why don’t we remove the body immediately after the execution? Won’t the hanging body desecrate Hashem’s name from the onset?

To understand this difficulty, perhaps we can look back into a period of European history, during which a people, in their quest for justice, became one of the most barbarous and unjust nations to ever exist. The year was 1789, and the French, after having been mistreated and disregarded by King Louis XVI and the upper class, revolted, and took over the government. After four years of failed attempts of the revolutionaries and the king himself at creating policies, the king was condemned to death and decapitated by guillotine. This act, especially after years of neglect and abuse on part of the king, was seen as an act of justice; however, after his death, the condemnations did not stop. France, led by Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, entered a time-period known as the “Reign of Terror.” Quickly-increasing numbers of civilians, unfairly accused of committing “counter-revolutionary acts,” were sentenced to death and killed. Only after many months, when Robespierre himself was condemned and finally killed, did the “Reign of Terror” end.

Our Parshah teaches us a powerful lesson. It has been known to man, since an immemorial time, that justice is a virtue on which a nation grows and progresses. Justice, at times, must take on the form of a court, complete with judges; at others, it must morph into a nauseatingly gruesome form, in which the suspect is executed in accordance with law. Perhaps, as Jewish people, wanting to prevent execution from ever being necessary more than once, the body of the executed is hanged, for the possible purpose of deterring future sinners from succumbing to the same fate as the victim. Yet in our quest for peace, social order, and justice, we must also be wary of the possibility of tyranny at hand: While the ragged body is a desecration to God, the greatest desecration of all is the malicious perversion of His law by those He appointed to safeguard it.

May we heed to and learn from these important Halachot of Parashat Ki Teitzei, and work at becoming a people that fully support justice, peace, and the sanctification of Hashem’s name.