Last week’s Torah Portion contained the “Ten Utterances” spoken to Moses by God at Mount Sinai. This week’s portion is named “Laws” Mishpatim and delves into what the covenant that God enters into with Israel actually demands. It’s not ‘ten and done’! Chapters 21 through 23 of Exodus go into the nitty gritty of, in the words of The Women’s Torah Commentary “Rules for Life in a Covenant Community”. And they start with civil and criminal case law before getting around to ritual and social precepts! There is a separate section that deals with kohanim/priests, but they are still subject to civil law and “rank” does not protect them.
We begin with how to deal with the mistreatment of slaves. The assumptions here are (a) slavery is a given, even Israelites can be enslaved, (b) slaves are not property in the same sense as a cart or tent, (c) there are consequences to mistreating slaves. Were not all these assumptions true we would not be able to make sense of the text, as we would lack the necessary context. While none of this is new per se, what I find eye-opening is that when the people stood at Sinai the men were separate from the women and only the men it seems were addressed directly. Here, in chap. 21 we have equal space allocated to cases of male and female slaves, Israelites and non-Israelites. There is even more detail about female slaves as they may bear children while in slavery. In that case those children become the owner’s if she leaves – she came in alone and she may leave as a free woman, but she will do so alone.
Such a cruel text, demanding that one choose between loyalty to one’s children or one’s personal freedom. Yet by naming the “problem” it cannot be ignored. It would have been a much quicker and lighter read, our Torah, if it didn’t go into the nitty gritty. We have murder, abuse of parents, kidnapping, bodily injury, property damage and that’s not all in this week’s portion that is considered as already being present problematic behavior in Israelite society. We may have better technology today but we’re still battling the same demons it seems. There was no opioid epidemic in antiquity but there was suffering and inequity. By naming the evils that would rather not be named our tradition gives us the strength to repudiate them, to deny their power over us. If we cower in fear that we will be named as having committed a shameful act we are not upholding our end of the deal: God expects us not only to act in an ethical fashion, but to name and bring to judgment those who abuse others. We may not take on the roles of judge and jury but we MUST uphold the power of the judiciary within Israelite society.
Being Jewish to me, means accepting a system of justice that demands not looking away from those people who have been mis-used. As our sense of privacy shrinks, we may want to shield ourselves from the violence of our modern society. Let me draw our attention to Ex. 22:20, which is two short chapters from the revelation at Sinai, and only a few more from the trauma of Egypt during the ten plagues. To these traumatized ex-slaves God says: “You shall not wrong or oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt”. We must go beyond, we who are today in many ways no longer a nation of ex-slaves, we must protect the rights of the stranger, because we’ve been there.
May you draw strength from one another and give it those in need. As we sang last week in T’filah during Religious School with Zoe leading: “we’ve been working every day to bring love and not to hate: peace through you, peace through me”.
Take care of each other – I’ll see you God willing when I’m back in March!
Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Leah Benamy
