das Urteil (judgement)

Friends, this post is not about what I did this week. Instead, I would like to tell you a story. For those of you who have known me since I became a Bat Mitzvah, I apologize, for I have already shared this with you in my d'var Torah. Indeed, it is a story that I have heard since I was very young and it was told to me by my favorite storyteller, Joel Ben Izzy. And, yes, I do have a favorite storyteller!

I've been thinking a lot about the beggar woman, the Baker and King Solomon recently, especially in the context of what it means to have a punishment that fits the crime. Two weeks ago, I visited the site of the Wannsee conference where about two dozen Nazi officers sat down to a beautifully catered lunch and unanimously supported the beginning of the Final Solution. Last week, I was in Sarajevo where the wounds of war are so fresh that the sense of injustice is palpable everywhere. What I have noticed, though, and what is most unsettling to me is this: while most of the major players of the Holocaust and the Bosnian War are so well known, they are but a miniscule fraction of the perpetrators of such horrors. It is relatively easy to judge an Adolf Eichmann or a Slobodan Milosevic, but what about all of those people who watched their neighbors being "relocated" and turned a blind eye so their children could live. Were they not also perpetrators? How do/should/can we judge them? I guess I've been thinking about this story because I wish that fairness were this logical and that justice were this simple...

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In the old days of Jerusalem, there was a bakery. This bakery baked the freshest, best-smelling bread you could find. The smell would come out of the bakery, through the marketplace and the streets of the Old City -- and people would line up to by that bread, or sometimes, just to smell it.

And so it happened that there was a poor, old woman, a beggar, asking for coins. She suddenly found herself standing in line in front of that bakery, not to buy the bread, but just to smell it. As she was smelling the bread, the baker came out and shouted, "You! What are you doing?" "I am smelling the bread in your bakery," she said, "it smells delicious." "I know it does," said the Baker, "I bake it! But, if you are going to stand here, you must pay me for smelling my bread." The women protested, "Wait, that's not fair. I was simply smelling your bread, not eating it." And the Baker replied, "I know, but you must pay me for smelling my bread."

In those days, and even today when a difference of opinion occurs, people gather around and start to argue, and a huge fight breaks out, really. All the merchants and customers came and said what they wanted to say, and someone finally said, "Baker, if you have such a good case, take it before King Solomon. He will judge it fairly."And that's what the baker did.

He dragged the woman behind him into the court of King Solomon and said, "Your Highness, this woman has been smelling the bread in my bakery and I insist that she pay for it." The court laughed at this ridiculous claim, but at that point, King Solomon turned to the woman and asked, "Is it true? Have you indeed been smelling the bread from this man's bakery?" She replied, "Yes, I smelled it, but I didn't eat it, must I pay for just smelling it?" "By the law of our land, you must pay," the King told her and the court grew quiet. "How much money do you have?" asked King Solomon. "I am a beggar, I have only these few coins. Here, count them. Must I give them to him?" King Solomon counted the coins, and they clinked as they fell back into the metal cup where they had been kept. "It's half a shekel," the woman said, "it is all that I have."

And now, King Solomon turned to the Baker and said, "You have been paid." "What do you mean?" the Baker exclaimed, "What do you mean, 'I have been paid"? She has to give me the money! Didn't you hear the coins?" The wise King Solomon replied, "The sound of those coins is payment for the smell of your bread."