Reflections from Rabbi Ellis

Mishpatim is the six Parsha in the second book of the Torah. Mishpatim is a break from everything we have come to know from the Torah. Until now the Torah has been made up exclusively of narrative, this week we pivot to the other half of the Torah - Halacha/Jewish law. This week’s Parsha is a list of the laws that G!d tells Moshe to relay to the Children of Israel before we receive the Torah. The list of Mitzvot in this week’s Parsha is neither comprehensive nor representative, it is a sample, a tasting menu, of the Torah. The list of Mitzvot in this week’s Parsha, which G!d explicitly tells Moshe to teach to the Children of Israel, are here to give us a preview of what Jewish life will look like. If the list of Mitzvot in our Parsha were meant just to let the Children of Israel know what they are getting themselves into, why are they preserved in the Torah for posterity? What are we supposed to learn from this incomplete list?

There are two lessons we learn from laws that G!d tells Moshe to teach to the Children of Israel in order that they will want to accept the Torah. The first is our inability to understand the laws written in the Torah based on the text alone. G!d gave us the written Torah at Sinai, the Oral Torah we had been passing down for hundreds of years starting with Avraham Avinu. G!d makes it clear that the written Torah does not come to cancel or change what we have already received from our ancestors. The Oral Torah was already a reflection of the written Torah. The written Torah fixes these laws and tradition at the core of who we are. The written Torah creates a system and order for the Oral Torah. We could not accept the written Torah until it was made clear to us that the Oral Torah is an essential part of it and without the Oral Torah the written Torah is indecipherable. 

The second lesson we learn from this list of laws is not in the specifics but rather in the generalities. The list of laws given in this week’s Parsha is so eclectic as to defy classification. Every time I think I know where it is going it changes direction. The purpose of the list in this week’s Parsha is to give us a glimpse of the life that G!d envisioned for the Children of Israel and that the Children of Israel envisioned for themselves. The Torah now shifts and after seventeen Parshiot of narrative we start learning the details of Jewish life, this week’s Parsha is our introduction. The whole is greater than the sum of its pieces, so too Jewish life is bigger than Jewish law. In this week’s Parsha we get to share the vision that convinced the Children of Israel to accept the Torah. In a few week’s G!d will tell Moshe that no one can see him and live. We can’t see G!d, but we can see his vision of a world redeemed because he reveals it to us in this week’s Parsha.

Shabbat Shalom!