Give Us Judges

There is a moment in the daily Jewish prayer that should make any thoughtful person pause. A Jew stands in the Land of Israel, in a Jewish state, with a government, a parliament, an army, police, courts, laws, legal advisers, and an entire sovereign public system — and still prays: “Restore our judges as at first, and our counselors as at the beginning.”

At first glance, that request seems outdated. The request has already been answered, has it not? There is a state. There are institutions. There are judges. There is Jewish sovereignty. So what is still missing?

The answer is that Jewish tradition never measured redemption merely by the existence of institutions. It never asked only whether a system exists, but what kind of system it is. Not only whether there is law, but whether there is justice. Not only whether authority exists, but whether authority understands its place, its limits, and its purpose.

That is why, even after the establishment of a Jewish state, the prayer “Restore our judges as at first” remains alive, urgent, and deeply relevant. It is not simply a request for more judges, or even for more competent ones. It is a plea for the restoration of an entire moral order — one in which judgment is not merely a mechanism of procedure, but an expression of integrity, wisdom, restraint, public responsibility, and moral clarity.

In the Jewish tradition, a judge is not merely a senior technician of legal texts. He is not simply a procedural expert, nor even only a sophisticated interpreter of norms. The ideal judge is someone entrusted with helping uphold a just society. Not ruling society in place of everyone else. Not redesigning its soul according to personal preference. Not inheriting the powers of all other institutions. But judging truthfully — discerning between wrong and right, between force and legitimacy, between arbitrariness and order.

Precisely for that reason, this prayer sounds so current today. It is entirely possible to build an impressive judicial system and still feel that something essential is missing. A country may be full of institutions, yet lack moral confidence. It may produce detailed legal arguments and lengthy decisions, yet still lose the trust of its people. A system may preserve the appearance of order while drifting away from humility, restraint, and fidelity to its original mandate.

And here lies a crucial point: the prayer “Restore our judges as at first” is not only a request for better judges. It is also a request for judges who know the limits of their power. A healthy legal system is not merely a strong one. It is one that understands that not every power it can seize is a power it may rightfully claim; that not every interpretive opening justifies an expansion of authority; and that silence from the public is not the same thing as consent to surrender sovereignty.

When a judicial system begins to take for itself powers never clearly entrusted to it, it risks ceasing to be a judge and becoming a ruler. Instead of protecting the framework, it starts redrawing it. Instead of restraining excess, it begins to exceed its own bounds. Instead of serving as one balancing authority within the structure of government, it can start to see itself as the supreme interpreter, supreme guardian, and sometimes even supreme educator of society itself.

This is not merely a partisan complaint. It is a fundamental democratic concern. A secular liberal should be able to understand it. A conservative should understand it. A religious Jew should understand it. Whenever a body that was never elected by the people, and never granted unlimited mandate, gradually grows accustomed to enlarging its own jurisdiction, a basic question arises: is it still serving society, or has it begun to replace it?

The depth of the Jewish prayer lies precisely here. It does not ask only whether there are “good people” in the system. It asks whether the system itself is correctly ordered. Does the judge see himself as a servant of justice, or as the owner of the public order? Is the legal adviser truly an adviser, or an unofficial ruler without direct accountability? Is law meant to preserve the society, or to reshape it against the will of large parts of that society?

That is why Jews continue to pray this prayer even in a Jewish state. Because sovereignty alone is not the end of the story. A Jewish state is not defined only by its flag, army, or demographic majority. It is also judged by whether something of biblical and national justice has returned to it. Whether its legal system generates trust or alienation. Whether it unifies or deepens the feeling of dispossession. Whether it remains faithful to the people, or begins to imagine itself above them.

This must be emphasized carefully: such criticism is not necessarily a rejection of law. On the contrary, it may be a defense of law in its noblest sense. When citizens cry out against a system that has taken powers never granted to it, they are not always calling for chaos. Often, they are asking for limits. For balance. For the return of humility. They are asking that the court remain a court, rather than becoming a super-government, a super-legislature, or a moral authority answerable only to itself.

“Restore our judges as at first” is therefore a far deeper prayer than it first appears. It is a request to restore law to its proper station: elevated, but not absolute; respected, but not beyond criticism; authoritative, but not the sole sovereign; wise, but not detached; moral, but not arrogant.

It is also a request to restore our “counselors as at the beginning” — meaning public advisers who understand that their role is to advise, not dominate; to illuminate, not control; to help public institutions walk a straight path, not to quietly become the central locus of national power.

Perhaps that is why this ancient formula sounds almost prophetic in our time. It captures the truth that the real debate is not between being for law and against law, but between two different visions of law: law that recognizes its purpose and its limits, and law that struggles to distinguish responsibility from rule. Law that serves the constitutional order, and law that begins to imagine itself as the source of that order.

And that is why this prayer does not belong only to the religious. Any citizen who feels that public institutions have drifted away from the people, anyone concerned by the concentration of power, anyone who understands that public decency requires limits and not merely good intentions, can understand the force of this plea.

For in the end, a society is measured not only by its ability to exercise power, but by its ability to restrain it. Not only by its ability to judge, but by its ability to judge justly. Not only by the existence of institutions, but by their fidelity to their purpose.

And so even today, in a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, a Jew continues to pray:

Restore our judges as at first, and our counselors as at the beginning.

Not because we do not have a state, but because we still seek a state truly worthy of being called just.