Sparks of Mishpatim

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Mishpatim

Judgements and the Number 13

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Last week we were standing at Har Sinai. This week we begin with the laws of slaves. And surprisingly, the Torah connects the two experiences.  As Rashi points out, the parsha begins, “And these are the mishpatim that you shall place before them.” The words ‘and these’ connects these mitzvot to the previous mitzvot. Just as those were given at Sinai, so were these.  What is the connection?

And while we are pondering that question, we can also wonder about the next Rashi, which describes a conversation the Midrash envisions between Hashem and Moshe.  In the conversation, Hashem warns Moshe, “Don’t think of just teaching the Jews the mitzvot as they are. You have to set the mitzvot before this nation the way a person sets a well-prepared table. The mitzvot have to be given together with their reasons.” Clearly, Moshe wasn’t exactly the lazy sort, who would leave out any part of the mitzvah. What is this warning all about?

We can get a bit more clarity by taking a deeper look at what the essence of a “mishpat” is. In general, we translate mishpatim as those laws which would have been compelled by logic if they hadn’t been mandated by the Torah. But Rav Shapiro explains that the word mishpatim, literally, means judgements. Mishpatim are laws that include an aspect of judgement, where there are two side that argue their case, like in a monetary dispute. Both sides must be taken seriously, and a judgement must be rendered. Where there is mishpat, judgment, there is first a moment when things are unclear. Clarity comes later, after the judgement is made.

Rav Shapiro explains that the introduction of Parshat Mishpatim is the introduction of a second pathway within the Torah. The first path was what we experienced at Har Sinai. It was a revelation of the true face of existence that was so powerful, so clear, that there was nothing that could stand before it. The experienced of Har Sinai is described as if Hashem held the mountain over us. We were coerced. In the face of truth and clarity it is impossible to take another path. When the Torah is given from a place of that much clarity, any reasons are superfluous; when Hashem Himself personally tells you to keep the Shabbat, it’s not necessary to spend time wondering why. Moshe lived with the clarity of Har Sinai, where reasons weren’t necessary. It was entirely reasonable for Moshe to want to teach us the law with no reasons attached.

However, Bnei Yisrael could not stay in the experience of Har Sinai forever. Parshat Mishpatim is an expression of anther reality, the reality where there is judgement. There is no longer just one clear path, but two competing sides, that we must choose between. Mishpatim opens up with the law of a Jewish slave in the sixth year, who must choose between his life as a slave, which he has grown to love, and the freedom which the Torah tells him is his due. In this mitzvah, we can see the first of the aseret hadibrot refracted through a different lens. Hashem told us at Har Sinai that He was our G-d who took us out of Egypt. At that moment we knew we were free, with perfect clarity. It’s a lot harder to feel the reality of our freedom after five years of slavery. Hashem may have taken us out of slavery in Egypt, but Mishpatim begins with a man who finds himself, again, a slave.

Parshat Mishpatim is the path we recognize. It involves all times when we find ourselves judging, when our circumstances aren’t as we would want them to be, or where the freedom of the Torah doesn’t feel that enticing. It is here that the comments of Rashi take on deep meaning. Both paths of Torah, says Rashi, were given at Har Sinai. It was all part of the original plan.

From the very beginning, Hashem commanded Moshe to teach the mitzvot with their reasons. This is not because we hope to understand the thoughts of Hashem and is also not so that we can argue with others. We are given reasons for the mitzvot so that we can be victorious in our own inner judgement, so that we can argue against our own inner fool.

We may have fallen into, or pushed ourselves, into circumstances that made us slaves. Even so, we have opportunities to free ourselves. The freedom of the sixth year is like the freedom of the shofar on Rosh Hashana. It reveals and actualizes whatever is asleep and dormant within us. We are free to refuse to listen to this shofar again and again. We can make the choice to remain slaves. But we are still always marching toward the Yovel, and when the shofar of Moshiach is blown, then all slaves are freed. We may not recognize how or why, but it is all part of the plan, marching toward Hashem’s goal.

Part of this path is the assurance from Hashem that we have a point within us that is able to make the right choice, even in our confusing world. This is because the world is built around a point of truth. This point is beautifully illustrated by Rav Shapiro through an exploration of the number 13, and the way that number is expressed in the three forms of our world: olam, zman and adam, which translate loosely into space, time and man.

13 is the number that brings together our world of expansion. To illustrate, in space a single point can expand in six basic directions. When it expands to make a form, there are 12 points at which those six directions touch each other (these are the six points of a cube). Additionally, there is another, middle point around which they all revolve. This is the 13th point, the point of unity within the expansion, the point of unity within the entire structure.   

In time we can see a similar phenomenon. From the first moment of creation, the world expanded into the six days of the week, and from there into the twelve months of the year. These are the twelve months of the sun, which march endlessly forward, apparently without meaning. However, the first command was, “This month is for you.” Hashem handed time over to us, and allowed us to participate in the march forward, and to give it meaning. The mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh is, unsurprisingly, called a judgement (Tehillim 81:5) and when we intercalculate the system of the moon into the system of the sun, we do it through a court. The 13th month we add, the extra month of Adar, serves to unify the two systems of time, the natural system and Hashem’s hidden plan.

This idea is also expressed in the realm of man. We express ourselves in our prayers. The original 12 brachot of the Amidah prayer are an expression of the basic needs of man as we expand in our world. The extra, 13th, bracha was added in later by Rabban Gamliel, together with his court.  It is the prayer against heretics. Rabban Gamliel considered our greatest human need: our need to connect to Hashem, and to introduce clarity and purpose into our world. This is the need that unifies all our other needs in the world.  

The 13th bracha was added into the Amidah immediately after the blessing, “Blessed are You, G-d, the King Who loves righteousness and judgment.” And the extra month of Adar is added into our year this week, immediately after we read the parsha of Mishpatim. That is us, this week. We no longer stand at Har Sinai, and  most of us are slaves, to one thing or another. We may even identify strongly with the slave this week, who chooses to stay right where he is. The message of the parsha is, we can reach in, with our emotions and our intellect, and we can choose to find our own freedom by connecting to that point of truth within ourselves. And even if we don’t, we are still on a path toward eventual freedom.

**This week’s post is dedicated to my wonderful Father, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, and my wonderful son, on the occasion of his 25th birthday. Enjoy your shared celebration. Wish I could be with you!!

Sparks of Beshalach

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Beshalach

Horse and Rider into the Sea

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For me, the first question of this week’s parsha is, “Why?!” We just finished the full cycle of the plagues. Last week’s parsha ends with Pharoah a broken man, leader of a decimated nation, begging the Jews to leave his country in the middle of the night. Now, just a few short days later, Pharoah decides it’s an excellent idea to go chase the Jews into the desert. He leads his people directly into the sea to be drowned. It’s an astounding testament to the resilience and the stubbornness of the human mind, but at the same time is absolutely mind-boggling. It leaves us asking, “Why?!”

Ramban remarks that of all the miracles, the greatest wonder was that Hashem hardened Pharoah’s heart to follow the Jewish nation into the desert and then straight into the sea (Shemot 14:4). As we know from the makot (see Ramban Shemot 7:3), hardening Pharoah’s heart meant giving Pharoah the strength to follow what he really wanted to do, despite the clear evidence of disastrous consequences. Here too, Hashem made room for the Egyptians to see what they wanted to see.

The Jews camped in the desert opposite the one Egyptian god that was not completely destroyed, the god Ba’al Tzefon (Rashi, Shemot 14:2). This was enough to convince the Egyptians that their real mistake, all along, was that they were not praying hard enough to the right avodah zarah. They were convinced that this time, with Ba’al Tzefon on their side, they would be victorious. And so they trapped the Jews between their army and the sea, and when a strong wind blew the waters of the sea to the side, they were convinced that the waters were splitting for them. They rode into the sea on their horses, into what they were sure was victory.

And Hashem made a mockery of them. The image of Hashem exalting over the Egyptians as they rode confidently into the sea is the essence of the song, the nevuah, that we sang at the sea. Az Yashir begins and ends with the image of the horse and rider being engulfed by the sea. This image is the only line we have of the song Miriam sang with the women. It is clearly the central image of the miracle at the sea, and key to understanding what this miracle was all about. We can understand this image in three levels of increasing depth.

The first level is the recognition that although we were freed from Egypt on the night of the slaying of the first-borne, we did not feel completely free. We were runaway slaves and Pharoah remained in power in Egypt. As was clearly evidenced, he remained a threat. The horse and rider together is an image of Egypt in its peak.  It was only after we saw the Egyptians destroyed in the sea that we could felt fully free of him and his influence. It was only then that we could finally burst out into song of thanksgiving.

The image of the horse and rider drowned in the sea also conveys a deeper message about the destruction of evil. Both at the time of the redemption from Egypt, and also in the final redemption, evil is not destroyed. Evil self-destructs. At its core, it has no substance, and so the entire system leads only to destruction. The Egyptians, of their own volition, rode their horses into the sea and were destroyed.  

Another, deeper, level of the revelation at the sea relates to the type of revelation that occurred there. As we discussed last week, the revelation in Mitzrayim was a revelation of the truth of Ma’aseh Bereisheit. The revelation at the sea was a revelation of a different system. The Mechilta (Parshat HsShirah 3) says that each maidservant by the sea saw more than Yechezkel ben Buzi saw. What Yechezkel saw was a vision of the Ma’aseh Mercavah, the Divine Chariot. The experience at the sea was also a revelation of Ma’aseh Mercavah.

Sparks of Bo

Posted on by Rebecca


Sparks of Parshat Bo

The Deepest Cry

This is the second week in a row in which we find ourselves immersed in the process of the makot, a process which Chazal say took a year to complete. If we are looking at the makot as a system of punishment, it’s a little hard to understand why all this time and space is devoted to them. The makot, however, have little to do with our Western concept of punishment. In the Torah, there is a concept of tochacha, rebuke, whose purpose is never punishment, but only clarification of reality, for the purpose of growth. This is what the makot were. The makot clarified the true nature of our world and ourselves.

This is what we mean when we say that the 10 makot parallel the 10 ma’amarot with which the world was created. There existed a time in history when it was possible to understand properly what Hashem was revealing to us when He created the world through ten utterances. By the time we were slaves in Mitzrayim, that was no longer the case. The result of all the sins of humanity was that the ten expressions that Hashem used to create the world were distorted. Their message could not be heard properly in the world. The first plague, therefore, begins where the last ma’amar ends, and reveals its message. Each makah peels away another layer of distortion, one by one, until the true message of the ma’amarot could be heard, and the true nature of our world was revealed.

As each facet of truth was revealed, it impacted reality, and that impact was felt according to who was receiving it.  The Zohar (2:36a) says that the makot were, at one and the same time, a plague for the Egyptians and a healing for the Jews.  (This is also the essential nature of gehenom in the world to come, see Nedarim 8b) For the Egyptians, the makot were the revelation, one facet after another, that everything they had built their society on was false. Each makah was another blow at the essence of their national culture and identity. Facing the truth was a painful experience. On the other hand, for the Jews, for us, living through the makot meant going through the process of rediscovering our true selves, and the true nature of our world. It was the joy of rediscovering our relationship with Hashem.

The last of the makot, the end of the process, was the death of the firstborn of Egypt. It was the death of Pharoah’s perception of the world as if Egypt were the firstborn, and he was a god. On the night of the final makah in Egypt, Hashem’s Presence was revealed. Even more, Hashem’s relationship to his true firstborn, our nation, was inescapably revealed. On the first night of Pesach we came face to face with the glorious reality that we are Hashem’s beloved firstborn, and that we fulfill the purpose of creation through our relationship with Him (see Rashi, Bereisheit 1:1).

This moment of revelation was marked by something unique to this makah. Moshe tells Pharoah that on the night of makat bechorot, “There will be a great outcry in the land of Egypt, such has never been heard before.” (Shemot 11:6). And this is indeed what happened (Shemot 12:30). A cry is a sound that expresses what can not be put into words. The cry of makat bechorot relates to the ma’amar of Bereisheit, a ma’amar that is substantively different from the rest of the ma’amarot. It does not use the language of speech. Instead, it expresses the emergence of the essence of creation before it could be grasped or put into words.  It is undefined, but it is what enables everything that is expressed after it.

Within ourselves, the ma’amar of Bereisheit relates to the feeling of self that we can’t express in words, the feeling of self we express with a cry. A cry is the sound we make that comes from a deeper part of ourselves than speech, it comes from our heart, or from our essence, from the part of ourselves which is too deep to be formed into words. Each of us has the ability to cry. Every newborn cries. We emerge into the world with a cry. Our cry is the root of our ability to speak, to bring out our essence and express it.

In Egypt, at chatzot, on the night of the redemption, there was a great cry that was heard throughout the land. But it was a different cry for the Egyptians and for the Jews. For the Egyptians, the entire conception of the world had been ripped out from under them. They were speechless. There was nothing left to say. Their cry was the cry of the utter self-destruction. It was the cry of despair that comes with the recognition that at their very essence, there was nothing. Everything they believed was built on a lie.

We cried a completely different cry.  It was the cry of prayer. For a Jew, the deepest part of ourselves is expressed in prayer. This is the essence of who we are.  When a Jew comes face to face with reality, when we recognize that the deepest part of ourselves is connected to our creator, we pray. The Zohar tells us that crying is the greatest form of prayer, and that whenever we cry out, Hashem promises to listen. This was, in fact, how the redemption began. Hashem heard our moaning, and our cries (Shemot 2:23).  And it is how the redemption ends. In the words of the Midrash (Shemot Rabbah 18), while Pharoah was desperately screaming, trying to force us out of Egpyt, trying to save his life from the angry Egyptians, we were busy saying Hallel.  

The halacha is that in our tefillot, we join redemption (as expressed in the brachot of Shema) to prayer (the Amidah). It is a halacha that reflects a deeper truth. The prayer itself is the redemption. On the night of makat bechorot we were redeemed through experiencing the depth of who we are. The result was that we gained the ability to truly pray. We have the opportunity to relive this redemption every morning and evening.

As Ramban explains in his introduction to Shemot, the purpose of the redemption was to bring the entire nation of Israel to the level of the Avot. And the level of the Avot was prayer. As we have mentioned earlier, they were the ones who established prayer for us, and gave it over to us as an inheritance. To return to their level means to step into the place they left for us, the place of prayer. To experience redemption is to pray.  

At the moment, we are still living in exile. And when we are in exile, our speech is in exile with us. We speak, but we often don’t know what to say. What do we ask for? What do we want? But the cry of connection and yearning for Hashem that comes from deep inside is real and unfalsifiable. We may not know what to say, we may not connect to all the words of davening, but if we can make space in our world and in our prayers for that one groan or cry that comes from deep within, we can begin to move ourselves, and the whole world with us, into a place of redemption.