TorahParsha

What is freedom?

for Parshat Mishpatim

 

i

After six years of service

the slave goes free.

 

But still the slave may say:

I love my master

I love the woman he has given me as a wife

I love the children born to me as a slave.

 

And he may choose

to stay a slave forever

with his beloved master

his beloved wife

these beloved children.

 

ii

Perhaps freedom is not only the freedom to go

but also the freedom to make the sometimes hard choice

 

to stay with family,

to stay with those you love.

 

___

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

Please pray for Yechiel ben Michal

www.TorahParsha.com

How to meet God

for Parshat Mishpatim

 

i

God tells Moses:

Let My altar be of clay

or unhewn stone

untouched by a sword;

let it have a ramp

and no stairs—

so that a man’s nakedness

will not be uncovered

as he ascends.

*

Then God gives the Laws of justice:

of treating slaves well

and daughters well,

of being watchful of others’ property

and other such Laws.

*

Soon after, God speaks of the Tent

the people shall make

where God will dwell

with a golden altar,

a brass altar,

and silver,

and silk and scarlet and purple cloth:

a place of beauty.

 

ii

First, God’s altar

will be a simple monument

housed by nothing specific—

of the world

untouched by a sword

—and so caring for peace;

hiding nakedness.

*

From this, we come to God’s Laws of Justice.

*

From God’s Laws of Justice,

we come to the altars in God’s Tent—

ornaments of God’s cloistered, gorgeous place.

 

iii

We come to the God of the world.

He shows us how to care for the world.

Learning to care for the world,

we come to God.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

___

This email was sent before Shabbat

www.TorahParsha.com

What is community?

for Parshat Mishpatim

 

a life for a life

an eye for an eye

a tooth for a tooth

a hand for a hand

a foot for a foot

a burn for a burn

a wound for a wound

a bruise for a bruise

*

Your life and your neighbor’s life

your eye and your neighbor’s eye

your tooth and your neighbor’s tooth

your hand and your neighbor’s hand

are utterly linked

they are two parts of a whole

you cannot hurt someone else

without feeling his pain.

 

 

_________

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

 

 

How can we achieve?

 

for Parshat Mishpatim

i

Moses tells the people of God’s Laws.

The people say we will do

all that God wants of us.

Moses writes God’s Laws down.

*

Then the people say

we will do and we will listen

to God’s Law:

adding the word

listen

to what has already been said.

*

And God inscribes the Laws

into tablets of stone

for Moses to take down

to the people at the mountain base.

 

ii

What you do

is a matter of yourself.

You do not need anyone else

to simply do.

It is like writing thoughts on paper:

you formalize what is in your mind,

you achieve little in the world.

*

Listening,

you bring what is outside

within you.

Listening to God,

you bring God’s words

God’s voice

within you.

*

Listening to God,

you can make what you do on your own

what you do from yourself

an act that is filled up with God:

an act of holiness.

 

iii

And doing and listening

you make your deeds whole,

you make your deeds concrete:

like solid stone.

 

 

____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Neshama Emuna bat Batya

 

How we support God

for Parshat Mishpatim

 

i

God gives the Law.

Moses told the nation the Law, the words of HaShem.

Then Moses reads to the people from the Book of the Covenant.

* 

Then the people saw the God of Israel 

and below His feet was a kind of paved work of sapphire brick.

 

ii

Sapar means told.

Sepher means book.

Sapir means sapphire.

*

Telling, you form real life into words. 

(As in: so that you will tell your son and your son’s son of what God has done in Egypt.)

A book translates telling into substance.

Perhaps sapphire translates telling into jewel s:

the life you have lived made to jewels.

 

iii

God is revealed into the world through the Law,

through which we live life.

Living life through Law,

we turn our life to jewels.

With our life as jewels,

we give firm ground in this world for God.

 

____

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

 

Please pray for the premature infant  Baer Yakov ben Emunah. Please pray for Fievel ben Chaya, Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah and for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther.

 

 

The Revelation at Sinai (Parshat Mishpatim)

i

The people came to Egypt as seventy souls.

The verses name them.

And then the people are slaves.

When God frees them from slavery, from the land of Egypt, He frees them troop by troop.

*
Later, at Mount Sinai, God says to Moses:

When a man lets his livestock loose to graze in another’s land, and… a field or a vineyard is grazed bare, then he who let the animal loose must make restitution

and God also says:

When a fire is started and spreads— and stacked, standing, or growing grain is consumed, he who started the fire must make restitution.

 

ii
We come to Egypt as many separate souls.

Then we are troops: we are together.

*

And at Sinai God says: in your own livestock, in your own flame, you are responsible to your neighbor’s field, to his grain—to him.

So we become a community.

This is what happens at Sinai.

 

____________

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

Please still continue to pray for Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah

Verses cited: Ex 1:1, 12:31, 22:4-5

More thoughts at TorahParsha.com

Equal Before the Law

i
Jacob loves his son, Joseph, more than all the others.

Joseph's brothers know this. So Joseph's brothers cast Joseph down, into a pit.

From this pit, Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt.

The Egyptians hold the Israelites slaves for hundreds of years.

*
Israel is a people, then, who are cursed by the notion of favorites: of favorite classes—Egyptians over slaves; of favored sons.

ii
This is the Law: a Jew who is a slave to another Jew goes free after six years.

So no Jew truly, permanently, owns another Jew.

No one is lord over anyone else.

*
This Law is the opening Law of God's description of the society He demands that Israel become. Which is a society He crafts out of Laws.

It is the Law, then, that undoes the scourge of favorites.

iii
You are children to the Lord your God, Moses says. Every one of you, equal and beloved.

Because God has given the Law to every Jew, this is so.

~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~