Shabbat Mishpatim Shalom

I was once in Jerusalem when it snowed, not as heavily as the snow that has blanketed the Holy City this week, but even so, long-time inhabitants were shocked into wonder, annoyed—until they laughed and finally surrendered to slowing down.

It is also snowing here in Manhattan, softly and slowly, but we’ve been told to expect a storm with high winds. Imagine if we were snow-bound somewhere in eastern Europe in the 18th or 19th centuries, and we were studying Mishpatim by candlelight, or very near a window which framed the perpetually snowy landscape.

So much in this parsha is ethically revolutionary for its time, perhaps for all time: asylum cities, punishments for maiming or murdering another human being, restitution for theft, protection for widows and orphans—and many breathtakingly admirable laws: Do not follow the majority to do evil (“Lo tehiyeh aharei rabim l’raot.”); Do not bend justice (not even) for your needy in his dispute (“Lo tahtey mishpat evyonicha” b’ribo”); Keep far away from anything false (“midbar sheker terhak”); “Do not oppress a stranger (“V’ger lo teelhatz”), etc.

But what’s also going on in our parsha? Here, we’ve just been taken out of slavery and lo! We are being told the laws of acquiring and freeing a Hebrew slave. I know: Slavery was commonplace, it guaranteed food, shelter, and clothing to the destitute and set limits upon this odious institution. There is so much that is unacceptable—the sale of a daughter, her forced marriage to the man who raped her, or payment to her father, the matter of the witches, the dreadful eye for an eye, the odious forced choice for a slave who has fathered children with his Master-given wife.

I don’t like it. It’s time to wrestle, but the snow slows one down, makes one dreamy, but like Frost, “I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.”