These are the rules that you
should set before them. This is God, speaking to Moses, setting the rules. There
are different kinds of laws in Torah and Talmud:
- those which signify a special relationship with
God
- those that are not understood by us, the chukim
- those that exist in order for a group of people
to function as a society. These are
the mishpatim
Mishppatim
are the laws that make intuitive sense to us, these are laws that any sensible
community would pass. Don't murder or
steal. These are laws that settle disputes.
These are laws of civilization. These
are laws of peace.
And
this parsha is called Mishpatim, after the laws that makes sense to us. They come right after the Ten Commandments,
and are the first set of detailed laws that might follow logically from the
first ten. What if you get in a fight and in the course of it a women
miscarries? What do you do if your ox
gores a man, or if you dig a pit and someone comes by and falls in it? Is it okay to lie in court? Do you have to return lost goods? Logical laws of peace and civilization.
As
Rashi explains, the first set of laws God gives after the ten commandments are
these sensible laws because they are easy to follow. The laws that don't make sense are the laws
that will mark us off as Jews, these are the laws that make the covenant so
difficult and so special. But first we
have to be trained on how to follow the rules with, well, the loss leaders of
Jewish Law. Suck the people in with laws
that make sense and then we can lay kashrut on 'em. And thus, after hearing these rules, the
people say,
So-
These are the rules that you
should set before them.
All the things that
Adonai has commanded we will do!
I
am an American, a middle boomer, who grew up believing in democracy with a
small d, in a household with crazy and arbitrary parents, in a school system
run by martinets and a religion run by men who wouldn't answer my questions or
let me participate simply because I'm female, during a war that was stupid and
destructive. And my first impulse for
much of my life has been that when you set rules before me, I am going to argue
with you. As that great sage, Bruce
Springsteen wrote, when they said sit down I stood up.
Or
at least that's how I like to think of myself.
The truth is, I'm actually a law-abiding coward. When they say sit down, I sit down, fancying
myself an anti-authoritarian because I make a few wise ass comments as I park
my butt in the comfy seat.
Well
yes. But I also sit down because it
makes sense to sit down. There is a
right and wrong. I don't murder or
steal, I don't go the wrong way down a one way street. Partly because that's how I was taught and
partly because it makes sense. Societies
where people murder or steal at will are considered barbaric and broken. Economic systems that don't allow their
workers any rest are ripe for a well-deserved revolution. We all know this. We know what is fair. We are, perhaps, born knowing this.
Researchers
have found babies as young as six months old already make moral judgments, and
they think we may be born with a moral code hard-wired into our brains.
These are the rules that you should
set before them.
Do
we need religion and the threat that a supernatural being is going to ruin our
lives or send us to hell if we aren't good in order to do good? Don't you all, past a certain age, and
assuming you're not a psychopath, know what's good and what's bad?
Do
you need to be a good Jew to be good?
Do
we need God in order to be ethical, in order to lead a good life?
Jewish
tradition and teaching comes down on the side as firmly as it is possible to
come down on a side, of Yes. We must
have laws and these are God's laws. The
Torah and Talmud and Halakha are all about the rules of what to do and what not
to do. We humans live in community
and these are the laws of how to do that in peace.
how
beloved we were by our rabbis, that that they took such care to make sure we
lead safe and righteous lives.
how
poorly the Moses and the rabbis must have thought of us to need to control us
so completely with so many rules?
Societies
without the rule of law are chaotic or tyrannical. We need to agree on standards of behavior and
enforce them. But do we need moral laws? And whose morality do we enforce? God's? Is God the final arbiter, some grand outside
force? Who is this Torah God to be
setting rules for us? What does any of
this have to do with us, now.
It
feels like I'm being told to sit down. I
want to stand up.
At
the end of the parsha, Moses invites Aaron and the other tribal bigshots up to
the base of Sinai to have a close encounter with God, who has enveloped the
mountain with a cloud.
So Moses and his
attendant Joshua arose, and Moses ascended the mountain of God. 14 To the elders he had said, "Wait here for
us until we return to you. You have Aaron and Hur with you; let anyone who has
a legal matter approach them."
At
the most holy of moments, as Moses is about to be embraced by God for forty
days, to have the entire Torah downloaded into him, to be in intimate
relationship with God, Moses makes sure that the chain of command is clear in
case anyone has a legal dispute. We don't need God to remind us of how to run
things. God doesn't need to give us the
mishpatim. We know what we need.
But
we need God in the mishpatim, at least I think we do, however we might define God
at any given moment. I define it, for
the purposes of this drash, as the embodiment of our best selves, of the
impulse towards community and peace. The
mishpatim are our holy parameters, so that we don't forget that as mortal
humans our vision is limited, our compassion is sometimes lacking, and that our
self-control is not always functioning.
God
and God's law, whether real or our own created construct, extends our vision,
reminds us that being our best selves is practical, that choosing the ethical
and righteous options is sensible. The mishpatim are the creation of a
community that wants and needs to live together in a feeling of holiness and one-ness.
These are the rules that you
should set before them.
All the things that
Adonai has commanded we will do!
Rabbi
Arthur Green writes,
The statutes can only be placed "before"
us: it is we who have to choose to walk
in their ways. In our day it seems
harder than ever to find out how to walk in a way that will lead us all to
peace with one another. But the message
is one we need to take to heart: there
is no path to God's teachings, no way to open the divine wellsprings that lie
within us, except that of peace. (From his commentary on his translation of
Sefat Emet, Mishpatim)
Moses went inside the
cloud and ascended the mountain; and Moses remained on the mountain forty days
and forty nights.
Shabbat
Shalom
