Last Week I mentioned to you the great emotion that was stirred in the hearts of the people Israel as they stood in God’s presence at Sinai. God spoke out of the smoky cloud, and the people w ere greatly moved. God gave the people the "ten basic steps of achieving holiness" -- in the ten statements He made. However, he did not stop there, and while I have stated again and again over the years that those statements were NOT commandments or laws, there is no question that there ARE definite and definitive laws in the Torah. We find them, or at least some of them, in this week’s portion, and the portion begins, significantly, with the words "AND these are the laws..." The "and" is a permanent bridge between the last words of the portion from last week and the basic laws stated in this week’s portion. Maybe that is just one more clue to the nature of God’s words at Sinai. If "and these are the laws" then "the former WERE NOT the laws!" Well, enough about that, lets look forward to this week’s text, and read: [Ex.21:1-11]

I think it is very significant that the first two issues treated in the laws given by God as a consequence to the statements at Sinai deal with slavery and with the right of women. Listen to my words... Is it 1993 or is it 3500 B.C.E. -- the issues are still the same, and the voice from Sinai still rings true: No human can be the property of another. If a man works for you for six years, you must release him on the seventh year, and pay him wages for his years of labor for you... If you "sell" your daughter, it must not be for the purpose of taking advantage of her. You must not allow "white slavery" -- in any form. If you arrange a marriage, and the man does not choose to live up to his part of the bargain, the woman must have recourse in law, and she must be taken care of in a proper manner. Heady issues!

Which brings us to another consideration: the universality of the law. We pride ourselves, in this "land of the free and the brave," that all are equal before the law. However, most of us are aware that some are more equal than others. The better your lawyer, the more you can expect to get away with, and the less successful you are in life, the more your chance of getting short changed by the judicial system -- if you are so unfortunate as to become entangled with the law. I can tell you many stories of actual cases where people were deprived of their homes, or their retirement income or of basic rights against arrest simply because they did not know how to defend themselves and could not afford proper legal counsel. Yes, our justice system got rid of a president that broke the law -- but I think you will agree that it was not the breaking of the law that did him in -- it was the lies and stonewalling that followed it. Reagan did not suffer from Irangate, though his trespasses were just as serious as those of Nixon, and Bosky, a thief in the grand style, did not get a "punishment that fit the scope of his crime," either! Weinberg was pardoned, Olie North’s sentence was reversed... Only Jim Baker and Jonathan Pollard rot in jail -- they’re dangerous criminals, obviously!

Judaism had a different system, one that was instituted at Sinai, and that had as its guidelines a system of "sanctification." We did not have, for two thousand years, a police force or a court delivery system, and yet we maintained a discipline and a civility that were second to none. How did we do it? We studied Torah and followed its precepts. Torah is an open book, and is available to all. It does not say, "do unto others," it teaches each individual to do for himself. It teaches integrity, honesty, and self respect. These teaching, these precepts, can be embraced by an entire nation, an entire society. As we see a new spirit in our land, let’s hope that it is the spirit of Torah. Lets hope that our new president and our new congress are heeding the word of God and will live by his sentence -- for it is universally and eternally just.

A people who live by Torah cannot falter nor fail. They are, and shall always be, as the Book of Psalms teaches us, "like a tree planted by streams of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, and whose leaf does not wither, and in whatsoever he does he shall prosper."

Those of you who remember the portion of the Torah we read last Shabbat, or who recall DeMill’s great film about the Sinai experience, may feel that this week's portion is a great descent from the heights of last week, when we rose to the pinnacle of a great experience. We had unfolded before us the canvas on which was depicted the greatest moment in the history of a people, nay, in the history of mankind. A people, downtrodden and unruly, recently freed from bondage, came face to face with God. A people accepted its destiny, lay claim to its future, in an incandescent moment of great exaltation and ecstasy. They began a career that was the fulfillment of that destiny. No history of any other people depicts an encounter, an event, as drastic, as significant, as cosmic in its consequences as that moment at Sinai. But, as the saying goes, "that was then, this is now." What do we find in this week’s portion?

We find the most commonplace laws — laws about two men quarreling, laws about farmers who did not extend adequate care to their animals, so that those animals strayed and hurt others, laws regarding the daily, commonplace differences, controversies, and personal quarrels that are not reported by the newspapers because they are not "important," not really "news."

After last week, do we not expect something more dramatic than this, something that would move us more forcefully? Why do we descend from the summit of a mountain down into the lowlands of the mundane, the usual and the ordinary, into the bitterness, the conflict, the irritation, the routine, the stark human experience in one short week?

The answer is that any law that remains solely and exclusively an embodiment of principle, that concerns itself only with vast, large, general formulation, however majestic and however high, will not affect the lives of the people for whom it is intended. Law becomes meaningful, law becomes a powerful factor in the lives of people when its great principles are translated into statutes, into ordinances, into precise and concrete enactments that tell us how to behave in present-day situations, in those encounters between one man and another, in those difficulties that arise in the normal course of our lives. The law can never remain on the mountain top. It must come down into the valley where people live, where they struggle, where they hate, where they love, where they strive, and where they reveal all of their human frailties, failings and fallibility. The law of Israel is not only a law of the mountain; it is a teaching that was not concluded in that instant at Sinai. It is a dynamic directive that becomes the specific, the concrete, the prosaic enactment.

There are three important, distinguishing marks of Jewish law that give it its particular character and set it apart from the general course of legal development in Western civilization. First of all, Jewish law is religious law. Oh, yes, I know about the great virtue of the separation of state and church -- I applaud it and I support it -- but, originally, all law was basically religious law. The law of Western civilization developed out of church law. As history moved forward, however, law, like all disciplines, achieved its autonomy, separated itself from the sources and roots of its origin, and functioned as an independent entity. And so, although it still retains some of the impulses that came to it from its origin in religion, the common law has developed in accordance with its own organic character. It is consistent with its own system. Jewish law, however, never detached itself from its religious roots; it never became independent of the entire scheme of religious values and religious beliefs. It has remained to this day fundamentally religious, and by virtue of that fact, it has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from systems of law that broke away from their religious roots.

Jewish religious law is based upon morality, and deals with every aspect of human life. There are issues that secular law does not touch -- such as the right to privacy -- but in religious law there are no such issues. A persons’s thoughts, intentions, private conduct, even when it has no social consequences — all are included, for in religious law one is always seen as standing under God's watchful eye. In religion, all law is an attempt to make us better servants of the Lord, and consequently, one who is rooted in Jewish tradition could not have said, as the central figure of Christianity is reported in the New Testament to have said, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s" -- unless, of course, he was advocating rendering nothing unto Caesar, since everything is "the things that are God’s." The things that are Caesar’s belong to God too, and Caesar may not do anything that contravenes or violates the law of God. Jewish law does not see the world broken into two parts, the dominion of one belonging to Caesar, the dominion of the other belonging to God.

All of life is a sanctuary, and we can never move away from the area of God’s sovereignty. A religious law is concerned not with protecting society, not with defending the rights of people, but with the basic premise that people should do their duty. The word Mitzvah — which means duty or obligation — becomes the key to this law. When two people come before a judge who deals in Jewish law, he does not concern himself solely, or even primarily with the question of which litigant is right, whose rights have been violated. He asks, what is the duty of each of these men, the offender as well as the victim, for even the sinner comes within the purview of God’s (and therefore the judge’s) concern. So there is always this concern in Jewish law, not for what is legal, not for what is consistent with our judicial system, but for what it is that God wants us to do, what is our duty. The judge does not sit there as an inquisitor, nor as a symbol of governmental powers, he sits on his bench as a teacher, as one to whom has been given the privilege of interpreting in human terms God’s will and God’s word.

The second characteristic of Jewish law is that it is community-oriented. The greater part of Jewish law, after the Torah, developed outside of Eretz Yisrael, and certainly developed at a time when the Jewish people no longer had any sovereignty or independence. The Mishna and the Gemara were edited after the Jewish homeland had been destroyed. The Talmud was completed in a land where the Jews were part of a far larger culture. The great code of Maimonides in the twelfth century, and the code of Juda Caro in the sixteenth century, were produced on ‘foreign’ soil, where this law, mitzvot, became the only guardian of Jewish integrity. If Jews continued to live an organized and disciplined life it was because they had this law. The purpose of the law was always to serve the highest interest of the community, to bind it together, to retain for its people a sense of duty, a memory of the past and hope for the future. It is impossible for us to explain how we Jews have survived without understanding that there was a law, around which the people rallied, and that united the community with a single-minded dedication. Furthermore, this law bound Jews in far flung communities, living under different potentates and despots. In a chaotic world deprived of order and civility, the Jews had an established code that allowed them to travel and to conduct business -- which made possible their survival.

Thirdly, Jewish law was largely a system that had no power. Whenever we think of a legal system, we think of policemen and prisons as well as of lawyers, judges and juries; we think of governments that have the power to impose sanctions upon those who violate the law. There can be no legal system without prisons, penalties, and punishments for those who presume to run counter to the law. Jewish law had to function without any coercion; it could not exercise any physical or penal sanctions. There were no prisons alongside of the academies or the synagogues where the Jewish tribunal would sit. There were no policemen or bailiffs prepared to carry out the orders of the court. The judge sat completely disarmed. He had nothing, no powers -- except the conscience of the people. Jewish law addressed itself to developing the character of a people, to refining individuals as human personalities, to replacing the lack of external force with the presence of inner sanctity. The law was obeyed not because there were jails, but because a people inwardly accepted it and its decisions, and its decisions and decrees were carried out with a dispatch that no penal system ever inspired.

This is mitzvot, Jewish law. It is obvious that the entire development of Western civilization makes impossible the close association between a legal system and a religious tradition, but some of the religious values ought to be retained. The law should be defended not because it happens to be the expression of the popular will of the moment, or the current sociology, but because it is alive with enduring moral principles. The law should be concerned with people. The law must worry about the thief, just as surely as it must protect you and me from him. Why does he violate the law? What has happened to him? How can we utilize the law not only to protect the honest man, but also to restore the wrongdoer to respectability and usefulness? These are some of the important elements in Jewish law that can and should be applied in civil law -- to make it civil.

We must place greater emphasis upon inner sanction than upon the club wielded by the law when its will is flaunted. The laws that we read today, and that we shall be reading for many weeks to come, therefore, reveal a great legal system, reflect a moral code. In this system the judge becomes more the teacher and less the enforcer of the law. This system seeks ultimately to evoke man’s inner devotion, and does not come at him with threats and sanctions. Anyhow, the threats seem to be ineffective, and the sanctions hurt society more than the offender. In the civil and political life we now live by other codes, yet the refinement of mitzvot, its profound insights, may still contribute to our moral and civil development. In preserving the impetus of Jewish law, we may also be preserving for Western civilization, of which we are a part, a valuable element that it ought not to lose. William Shakespeare said that ‘the law is a ass’ -- which is a beast of burden. What we need to understand is that this burden needs to be mitigated with reason, with compassion for humanity and its frailty. We need to harken to the voice that was heard at Sinai -- but we must understand that the heroes of life are those who know how to conduct themselves in the daily routines of the life in the home, the marketplace and the sanctuaries where we seek God and find our true selves.

5757 -- The Loss of the 73

Imagine if you please, ladies and gentlemen, the scene in Galilee that fateful last Tuesday. It is a wintery night, bitter cold and filled with rain-snow. The time is seven o'clock, but it could just as well be two in the morning. The night sky has been rendered even more dark by the thick, black clouds. Because of the high elevation, some of these clouds actually touch the ground. The wind is howling, whipping the air and rendering the 32 degrees temperature to about zero. Suddenly there is another sound in the air, the heavy drone of hard working engines. Two helicopters, carrying between them 73 souls, air crews and soldiers-passengers, weighted down by battle fatigues and battle equipment: guns, machine-guns, mortars, ammunition, hand grenades, explosives and communications equipment. They are flying at about fifty miles per hour, at an altitude of 360 feet. Suddenly, one of the helicopters, for a reason as yet unknown, approaches the other at high speed and a collision takes place. One helicopter breaks apart and falls to the ground near the guest houses and the homes of the villagers of Moshav She'ar Yashuv. The other lingers a few seconds, its pilots trying desperately to bring it down for an emergency landing -- but to no avail. The second helicopter, too, smashes to the ground, near the cemetery of Kibbutz Dafna -- a short distance from the first crash site. Fires erupt, and secondary explosions occur at both impact sites as the explosives and the ammunition that were carried on board are detonated by the heat of the conflagration.

Tzahal, the Israel Defence Force, goes into action immediately. The whole area is quarantined, closed off to traffic. The inhabitants are asked to remain indoors, to avoid the danger of un-exploded ordinance and the sight of the mutilated remains of the fallen. All hospitals in the area are readied to treat the wounded -- but to no avail, as no survivors are found. When the army and police arrive on the scene they light up the skies with flare-rockets and see the ground strewn with debris: large and small metal fragments from the helicopters, bodies everywhere. Expert sappers from the police bomb-disposal unit carefully remove un-exploded hand-grenades from the battle dress of the dead soldiers before other soldiers place the remains on stretchers and take them to a central location for identification and preparation for burial. Khevra Kadisha, those valiant men who are responsible for preparing the dead for interment, have the unenviable and gruesome job of going over every inch of the terrain, to find and collect the scattered shattered remains of bodies that just a few hours earlier were young men, alive and full of hope and dreams and potential to change the world and make it a better place. Seventy-three victims. Seventy-three young lives, with sweethearts or wives waiting in vain for their safe return. Seventy-three families that will have to be visited by the army chaplains and officers from the units in which their dear ones served. Of course, they will not be the officers directly in charge of their son -- for those fell with their men. And who do you send to notify their relatives?

Well, what can we say? How can we reason this loss of life? This week's Torah portion, Mishpatim, contains the following passage: "Behold, I send an Angel before you, to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Take heed of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions; for my name is in him. But if you shall indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversaries. For my Angel shall go before you, and bring you in to the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off." [Ex. 23:20-23] So we are promised "hashgakha," Divine protection -- and still these accidents happen, and still terrorists explode bombs and take the lives of so many of our brethren. Where is God, you ask?

God is in the fact that we are in a battle for our very existence and that we have not had hundreds and even thousands of casualties! God is in the miracle of our survival, at all times and against all the odds. The two helicopters where travelling to battle, and they came in harms way. God is in the miracle that they fell over an inhabited area without causing any casualties. God is in the families of the victims, who, in spite of their heavy, unimaginable loss, will continue to bear the burden of sovereignty and the cost of fighting an intractable enemy who wishes to see our total annihilation. We must not lose sight of the real cause of our loss. These men were in the air that fateful Tuesday because Syria allows Hesballah to wage war against Israel and against the inhabitants of Southern Lebanon. If we took our men out of Lebanon we would make upper Galilee vulnerable to rocket and mortar attacks as well as terrorist attacks from accross the border. The policy of having a security zone in Lebanon has been in force for more than a dozen years.

Still, seventy-three families are sitting Shiva in Israel this week -- but on Shabbat they come out of shiva, and they go to services, and they will celebrate Shabbat -- and God's timetable ordained that this Shabbat they will also celebrate Rosh Khodesh -- so they will chant the Hallel and remind themselves that He is the One who took us out of Egypt: "Betzet Yisrael mimtzra'yim -- 1. When Israel went from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion. The sea saw it, and fled; the Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the hills like lambs." [Psalm 114:1-4] They will hear us proclaim, "Yevarekh et Beyt Yisrael -- he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, both small and great. May the Lord increase you more and more, you and your children. May you be blessed of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The heavens are the heavens of the Lord; but he has given the earth to the children of men. The dead cannot praise the Lord, nor can any who go down into silence. But we will bless the Lord from this time forth and for evermore. Hallelujah! Lo hametim yehalelu ya velo khol yordey duma -- va'anakhnu nevarekh ya me'ata ve'ad olam, haleluya!" [Psalm 115:12-18] And hopefully, they, and all Am Yisrael, the people Israel, will be consoled over our terrible loss. Yehi zikhram barukh, may their memory be a blessing to us all.

Do you remember yesterday? I am talking of Thursday – just twenty four hours away, and already a part of history. What was, was! How do we view yesterday? The Beatles recalled it with nostalgia:

Yesterday,

All my troubles were so far away,

Now it seems that they are here to stay...

Why she went away I don’t know, she would not say...

So love, and happiness, and the very ‘reason for being’ is tied up with this concept of yesterday. George Aznavour had a similar attitude:

Yesterday when we were young,

There were so many songs that needed to be sung...

So yesterday is the age of innocence and challenge, a time of youth and vigor, a time when possibility exceeded imagination. Yesterday is always what could have been done which we fondly miss today in the realization that it will not repeat tomorrow.

Not so in the Torah. For in the Torah, "yesterday" we stood at Sinai and heard God speak. We were uplifted, we were inspired – but we were also intimidated and frightened. Today, Moshe speaks to us, and he tells us that what God wants of us is not some lofty far off ideal that can only be met on a mountain top in the Sinai desert.

We live in an age of extremist autonomy. Each person zealously guards his or her autonomy and individuality from everybody else. We resent it when anyone presumes to tell us what is right or what is wrong, interpreting it as an attempt to impose external qualifications or restrictions on our discretion or on our behavior. We want to live by the Nike motto, "just do it!"

There is much to be said in praise of this ardor for independence and personal sovereignty. We recognize it as the strong suite of America – a society that was conceived on the principle of the inviolate ‘right’ to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that has molded a population that cherishes originality, uniqueness, personality, creativity and free thought. Art, literature, philosophy, democracy, science and spirituality all blossom with thousands of different faces because of the absence of central controls or direction. Surely that pluralism of thought and expression is a precious heritage.

Yet we also pay a price for our ‘inviolate right’ to autonomy. All this freedom, this lack of discipline or di rection also produces tremendous solitude, isolation, loneliness, drifting and superficiality. Pop psychology has taken the place of true understanding, and pop spirituality has replaced true religion. Rather than letting God into our hearts, rather than molding our behavior to conform to God’s will, we have accepted the glitz and pomp of show-business theater religion, tele-evangelists, performing preachers with guitar and tambourine, dancing maidens waving banners proclaiming that God is Good and Good is God — so let’s just do it, as long as we drop a few dollars for the unfortunate — and the players, to be sure! Let us interpret God after our own image, and allow Him to accede to our preferences and whims. We take care of the daily routines, and God handles "the big picture."

Don’t be surprised, then, if Judaism has a difficult time in contemporary life. Based on the premise that all human beings must commit to something, Judaism asserts that we are either servants of the Holy One, Blessed be He, or else we become slaves to some lesser tyrant - our drives, our work, our guilt, or, God forbid, some other human being.

Only in the service of God, in the yoke of the mitzvot, are we able to find the antidote to human bondage. This week’s Torah portion begins by telling us that no one can be a slave forever: "If you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing." [Ex. 21:2] However, this rule is followed by the most serious and the most mundane matters, "And he who strikes his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death. He who steals a man, and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. And he who curses his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death. If men quarrel together, and one strikes another with a stone, or with his fist, and he dies not, but keeps to his bed; he rises again, and walks out with his staff, then shall he who struck him be acquitted; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed. And if a man strikes his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he dies under his hand; he shall be surely punished. However, if he survives a day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money. If men quarrel, and hurt a pregnant woman, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no further harm follows; he shall be surely punished, according to what the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine." [Ex. 21:15-22] So you see, we have a variety of laws and guidelines meant to shape Israelite life to conform to the lofty ethics and pervasive holiness of God’s will. Rather than perceiving those laws as oppressive restrictions and burdensome obligations, our ancestors exulted in their newfound ability to grow spiritually and morally as agents of God in the world. They teach that as a father exhorts a child to be careful not to stumble over anything and hurt himself because he is as dear to him as the apple of his eye, God, likewise, exhorted Israel concerning the commandments, because they are more beloved to God than the angels.

Judaism celebrates the love between God and the Jewish people, a love that spans all our yesterdays, and that will be there for all our tomorrows. So we don’t look at yesterday with jaundiced eyes, nor do we curse today’s disappointments. We are sure of God’s love, we know how to live our lives so that our tomorrows will always be blessed with happiness in His service.

This Shabbat, like every Shabbat, is the first Shabbat after the last one that we celebrated. However, last week ‘just happened to be’ a most important Shabbat in terms of the reading of the Torah, for it was the time when we read of Ma’amad Sinai – our presence at the Sinai revelation, when the Lord spoke to the children of Israel the words that have become ‘bigger than all other words,’ so that eventually the Greeks tagged them as ‘Decalogue’ – the "Ten Commandments." Please note well that it was the Greeks, for whom form was more important than content who thus dubbed our experience, proving for all time that they understand nothing about Judaism or its teachings. You might say that Judaism "was Greek to them" – or is that an oxymoron?

This week’s portion in the Torah is ‘Mishpatim’ – which means laws or judgements. However, it is necessary for us to note that the text begins with the words, "ve’ele hamishpatim asher tasim lifneyhem – and these are the ordinances (laws) that you shall place before them." [Ex. 21:1] Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzkhaki), our great sage and interpreter of Torah that lived a thousand years ago, and is still considered as the most definitive authority on Torah text, says the following, "why does this portion begin with the word ‘and?’ To teach us that last week’s ‘fireworks’ are directly connected to this week ‘nitty gritty’ workaday statements. This week’s words are part and parcel of the revelation at Sinai, and must not be given a lesser value or consideration."

By a strange coincidence, but not without preplanning and premeditation, to be sure, last week we had a sanctuary filled with worshipers – and not only did we have ‘people’ here, we had young people here, members of the United Synagogue Youth organization, the pride of a number of congregations in our sub-region, the future and the hope of our people. They came, they worshiped and learned together, they exchanged ideas and formed friendships. It was such a joy to see them here. It was, to us who shared this sanctuary with them, a heart-warming experience. However, just as the ‘presence at Sinai’ was a one time experience, so also the youth convention is over, and things go back to the way they were. Once more our sanctuary has more echo that voice, more chairs than people to occupy them. On the morrow of God’s meeting with the Children of Israel, Moshe must have had the biggest ‘let down’ experience of his career, second maybe (but probably not quite) to the time when the Israelites were at the east shore of the sea, with Egypt drowned in the mighty waters, and the people Israel, no doubt, complaining about the mud on the soles of their shoes... At Sinai on the day after, things must have been similar to Woodstock once the celebration was over – minus the candy wrappers and other modern trash...

Celebration is great, but "Purim comes only once a year," as the saying goes, and the rest of the time we must face reality. God gave us the ‘big picture’ from the mountain top – but now it is time to be issue-oriented. Israel has a mission and a purpose, and we face the new day with a new agenda, thirty five hundred years ago even as we do today. We must not perpetuate the transgressions of the Egyptians – we must not enslave our fellow Israelites. We must not perpetuate the transgressions of the Canaanites that caused God to remove them off the land which he gave to Israel. Thus our portion today begins with ‘and,’ for it is a part of the heritage of Sinai, it is arteries and the veins, it is bones and cartilage, it is all that is ‘the stuff of life’ that is under the skin that gives us our outer image, our visage. We look at one another and say, ‘this one is handsome,’ ‘that one is beautiful,’ and ‘all these other are so common, so drab, so lackluster.’ Yet all share the same makeup under the skin! Likewise with the revelation at Sinai. God spoke to Israel, and they all stood there, shaking with excitement, with awe and with anticipation. When the day was done, when the heavenly storm was over, when the trumpets’ sound faded away, the revelation continued, and it was Moses who stood there alone, to learn the details of the flash of lightening, the reverberations of the thunder. For it is in the details that the miracle is made manifest.

May we never forget this lesson, may we never become a people who celebrate the ‘gift wrap,’ the covering more than the content of the gift. May we never lose sight of the truth revealed to Elijah the prophet, when "a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice." [Kings I 19:11,12] And in that still small voice, the one that calls us to act with justice and loving kindness, with mercy and pity, with compassion and understanding. It sounds simple and humdrum, mundane, commonplace and totally ordinary – but it is not! It sound ‘everyday’ – but it is, in fact, the stuff of holiness, of consecration and of the nature of God Himself. May we always know how to conduct ourselves so that we can achieve it and transform ourselves into His people, worthy of Sinai, worthy of revelation, worthy of His covenant. Amen

This week’s portion in the Torah is ‘Mishpatim’ – which means laws or judgements. The reading in the text begins in Exodus 21 and ends at the end of 24. Three chapters of "Mishpatim" - ordinances, laws, and regulations by which a people become civilized. Oh, yes, this book is thousands of years old, but it begins with an issue as current as this morning’s news.

"If you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing." [21:2] What an incredible concept - you ‘buy’ a servant (or ‘slave,’ as they were called in other civilizations, and you are allowed to keep him in your service for six years and no more! There are places in our world, this very day, where life is cheap and slaves are kept for all of their miserable lives.

The rights of women were evidently a solemn issue for God, and He instructed Moshe, "And if a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she pleases not her master, who has designated her for himself, then shall he let her be redeemed; to sell her to a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he has dealt deceitfully with her." [21:7,8] So, there was a "double standard" - if she was a servant, she lived by the rule of the servants, and was freed on the seventh year, but if she was a concubine, the master had to treat her as he would a wife!

Still, servants were property of the master, right? Not quite, not as long as this law was followed: "And if a man strikes the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, and destroys it; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. And if he strikes out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake." [21:26,27]

In a civilized world, a man’s freedom ends at the property line of his neighbor. Listen to the following law: "If fire breaks out, and catches in thorns, so that the stacks of grain, or the standing grain, or the field, be consumed with it; he who kindled the fire shall surely make restitution." [22:5] There were also rules of proper behavior in trade between neighbors, and we read, "For every kind of trespass, whether it be for ox, for ass, for sheep, for garment, or for any kind of lost thing, which another challenges to be his, the cause of both parties shall come before the judges; and whom the judges shall condemn, he shall pay double to his neighbor. If a man delivers to his neighbor an ass, or an ox, or a sheep, or any beast, to keep; and it dies, or is hurt, or driven away, no man seeing it; Then shall an oath of the Lord be between them both, that he has not put his hand to his neighbor’s goods; and its owner shall accept this, and he shall not make it good. And if it is stolen from him, he shall make restitution to its owner." [22:8-11]

Furthermore, these rules were not for Israelites alone! There are societies today where the law favors the local person over the stranger, and the influential over the less fortunate. But the Torah teaches, "You shall not wrong a stranger, nor oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow, or orphaned child. If you afflict them in any wise, and they cry to me, I will surely hear their cry; And my anger shall burn hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children orphans. If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be a creditor to him, nor shall you lay upon him interest. If you take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall deliver it to him by sundown; For that is his only covering, it is the garment for his skin; Where shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he cries to me, that I will hear; for I am compassionate. You shall not revile the judges, nor curse the ruler of your people."[22:21-27]

One of the most important issues in any civilized society is the one of the steadfast rule of justice in the courts. So it is not surprising to read, "You shall not raise a false report; put not your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. You shall not follow a multitude to do evil; nor shall you speak in a cause to incline a multitude to pervert justice; Nor shall you favor a poor man in his cause." [23:1-3] "You shall not pervert the judgment of your poor in his cause. Keep far from a false matter; and do not slay the innocent and righteous; for I will not justify the wicked. And you shall take no bribe; for the bribe blinds the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous. Also you shall not oppress a stranger; for you know the heart of a stranger, seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt." [23:6-9] I find this text to be exemplary in its fairness. It recognizes that sometimes in wanting to be fair, we look at the rich and powerful and ‘automatically evil’ – and the poor as ‘automatically guiltless." Not so, says our text, don’t pervert justice for the poor any more than you might for the rich.

All the above issues, some seemingly petty and mundane, some which we recognize as revolutionary and truly noble in their scope and magnitude of fairness – all were instituted at the time of Sinai, by the God who spoke at Sinai. We, the decedents of the people who stood at the foot of that smoky mountain should always be mindful of His beneficent grace in teaching us how to live in a world where we can truly be free and safe and happy.

Amen