Parshat Mishpatim

In Hebrew, this week’s Parsha is called Mishpatim, which means Laws.  That’s basically what the whole Parsha is: a list of laws.  For most people, a list of laws is not as interesting to read and learn about as the stories of the Torah and their lessons.  But the laws of the Torah have a lot to teach us about the ultimate goals of Judaism.   

One way to understand the relationship between a legal system and the morality of that culture is to understand the legal code as the bottom line standard to which people in the society need to adhere.  Ultimately, society has a desire for people to be motivated to live up to its moral ideal out of a desire to be moral people.  In order for that society to ensure that a bottom line morality will exist, societies set up legal codes to force desired behavior.  The laws of any given society are a reflection of that society’s moral priorities. 

When you look at the list of laws in this week’s Parsha in this way, you can get a sense of an overarching morality that the Torah is trying to teach.  I know that there are critics who will use this week’s Parsha to argue the lack of morality in the Torah, on account of the Torah’s sanctioning of slavery detailed in Mishpatim, but I think there is more to this week’s Parsha than meets the eye.  Our rabbis have taught us over the generations that the Torah speaks with a relevant message to every generation.  The Torah’s discussion of slavery has been explained by many commentators to be a submission to the morality of the times.  They explain that the Torah’s ideal is ultimately for there to not be any slavery, slavery is not a good thing (it is interesting to note that during the Civil War, rabbis from the North used arguments from the Torah to argue against slavery, and rabbis from the south defended slavery with arguments from the Torah).  But to try and go against what was a fabric of society throughout the entire world at that time would not work.  So instead of totally abolishing slavery right off the bat, the Torah first changed the nature of slavery.  The laws of responsibility that the slave owner had towards the slave was a revolution in morality for that period.  The slave owner could no longer deal with his slave as merely an object to be treated in whatever way the slave owner wanted; the slave still had certain basic human rights which needed to be respected.  

With this understanding of slavery in mind we can see how it fits into one of the many moral themes found within the Parsha. Some of the other laws that I’d like to point out here are civil laws such as: a person is obligated to pay for damages he has caused to others, who is responsible to pay damages when a pair of individuals is fighting and a third party gets hurt during their fight , if someone’s property damages another person’s property (in the Parsha it’s talking about a person’s ox, but it could be interpreted for modern society to other things such as a car), and not to harass the weak members of society. 

The society these laws are creating places a responsibility on the guilty party, and does not allow (ideally) for a system where the powerful bear no responsibility for who they hurt.  A common element in all of these laws is that might does not make right.  The Torah is putting into place a legal system which is aware of power dynamics in society, and which protects the rights of the weak.  In much of the ancient world the powerful could often do whatever they wanted to anyone weaker than them.  The Torah lesson here is that society needs to put in place laws which protect the weak from the strong-- a moral revolution for that period of time.  This lesson is most explicit in the Torah’s command (Chapter 22, Verses 20-22): “You shall not wrong a stranger (or convert) or oppress him (or her), for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.  You shall not oppress a widow or orphan.  If you do oppress him (or her), I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to me.”  The Torah uses its classic example of the unprotected members of society to make the point that their vulnerability is not a reason to oppress them.  So we see that the minimal standard of a Torah society is not to oppress the weak; the societal norm is to help the weak; the ideal moral behavior is to protect the weak.

Many of these civil laws on the surface were meant for a time when the Jewish people lived in a Jewish land which was governed by Torah laws.  But the timelessness of the Jewish legal system insists that we apply the morality of the Torah to our own lives whenever possible.  On a national level it is easy to identify the bad guys who are abusing their power and to say that their behavior needs to change.  On a personal level it is a lot more difficult to make that same observation about ourselves in our own relationships.   Interpersonal power dynamics can be difficult to identify and even more difficult to change even when a need for change can be identified.  But the Torah’s lesson with regard to power dynamics is that we always need to make sure that the powerful are not taking advantage of the less powerful.  To try and identify in our own lives where we are the powerful party, to make sure that we do not abuse that power and to change our behavior when we find that we do, is a very difficult but crucial part of being a moral Jew.