True Justice

Imagine Mashiach arrives today. He sounds the “shofar gadol,” redeeming our assimilated brethren from lives of spiritual futility, and delivers them home to our Holy Land. Simultaneously, the shofar mobilizes us to wash away the spiritual filth accumulated over years of galus and return home to Eretz Yisrael. A unified Klal Yisrael converges at the gates of our land and… what happens next?

The Gemara (Megillah 17b) teaches, “And once the exiles have been gathered, we will impose justice on evildoers, as it says, ‘v’etzrof kabor sigayich’ ”  (Yeshayahu 1:25). Rashi explains this phrase as referring to the process of smelting (“etzrof“) an amalgam of silver and bronze, called “sig” (sigayich), to extract the silver and discard the dross (“bor“). He likens it to extracting reshaim, evildoers, from the righteous members of Klal Yisrael.

The next pasuk (ibid. 1:26) declares, “V’ashivah shoftayich k’varishonah — and I will restore your judges as they were in the beginning.” The flow of pesukim in Yeshayahu teaches that after the ingathering of exiles, Hashem will eradicate the reshaim from within us and reinstate our judges. This is the rationale for instituting “Hashivah shofteinu k’varishonah, v’yoatzeinu k’vat’chilah” as the next brachah in the Shemoneh Esreh; its theme logically follows the previous brachah, teka b’shofar gadol.

Rav Chaim Friedlander adds a practical point: While mired in galus and subject to the governance of foreign rulers, our judges are incapable of functioning in an unlimited, absolute capacity. Therefore, a primary goal after kibbutz galuyos is restoring our judges to their optimal role within Klal Yisrael.