Mishpatim – What do our laws teach us

Picture the scene: You are listening to a series of inspirational shiurim, the stuff that tugs your heart strings and makes you wipe a stray tear from your eye. The Rabbi’s discussing what it means to be a Jew, how to relate to God, and what the Torah means to each one of us. Then, you come in one morning and the Rabbi says “I would like to continue this week by discussing the intricacies of the differences between a Jewish and non-Jewish slave, as well as how one can sell his daughter as a maidservant. We will then discuss the extremely interesting halachic contrasts of the borrower, renter, paid watchman, and watchman for free” with a smile on his face [scratching vinyl-record sound]. As you join the crowd piling out of the room for fear of being too enthralled with all these interesting topics, it strikes you that this very strange example is exactly what this week’s פרשה is. We hear about the מכות, קרבן פסח, קריעת ים סוף, the מן, עמלק, מתן תורה, literally the foundations and cornerstones of our national existence. Enter פרשת משפטים, detailed case after case of such mundane things, slavery, borrowing, damages. And it isn’t like the inspirational stuff ends here. As soon as we wrap up פרשת משפטים, we jump back into the sin of the עגל, followed by the largest scaled forgiveness in history, the Mishkan and the בגדי כהונה. Why does Hashem do this? Why do we take a boring break in middle of all the action?

The answer lies in who the audience of this saga was. This was a people who only knew slavery. The wounds on their backs from the Egyptian whips were fresh, and watching their babies helplessly tossed into a raging river was still on the fore of their minds. The God they knew was an extremely powerful, primarily destructive God that only had a close relationship with one man for most of the time they had been exposed to Him. They had already seen what powerful masters could do, so they needed a reassurance that Hashem was not that kind of master. They needed to know that this new type of slavery was not the kind that suppressed them into meaningless servitude. Rather they were now slaves to the Master of the universe, and that slavery is the kind that restricts the mind from exploring the limitless options that are available in the world so that your true self can emerge and blast its true potential out of its shell.

Till now, every experience with God was inspirational and out of this world. קריעת ים סוף, מתן תורה, they saw God in His Essence, but what happens when that inspiration disappears? Since they always do disappear. Inspirations are like lighting bolts, they illuminate the sky and while they are there, everything is clear, but shortly after they disappear and it’s just you and the dark night sky again. How would these people take those experiences of Hashem and bring them down into their lives? That is where פרשת משפטים comes in. Bookended by the inspirational stuff is a lesson on how to translate inspiration into every day life. When you get into a fender bender, realizing that God is interested in your life then too, and governs how we should act and react in those situations is how you take the Godliness of מתן תורה and translate it into your average Wednesday. Business transactions, fights, property damages, interest lending and borrowing, God exists on הר סיני, but also in every one of those areas as well. This God of theirs is there not only at the high moments, but every day as well.

An additional point that is made by פרשת משפטים is that God is there for the underdog. Their new laws would naturally prevent violent national slavery from occurring ever again. There are strict rules about how you need to treat your slave, when someone’s business is going under you have an obligation to help them, the poor must be able to borrow money and feel comfortable about it. To the people that had been at the bottom, here was their God, amidst all the initiation and inspiration, telling them that even the underdogs would be treated equally fair.

Another slightly unrelated aspect of פרשת משפטים is regarding rights vs. obligations. There is an inverse relationship between my right and your obligation. My right to live puts an obligation on you not to murder me. My right to my property puts an obligation on you not to steal/damage my property. My right to a peaceful living is your obligation not to disturb that peace, and so on with every aspect of life. Most western societies look at this system from the “rights” point of view. They have a Bill of Rights, or a Convention of Human Rights. Each member of society is therefore looking out for themselves in the world, they need to defend their rights. The Torah at its core, when discusses those rights, chose to present them in the form of obligations, never once is a right to collect money, or a right to put someone else to death mentioned, it is all obligation to pay or obligation to be put to death, etc. The outcomes of these two systems if they are operated correctly are exactly the same, both have the potential to produce a peaceful society. But the Jewish body of law forces us to see the world from the other’s point of view, what is my obligation to my fellow man, to my community, to the world.

This nation of slaves was not only taking on a relationship with a new kind of Master, where they would have a vertical relationship with a God that would take care of all of them. They now also had horizontal obligations to each other, which further ensured that they would all be protected.