Volume 27 Issue 2 09 Feb 2018 24 Shevat 5778

Devar Torah

Parashat Mishpatim

Sonia Redman, Year 12

Translated into English, the general meaning of Mishpatim is ‘Laws’ and that’s exactly what the subject and content is of this parashah – a long list of detailed rules supposedly passed from God to Moses on Mount Sinai.

It may at first seem like a constricting procession of ‘you shalls’, and ‘you shall nots’, but on closer inspection, the laws set forth in the Parashah give the Jewish people the Torah’s first explicit injunction to protect the stranger. It says: “and a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”.This experience of living as a stranger infuses Jewish tradition for thousands of years to come. As we well know, the Israelites didn’t just endure 400 years living as the stranger in Egypt, but also subsequent centuries living as strangers under foreign, often hard and cruel, powers.

The Torah’s reminder that we were once strangers inspires an important value. Empathy. And in this context, though it appears to have religious origins, the Torah is reminding us that empathy is at the root of what it means to be human. It is difficult to feel connected to many other rules in the Torah, made centuries before our time and to feel inspired to follow their instructions without question when they no longer appear relevant. But, the commandment of empathy transcends time, and as such, universally applies to all Jews, and humans, today. While we still certainly look at the other laws in the Torah and consider how we might translate them into our modern lives, the value of empathy remains intact and unchanging.

Empathy also ensures that as a Jewish people, we end up not just with a set of structured laws and customs, but with a larger sense of a tradition that strives to teach empathy for its own sake. It’s more than not oppressing a stranger because “God said so”.  Because of the centuries of persecution and exile the Jewish people has faced, because we have felt what it is to be abandoned, that we must think with our hearts in order to consider the dictates of morality that are incumbent upon us.