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Parshat Mishpatim

Their judges are not our judges. There is an amazing insight. When you contemplate the laws of the world, basically the western world aspires to the Ten Commandments of last week’s parshah. On many courthouses in America, they actually pride themselves on having the Ten Commandments in front of their courthouses. When the presidents are usually sworn into office, they swear on the bible with the Old Testament in it. This is a curiosity and an amazing irony. Let us look at this week’s parshah to see why. It starts off, “These are the laws that you should place before them,” before Am Yisrael. Then it goes into civil law and damages. To Hashem there is no world of religion in the secular sense. Most people look at religion as a matter of ritual and spirituality of a mystical nature. The laws of man differentiate between religion and state. The Torah knows no such distinction. There is no division between religion and state. To the contrary, all areas of life are intimately interwoven, and holiness derives from Halacha correct business dealings no less than the ultimate levels of spirituality. The laws concerning the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kipur in the holy of holies is not less of an act of holiness than someone giving the correct change to a person who cannot count money. The sages teach that one who wishes to be pious should be meticulous in matters of civil law. In Judaism the treatment of the concepts of temple and court is the same as synagogue.

In the Beit Hamikdash the Beit Din of 71, the Beit Din Hagadol, which was the supreme authority on all matters of life and death, had to be on the temple mount, very close to the temple itself. Both the Beit Hamikdash and the Beit Dine are expressions of the service of Hashem. A judge who rules correctly is considered no less than a partner in perpetuating and creating Hashem’s world. Therefore one who judges with corruption and bribery is a destroyer of Hashem’s world. In Sodom and Amorah there were courts of law. There is a famous story about Eliezer when he went there to try to redeem Lot and communicate with him. He was attacked and beaten by a Mafioso and he was dragged into court. In total bewilderment, the judge sat before him in judgment and found him guilty. What was he guilty of? The person who had attacked him said that he was a doctor and that he could see that Eliezer, the servant of Avraham Avinu, was suffering from hypertension. Therefore, he saw it as an urgent matter to draw blood from the nose of Eliezer by beating him in the face until the blood poured out. His fee was astronomical. Therefore Eliezer could not leave Sodom until he had paid back this Mafioso. Eliezer was trapped. The guards had restrained him and the judge had just passed judgment. “Guilty! You will not leave Sodom and Amorah. You are a prisoner of Sodom and Amorah until you pay back your handsome ransom to that hooligan who claims to have saved your life.” With that, Eliezer went up to the judge and said, “Your honor, I just have to communicate with you confidentially.” So the judge thought this was quite amusing. Nobody had ever done that before. As the guards let him go to the judge, all of a sudden he pulled a massive right-hook into the judge’s face. The judge was knocked off his seat and onto the floor, blood pouring from his nose. The judge was now going to sentence put him to death. Attacking a supreme judge of the land is nothing less than treasonous. Eliezer said in response, “your honor, I too am an expert doctor. I could see during the case that your blood pressure was reaching critical proportions. I had to draw your blood to save your life. My fee is the same as his fee. You owe me. I owe you. You pay him!” With that, Eliezer walked out of the courthouse—one of the wicked courts that eventually got the sulfur treatment. The sulfur bogs of Sodom and Amorah are the sulfur bogs of the Dead Sea today, 4000 years later. Even the floods of the generation of Noach that lasted 100 days, after a year the floods receded. From all the debauchery, decadence, wickedness, and destruction of Hashem’s world, He turned it into a mikvah and after a year turned it back into living land. With the wickedness of the courts that were making a total mockery and desecration of Hashem’s seven universal laws to proportions that have never been done before, until this day, 4000 years later, not a bird and not a bee, not a flower and not a tree, not a fish in the sea, because it is really the dead sea. There are no signs of life in that valley of hell. Eventually, after Mashiach will come, that valley will return to its previous glory. It will then be like the Garden of Eden. All the fruits of the trees and the leaves of the trees will provide healing for every kind of ailment in the world. People will go there for cure. Until then, it is literally dead.

A judge who rules correctly is considered like a partner in the perpetuation of Hashem’s creation. He is a solid foundation, and a loyal servant of Hashem. One who rules corruptly is a destroyer of Hashem’s entire world. Therefore, immediately after carrying us through the splitting of the sea and the giving of the Torah, immediately after receiving the Ten Commandments, we received mishpatim, which are all the laws of business and honest dealings. In much more detail, tractates of Gemara Bava Kama, Bava Metziah, and Bava Basra—the three gates—are all dealing with the fine print. Of exactly what happens for different cases. They are not in the least mundane. These are all expressions of Hashem’s greatness. As the first commandment proclaims, “I am Hashem.” Everything you are involved with concerning the civil and the physical is no less than Avodat Hashem. A person is commanded to enjoy this world. But a person is also commanded to serve Hashem honestly.

The Ramban comments that the civil law is an extension of the tenth commandment which forbids coveting. Is there any court in the history of the world which says to a man, “You are guilty of the tenth commandment?” How can the courts in this world judge a man on his thoughts? No court can judge such things but the heavenly court. This is absolute evidence that the Ten Commandments are not man made. Any tampering with those commandments is a disintegration of man, and is totally forbidden.  When we see the Ten Commandments on non-Jewish institutions, we can know for a certainty that that is absolutely forbidden. Why? The Ten Commandments do not apply to the rest of the world. The gentiles are not commanded to keep Shabbat. One who keeps the Shabbat without having been commanded is liable for the death penalty; firstly, because he was not there to testify in an unbroken chain from Mount Sinai. By keeping the Shabbat we testify to the world that there is a G-d and we have to be the light unto the nations. By our conducting ourselves in an ethical and honest way by giving right change to everybody that we deal with we are honoring the name of Hashem. If a person doesn’t walk with Hashem, all the temptations of the world are there for him, everything from money, to the flesh pots of America.

So we see an incredible insight.  The sages show that the Torah embraces all areas of life and that holiness is indivisible. The separation of religion and state does not apply. Indeed, justice in monetary matters is an absolute prerequisite to Am Yisrael’s national security. As the prophet Isaiah said after warning of impending catastrophes and exiles, “Zion will be redeemed through justice and its captives through righteousness.” ‘Captives’ refer to those who are in exile.

“That you shall place before them:” Moshe was commanded to teach not only the laws but also the underlying reasons so that people would understand them fully and be able to apply them. The laws must be placed “before them,” Am Yisrael and not before the other nations of the world. The other nations have their seven universal laws. The difference is that the penalty for violating the seven laws is no less than death. So we see that the law that is given to Am Yisrael is placed before Am Yisrael in its fullness, like a table that is set and ready for the meal. It is ready for Am Yisrael to perform in the world of the physical. Disputes must therefore be brought before them, before the Jewish judges who will rule according to the laws of Torah. For the Jews to bring their cases before any other court, even if the laws are exactly the same in that particular instance, is tantamount to a public declaration that the system of another way of justice is superior to that of Torah. That is not less than a total desecration of Hashem’s name.

The Jews must have the attitude that all of one’s work must be considered done before the Shabbos arrives. Even if he has a work-desk that is piled to the heavens with work, the Master of the universe frees him on the seventh day and on the seventh year without charging him for his freedom. Even though a purchase of land represents a major investment, the purchase is valid for six years only. Just as Hashem frees us, so to we must act accordingly. If a Jew has the choice of buying a Jewish slave or a gentile slave, he should purchase the Jewish slave to redeem him, even though it would be more economical to buy a gentile slave who can never be let free. The Ohr Hachaim writes that if a fellow Jew is in such financial distress that he must sell his services to his brethren; his brethren are morally and ethically obliged to redeem him.

There are two ways that a Jew can become a bondsman. The first way is if he sells himself to escape extreme poverty or bankruptcy. The second way is if he is a thief who is caught and convicted. In order to raise the funds to pay for his theft and damages, he is sold so that the victims can get the money.

“If you buy a Jewish bondsman he shall work for six years. In the seventh year he shall be set free. If he arrives by himself” that is a person who is poverty stricken and is looking for work, “he shall leave by himself. If he is the husband of a woman, his wife shall leave with him. If his master will give him a woman and she will bear him sons and daughters,”the wife and the children belong to the master, “he shall go out by himself. But if the bondsman says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I do not want to go free.’ Then his master shall bring him to the court and shall bring him to the door and the doorpost. His master shall pierce a nail through his ear and he shall serve him forever.”

The court itself is called Elohim, a word that also can mean Hashem, because, as Ibn Ezra writes, a court carries out the work of Hashem on earth, and because Hashem’s presence and influence rests on the judges. It says in the Gemara that when a judge judges he should feel no less than the sword of the angel of death on his throat. If he makes a false judgment, he could lose his life.  

The Torah treats with disdain the bondsman, the slave who spurns his freedom and chooses to debase himself by remaining slavery of his master and living with his slave companion and children to the end. The ceremony that extends his slavery emphasizes his ear to the door. The sages explain this in the following light. Hashem said to the children of Israel, “You are My servants.” (Leviticus 25:55) “The bondsman has so degraded himself that he has chosen to be a slave of a slave.” (Kiddushin: 22:2) Secondly, our passage refers to a thief who is sold by the courts. The doorway symbolizes freedom. It was against the doorpost that the Jewish people placed blood of the gods of Egypt. We were redeemed from Egypt because we believed in Hashem by slaying their false gods. The Pesach offering is an act of redemption. This caused the angel of death to pass over the Jewish homes. Against this background the sages expounded, the ear that heard on Mount Sinai the commandment not to steal, and after having stolen and having been sold into slavery as a rectification he threw away the opportunity to be redeemed after six years, that ear should be drilled with a nail. A Jew who prefers to be a slave of a slave rather than to owe his allegiance and to serve entirely Hakadosh Baruch Hu, has rejected multiple times the lesson of the doorpost. Therefore, nailing his ear to the doorpost is an appropriate act of sealing his treaty against his redemption.  

Following this, we have many specific laws of death, damages, and how to repair. The parshah discusses the penalty for bodily injury, death caused by animals, or by accident, damage to property, theft of livestock, and self defense among other topics. “If a person permits livestock to devour a field or a vineyard, from the best of his vineyard he will pay.” It then goes on to describe a thief that bores a hole. If a thief tunnels under a home, and he is struck and he perishes, there is no blood-guilt on this act. If the sun shines upon him, there is blood-guilt on his account and there shall be restitution. I heard a story once of a person living in his home who woke up to the sound of glass breaking on the ground floor. He went down with his pistol to see what was happening. In the pitch dark he saw that there was a burglar looting his home. He waited for a few moments, and when the burglar had finished filling his bag, he went behind the burglar and told him to put his hands up. The burglar started laughing and he put his hands up. Then he went to the telephone to phone the police. While he was phoning the police, the burglar said to him, “what do you think your doing?” He said, “I’m phoning the police obviously because you broke in. What you did is criminal and you will have to pay for it.” So the burglar started shrieking with laughter even more than ever before and he said, “Don’t waste your time.” So the owner of the house said to him, “Why not?” He said, “Because even if I go to jail, the moment I get out of jail I promise you that I will come back here and murder your family. So just put the phone down.” With that the owner put the phone down. He went up to the burglar, shot him through the head with a few bullets and instead of phoning the police he phoned the ambulance. He said that somebody broke in, he shot him, and he doesn’t know if he is alive or dead. The ambulance came, sure enough, to find a corpse, and that was that. By Jewish law he is in the clear. We are obligated to kill a pursuer day or night. This burglar promised to kill his family.
    
We see that those nations who have pledged to annihilate Israel and those nations who have pledged allegiance to the dollar and agreed to continue talking while the other nations develop nuclear weapons, they become a partner in the crime of world history for which we see the prophesies of Gog and Magog coming into focus. The Pirkei Avos states that those laws that are not executed through the earthly courts the heavenly courts execute through war. “War comes to the world through delaying of the execution of the law, or corrupting the execution of the law.“ The world knows roughly how many Jews perished in the holocaust. Very few people have bothered themselves to calculate how many gentiles perished in the holocaust. That number, according to some calculations, is about sixty million. Many parts of Europe were laid waste.

When we explore further, we see an incredible prayer that we say in the Shmonah Esrai. That prayer, in a sense, explains something that isn’t always clear to us. “Restore our judges as in the earliest times.” When Elijah heralds Mashiach’s coming, he will first establish the Beit Din, and then the redemption will begin. We pray that Hashem will help all Jews and Jewish judges to rule and to judge wisely and justly. The prophets who gave wise advice in both spiritual and material matters will be a source of redemption for the nation.

“There shall be no woman who loses her young or infertile in the land. I shall fill the number of your days. I shall send my fear before you and I shall confound the entire people amongst whom you shall come. I shall make your enemies turn their back to you. I shall send hornet swarms before you. It will drive away the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you. I shall not drive them away in a single year, lest the land become desolate and the wildlife of the field multiply against you. Little by little shall I drive them away from you, until you become fruitful and make the land your heritage. The border will be set from the sea of reeds until the sea of the Plishtim, from the wilderness until the river. I shall deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands and you shall drive them away from before you. You shall not seal a covenant with them or their gods. They shall not dwell in your land. Lest they cause you to sin to me that you will worship their gods for it will be a trap to you.” It says in the commentary the Ramban, “Israel was forbidden to commit a treaty with the Canaanites to inhabit the land that will permit them to retain their idolatry. It is forbidden to have them as inhabitants of the land as long as they continue to worship idols.” From the beginning of the books of Prophets until the destruction of the temple there are repeated instances of Israel succumbing to the temptations of idol worship, with the resulting disasters. This more than any other rationalization shows the power of ancient idolatry over people’s minds and why it was necessary for Hashem and Moshe to warn repeatedly against falling into such a trap.

It seems a tremendous irony today how the rest of the world are so concerned with peace treaties that are anything but that. They are treaties against Hashem and His Torah. We are seeing how ironic it is that even at this juncture in world history, how many people are spending their supreme efforts in supporting the enemies of Israel? Those people, who are not only against the physical nation of Israel but are spiritually against the Torah of Israel, have no problem in desecrating and burning shuls and murdering righteous people. There is no question about it that we see a clue at the end of the prayer for the return of justice. “Blessed are you Hashem, king who loves righteousness and justice.” It says righteousness and justice. Why doesn’t it say justice and righteousness? The prophesy of Isaiah tells us that Zion will be redeemed through justice and Jerusalem through righteousness. We see that a person who loves to give tzedakkah—charity which is tzedek, the right thing to do—through that charity and honest behavior a person redeems. For a person who hates to redeem and to tithe his money, for that person who hates righteousness, Hashem loves justice.

When we voyage further into the parshah, we see a most curious thing towards the end of the parshah. This is after Am Yisrael said, “We will do and we will obey.” Everything that we know we will receive and everything that we do not know we will continue to obey. Everything that Hashem has said we will do and we will obey. “Moshe took the blood and threw it on the people. ‘Behold the blood of this covenant. Hashem has sealed with you a covenant of all these matters.’ Moshe and Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel ascended. They saw Hashem. Under His feet was the likeness of sapphire brickwork. It was like the essence of the heavens in purity.“ Rashi and Tanchumah interpret it as Nadav, Avihu, and the elders having sinned because they gazed at the vision while indulging in food and drink. For that they deserved to perish. But Hashem did not stretch out His hand to harm them, in order not to take away from the joy of Matan Torah. Therefore the punishment of Nadav, Avihu, and the elders was delayed until later. The Baal Haturim comment that Hashem purposely did not send Eliezer and Itamar with the other two so that they would not incur the death penalty like the other ones. Had they too died, Aharon would have been childless. Unkeles interprets the eating and the drinking in a favorable way. Their joy upon seeing the vision was as great as if they had been celebrating the greatest feast in the physical world.

We see that Yitzchak Avinu asked his son to bring him a meat dish when he wished to bless him. He had meat and wine and he celebrated. Many offerings in the Beit Hamikdash were meat and wine offerings. It says in the Talmud, “There is no joyous feast except with meat and wine.” It is an amazing insight. When serving Hashem, the phrase goes, ‘tamid b’simchah liheyot b’mitzvah.’ A mitzvah should always be with joy. Mitzvah Gedolah lihyot b’simchah tamid.’ It is a great mitzvah to always be joyful. Constantly keeping the mitzvot is a joy of unparalleled importance. Being joyful in one’s service of Hashem is a very great mtitzvah. To internally know with a joy and fullness of heart that what one is doing in this world is to honor Hashem. By being a living example of the happiness of serving Hashem in this world and meeting one’s mission in this world, one takes one’s service of Hashem to the highest level. Avodat Hashem b’simchah.

The phrases are: tamid b’simchah liheyot b’mitzvah. Tamid b’mitzvah liheyot b’simchah. I would like to share a third level of this statement. There was a specific offering that was the first offering of the day and also the last offering of the day. This was the tamid offering. By being able to give Hashem that tamid offering b’simchah, it was the greatest mitzvah. By serving Hashem tamid with that tamid offering as a mitzvah, it was the greatest simchah.

May we all soon experience the Beit Hamikdash, the Beit Din Hagadol, the geulah shleimah, Mashiach Tzidkeinu, and all the laws of Torah coming back to life, and us coming back to Torah, and all Am Yisrael doing teshuvah gamor.