Building Bridges to Heaven

Building Bridges to Heaven: D’var Torah for Parashat Mishpatim
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
February 17, 2012


Judging by the laws we find in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (“Ordinances”, Ex. 21:1—24:18), c. 1000 BCE was a pretty terrible time to live. Slavery, kidnappings, robbery, manslaughter and murder, child abuse, animal abuse, high-stake financing and other assorted and sordid misbehaviors.

It isn’t, however, that those were lawless times; there were laws, and when they weren’t circumvented (or when the judges couldn’t be bought), these laws were pretty tough: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Ex. 21:23-25). Tough indeed, yet from the number and varieties of crimes referenced in the parasha, one can be forgiven for wondering if such harsh punishment served to deter anyone from doing just about anything they wished to.

In fact, it didn’t. As Jewish law evolved, the famous litany of consequences quoted here served only as a starting point, not as a reference, for countless reforms. The human imagination is as perverse as it is wonderful, and as the process went forward, with each misdeed variation came its own recourse, addressing intent and cause along with intended—and unintended—consequences. With each refinement, Jewish law moved farther away from the legal foundation it found in earlier Mesopotamian law. See, for example, the laws concerning the “wayward and rebellious son” (Ex. 21:15, 17). In its first incarnation, such a boy can be killed by his father. However, by its next occurrence (Deut. 21:18-21), the case is expanded to include several examples of the boy’s misbehavior, each more outlandish than the one before. In the end, even if he is found guilty of all those offenses, it isn’t the father who kills his son (since what true father ever would do such a terrible thing?) but rather “all the men of the city.” At first reading, that punishment seems even more harsh; yet what is implied in the Deuteronomic development is the presence of a court system that is absent in Exodus, with the result that the father does not, may not, kill (or abuse) his own son.

Moreover, by Talmudic times, it is ruled that “such a case never happened and never will happen” (BT Sanhedrin 71a). Since the crime never happened, the Talmud teaches that the punishment was moot too—good only for the sake of learning to appreciate exactly how seriously the Torah regards the fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.”

Earlier Mesopotamian law codes found equity in the concept that whatever a person did to his fellow would be followed up by exactly the same deed. If you set your neighbor’s house on fire, your house was set on fire too. Thus, “an eye for an eye.” Mishpatim has another, a better, idea: Justice rather than revenge; the value of an eye for an injured eye. Instead of two half-blind men for the entire community to accommodate and take care of, why not have the injured party taken care of by the individual who caused the injury to begin with? What a concept! Individual responsibility!

This new, improved view of justice is applied throughout the parasha. Slaves released at the end of the sixth year must be provided for by their owner on exiting their servitude. Similarly, a woman taken with the intent of marriage but later found wanting cannot be sent away without provisions for the future. Yes, the very societal conditions these laws paint are terrible. Yet what the Torah imposes is a system of responsibility, of caretaking. The consequence the Torah ultimately looks for isn’t only satisfaction. Its higher call is for compassion and cooperation. These, Moses teaches us, are the true foundation stones of society. With them in place to begin with, there would be less recourse to violence and crime. Eliminating the conditions that are the breeding ground of crime makes all the laws and harsh consequences of Mishpatim moot.

Ex. 23:4-5 is a case in point. “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden, and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it.” How long will this person remain your enemy if you cooperate with him in the caretaking of his property and animals?

According to the Torah, the key to a utopian society isn’t in the number of laws it flaunts in its codes or in how severe they are. It’s in the respect and compassion we show one another as we work together toward common goals.

This portion reminds us of our humble origin as strangers in a strange land, slaves to a cruel and heartless master. Freedom isn’t the same as lawlessness and chaos; freedom means helping out and cooperation. There may be 53 laws in Mishpatim, this week’s Torah portion, but they are not to be seen as restrictions on our freedom. Rather, they are guidelines meant to lead us to a higher plane, to a place where we qualify to be “a holy people” unto God (Ex. 22:30).

Coming so soon after the giving of the Ten Commandments, Mishpatim is more than simple commands. Together, Yitro and Mishpatim describe a process that reflects a whole philosophy. It’s a whole new way of thinking about crime and punishment.
Almost incongruously, following these laws Mishpatim goes on to describe Moses, Aaron and 70 elders of the People of Israel attaining a vision of God. “And there was under God’s feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity” (Ex. 24:10). The vision takes our breath away.

Yet it seems so distant! The world at God’s feet is nothing like clear and brilliant sapphire. On the contrary, it is murky and even dark. It is filled with the rasp of war and violence, hate, envy and greed. The year 1000 BCE might as well be 2000 CE. Not much has changed.

Could the Torah guidelines be misleading?

Or is it more likely that we haven’t really tried them fully yet? That our justice system is still as crude as it was 3,000 years ago; that we still think of deterring the criminal by the severity of the laws we pass?

Mishpatim calls on us to ascend to the heights, to look up and see the model of justice and compassion that we need in order to establish a better system. True justice is a system, not merely a series of laws. Holiness, after all, isn’t a one-time condition reached through some act of ecstasy. It’s an ascent. It’s a process, a step-by-step climb that begins deep inside each one of us, inside our hearts, and reaches all the way to the very heart of heaven itself.


©2012 by Boaz D. Heilman