Daniel Schiff

honoring the great are, in actuality, not micro statements about sitting and standing in court, but are in fact macro requirements about the manner in which society should handle fairly the reality of economic disparities. The poor should not be afforded inequitable opportunities or exemptions simply because they are poor,'” and the wealthy should not be honored simply because they are wealthy. As has been discerned, when the wealthy give of their material blessings in the same proportion as do others, the dollar impact can be remarkable, but they have done nothing out of the ordinary that is deserving of special honor. If we honor the affluent, we are“beautifying” their contributions simply because they are wealthy, and this is precisely the action that Leviticus 19:15, in its fullest sense, prohibits.

There has been much discussion among scholars of Jewish law and ethics about the nature of the textual principle /ifnim mishural hadin, the notion that it is worthy to act“beyond the letter of the law.” This principle, to be found in a number of places in rabbinic literature,” suggests that there are times when going further than the law specifies is regarded as deserving of praise. Professor Louis Newman offers a fine description of this concept in his perceptive essay on the subject:

It would appear that the concept of lifnim mishurat hadin parallels most closely notions of waiver in Anglo-American jurisprudence. While the concept of waiver arises in a wide range of legal contexts, the fundamental element is a“voluntary relinquishment or renunciation of some right, 2 forgoing or giving up of some benefit or advantage, which, but for such waiver, a party would have enjoyed. Specifically, the term denotes waiving a legal right to act, or to refrain from acting, in some specified mannef Whether we are concerned with an elder who has a right to refrain fro® unloading animals(but does so anyway), or a man who has the right to kecp the property that has been sold to him(but returns it to the seller), the term lifnim mishurat hadin designates a willingness to waive voluntarily some benefit or right to which one is entitled by law. In each case it is implied that the party who waives the right in question does so out of a concern for the other party, who would be harmed or disadvantaged if the right were exercised. In this sense, lifnim mishurat hadin has a moral dimension that distinguishes it from other sorts of waivers that could be exercised for any of