Emor: Living Justice

There is a phrase you hear often when working with young people, all of you who are parents are likely familiar with it - “That’s not fair.” It usually comes out in moments of frustration: Maybe the rules don’t go their way, or a consequence feels uneven, or life tilts just slightly off balance. And yet, beneath the complaint is something profound. What they are really expressing is an instinct that, I believe, all humans share: a demand that the world make sense morally, that actions and consequences line up, that justice is real.

The Torah takes that instinct seriously. In Parashat Emor we encounter one of the profound articulations of justice in the Torah. Until this point in the text, many mitzvot (commandments) had been given by God that define what is right and wrong. This week, the Torah steps back and gives shape to something deeper: not just rules, but the ethos of justice itself, especially what we might call corrective justice.

Six verses lay out this vision:

Regarding anyone who kills any human being: they shall be put to death.

One who kills livestock shall make restitution for it: life for life.

Regarding anyone who maims another person: what was done shall be done in return—fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

The injury inflicted on a human being shall be inflicted in return.

One who kills livestock shall make restitution for it; but one who kills a human being shall be put to death.

You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike: for I the ETERNAL am your God. (Leviticus 24:17–22)

These are striking verses. They are meant to be. And if they make us uncomfortable in 2026, that discomfort is worth honoring. We might read these words and ask:

Does Judaism really endorse the death penalty?

Isn’t this just a system of harsh, ancient retribution?

Is this justice, or simply vengeance dressed in sacred language?

Historically, passages like these have been misunderstood and even weaponized against Jews to paint the God of the Torah as severe or violent. But Jewish tradition does something remarkable and refuses to leave the text at its surface. Through generations of interpretation, our sages guide us beyond the literal reading into the moral architecture beneath it.

Among them, the medieval Spanish commentator Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra offers a particularly sharp and clarifying lens. Ibn Ezra teaches that when the Torah says “an eye for an eye”, it is not prescribing brutality. Rather it defines a principle: Justice must be exact.

Not more than the harm done. Not less than the harm done.

In his reading, the Torah is establishing midah k’neged midah - measure for measure - as the ideal of justice. Human beings, when hurt, tend to exaggerate. We inflate the offense, escalate the response, then claim the escalation in the name of fairness. Ibn Ezra insists that true justice resists that pull. It demands discipline.

Justice is not rooted in our human, emotional reaction. It is the profound attempt to arrive at calibrated truth.

Then the Torah presents the other bedrock of its justice system: “One law shall be for you - for the stranger and the citizen alike.” (Leviticus 24:22) No exceptions. No favoritism. No bending the rules depending on who is involved. Justice, the Torah insists, must be consistent and universal, or it is not justice at all.

This is all well and good, but these beautiful explanations of our people’s ancient law code always beg another question: What does the Torah’s ancient, powerful vision of justice have to do with our modern day lives? 

I believe it is calling us to translate it into the realms in which we do have authority: our relationships, our communities, and our moral choices. This is a deep challenge because it means we have to fight against some of our most natural, deepest human inclinations. 

In moments of conflict when someone hurts us, we instinctively react, expanding the harm. The Torah calls us to respond to what is real, not what anger magnifies.

In moments when we judge others unfairly, holding them to unrealistic expectations, the Torah calls us to apply judgement evenly, or it dissolves.

In the process of building community, including people different from ourselves can become hard. The Torah reminds us that fairness is not just a feeling, it is a practice and calls us to create spaces where everyone will be treated with consistency and dignity.

In the end, the Torah’s vision of “an eye for an eye” is not a call to violence, it is a call to precision of the soul. We are called to resist exaggeration, bias, and the easy slide into imbalance.

May we all be blessed this Shabbat to grow into a deeper, steadier sense of justice:

not louder, not harsher, only truer.

Shabbat Shalom!