Manifesting Holiness: Mishpatim.22

 Manifesting Holiness: D’var Torah for Parashat Mishpatim

Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

January 26, 2022

How do we see God?

This is one of the questions I hear most-often, especially from children. The answer, of course is that we can’t. God has no body, shape or form. At times we can perhaps sense God’s Presence. We can sense holiness. We see God’s Creation and are filled with a sense of awe. But we can’t see God. 

But just once, a Revelation of God did manifest itself to all humanity, or at least to the People of Israel. This was when God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, teaching him the Laws and inscribing them on the tablets of stone that Moses then brought down to the Israelites.

This most awesome moment is described in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (“Laws,” Exodus 21:1-24:18). God commands Moses to climb to the top of the holy mountain, accompanied by Joshua, Aaron and seventy select elders. Only Moses will be called to God’s Presence, but the others—including the entire People of Israel who remain at the foot of the mountain—will witness God’s glory: “And they saw the God of Israel; under His feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity” (Ex. 24:10).

In our sacred texts we read of many other occasions when God speaks to prophets, appearing in dreams, visions, or in a bat-kol—an echo of a heavenly voice. This one time, however, God’s Glory appears to the entire people. 

This vision remains indelibly etched in our collective souls, a one-time event that took place more than 3000 years ago yet left its impact for all eternity.

Yet in this portion, the description of God’s Revelation, for all its grandeur, is described in only a few short verses. The rest of the portion contains laws and commandments—53 to be precise—ranging from the treatment of slaves (considered an economic necessity in those days) to crimes of passion and violence; from agricultural restrictions (letting the land lie fallow every seventh year) to dietary laws (“You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”). Yet as much as these commandments deal with ethics and justice, they also require us to be compassionate and empathetic—particularly the stranger, the poor, the widow and the orphan. 

Mishpatim teaches a valuable moral: God’s Presence can be perceived through our own deeds. That one time at Mount Sinai, God’s Presence appeared to us all. It was, after all, the moment when Israel and God agree to abide by a sacred Covenant, and all parties, including God as it were, had to be present for the signing. But from that moment on, at such times when we long for a glimpse of God’s Glory, rather than search elsewhere we must look at ourselves and our own behavior. Mishpatim teaches us that God’s Presence becomes manifest through our conduct. Holiness is not restricted to the heavens above—it appears whenever we show kindness, when we treat others, animals as well as humans, with fairness, kindness and respect.

© 2022 by Boaz D. Heilman