Mishpatim
Shemot 21-24
"These Are the Rules that You Shall Put Before Them"-Two Models of Relating to Torah
Jenny R. Labendz, 5764
So many laws! Read over the legal section of this week's parashah, from Shemot 21:1 to 23:19. Read it over fast, just to see what's there. Is there a unifying theme? What is this parashah about?
There are more laws packed into this week's parashah than in any other parashah in the Torah. As my friend (and former CRW Beit Midrash teacher!) Josh Feigelson put it while studying the parashah in the Pardes Beit Midrash earlier this week, "Don't you think it's a little overkill? We've basically never had law before and suddenly...THIS MUCH?" I was struck by his comment and in thinking about how to make sense of this parashah, I came across two contradictory models that both resonated with me.
The first verse of the parashah relates Hashem telling Mosheh, "וְאֵלֶּה הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תָּשִׂים לִפְנֵיהֶם"-"These are the rules that you shall put before them." This language of "putting" the rules before the people is a striking introduction. How are we supposed to receive all of the detailed and varied instruction? It is to be "put" before us.
If you were responsible for putting Parashat Mishpatim before people who had never seen Torah before, how would you do it? Think about this for a moment before moving on; how would you "put" it?
There are many pedagogic models that could be read into this line. I want to explore two of them, and not from the perspective of the educator, but of the student, the simple Jew who is trying to receive Parashat Mishpatim.
The Ramban comments on a similar verse in last week's parashah (19:7) which says that Mosheh put all the things God said before Israel ("וַיָּשֶׂם לִפְנֵיהֶם אֵת כָּל הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה"), and then Ramban applies it to our verse as well. According to the Ramban, the "putting" of these laws means setting them out the way they are before all the people and saying basically, "Here it is. Choose now if you will accept them." Ramban aligns his verse with a number of others (Shemot 24:3, Devarim 4:44, 31:19) that he believes bear the same message: the presentation of the whole Torah to the people for their acceptance - their choice - and he points to the fact that his verse is followed immediately by the people's response "כֹּל אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהֹוָה נַעֲשֶׂה"-"All that Hashem has said we will do!" (19:8). He further points out that Mosheh turned first to the leaders of the nation, the sages, since they are the ones who can make the choice for the nation, but the rest of the people didn't even wait for the leaders and they eagerly asserted their choice, "We will obey!"
What is this model? It is a way of learning wherein we approach a large body of material, a rich mass of Torah, and we decide to jump in, no matter what. We establish a relationship with Torah even before we are given the time to think about it. What prompts us to do this? Many things: love, intuition, that sense in your gut that something about this is simply right for you. (Is it something like what makes you dance at the mishmar on Thursday nights in camp?) Maybe it's even something more intellectual; reading the laws through once, seeing them all together on the table, maybe they strike you as good laws, as a system worth accepting. Sometimes as learners, we need to approach the Torah that way if we are ever going to develop a close personal relationship with it. We have to have the experience of instinct and of choice.
For the Netziv, however, this was definitely NOT the model that our verse is proposing. In his commentary on the Torah, he writes that the Ramban is plainly wrong. About the verse from last week's parashah ("וַיָּשֶׂם לִפְנֵיהֶם"), he writes the following:
| It is impossible to interpret that ["he put before them"] means that he said them as they were, because if so, there would be no need for the text to inform us that Moshe did just what God said, since in all such instances the Torah does not do that unless it is trying to tell us something else. Further, why would it say, "he put" and not "he said"? Rather, "he put" refers to an explanation, as it says in Eruvin. | "וַיָּשֶׂם לִפְנֵיהֶם"-אי אפשר לפרש שאמר הדברים כהוייתן דאם כן, לא נצרך הכתוב להודיע שעשה משה כמו שדיבר לו ה' והרי בכל הפרשיות לא כתיב הכי אם לא שבא לאיזה למוד. ותו, למאי כתיב "וישם" ולא "ויאמר"? אלא, פירוש "וישם" הוא פירוש הדברים, כדאיתא בעירובין. |
That last bit is a reference to a passage in the Talmud Bavli, based on a statement in the Mekhilta. Both texts bring teachings of R. Akiva that bring various Scriptural verses to demonstrate the great lengths to which a teacher must go to make sure that students understand what they are learning. The Mekhilta's version, after quoting from the first verse of our parashah, says that teacher must "ערכם לפניהם כשלחן ערוך"-"spread out [the teaching] before them like a set table". This is taken to mean that a teacher should explain the laws, present them in their full and elaborated form, ready for comprehension like a set table. The Bavli's version (Eruvin 54b) concludes, "ומניין שחייב להראות לו פנים? שנאמר, 'ואלה המשפטים אשר תשים. לפניהם'"-"From where do we learn that a teacher is obligated to provide explanations and reasons to the student? Because it says, ‘These are the rules you shall put before them'" (the first verse of our parashah). In this vein, R. Baruch Ha-Levi Epstein writes in his commentary to these lines in Torah Temimah that the point is that the teacher "shouldn't simply say it as a fixed law [and say] ‘this is how I heard it; understand the reason on your own.'" (".לא יאמר כהלכה פסוקה, 'כך שמעתי והטעם הבן עצמך'")
This doesn't sound very much like the Ramban's model. The Ramban didn't paint a picture where a teacher slowly explains passages to a student and helps her understand, but where the teacher (lovingly, of course) places the text in front of the student and watches her fall in love with it on her own, without searching for specific meaning and explanation just yet.
Going back to the Netziv, in his comment on the opening verse of our parashah he says, exquisitely:
| "That you shall put before them." | "אשר תשים לפניהם": |
| This means: thorough explanation, as it is says in Eruvin 54b, and as I wrote above regarding "he put [the laws] before them". And the Holy Blessed One said this explicitly here more than in any other place in the Torah because Parashat Mishpatim is written with incomparable brevity, and there are sections of the Torah that have no understandability without the explanation of the tradition." | משמעו, 'באר היטב', כדאיתא בעירובין דנ"ד וכמש"כ לעיל בפ' "וישם לפניהם". ופי' הקב"ה כאן יותר מבכל התורה משום דפ' משפטים באה בקיצור מופלג ויש פרשיות שאין להם שום הבנה מבלי הביאור בקבלה... |
I want to highlight two aspects of the Netziv's comments. First, he distinguishes Parashat Mishpatim from other parts of the Torah. It is critical to be able to distinguish in this way. Not all Torah is the same, and not all learning is to be approached the same way. Although he explicitly rejects the Ramban's read of this verse, perhaps the Netziv would allow and even encourage Ramban's model in other places in the Torah, other aspects of learning. That sense of overawed enthusiasm seeing this vast sea of law and tradition has its place, and it is part of our learning and our relationship to Torah. (Maybe this was even how you reacted to your first fast read through of our parashah.) We need to make room for that, and try to leave a space inside of our careful, thinking, questioning minds for a bit of impulsiveness, I think.
But for the Netziv, Parashat Mishpatim wasn't the place to do that, and this brings me to the second point I want to highlight. It seems that Mishpatim represents for the Netziv some very hard questions. He says at the outset that there are things that, read on their own, are simply incomprehensible! Read inside the parashah again; are there things that trouble you? Are there questions you have that if you really thought about them but had no commentaries to turn to might gnaw at you all of Shabbat (or longer)? So the Netziv believes that this fast-paced parashah is one of those learning endeavors in which we need to slow down, approach the tradition and ask: What does this mean? We don't need to be worried that the first read leaves us confused, and we don't need to expect of ourselves at this time that ecstatic impulsive acceptance. Sometimes, the better path is going to be a slow and steady process of relationship building with the text, and only then will be able to accept it.
I think we need to keep both these models handy as we engage in Torah study and Torah living. Sometimes it will be a surprise even to ourselves which model kicks in when. This week, test it out on our parashah. If you feel more like the Ramban, celebrate it! Sing and dance and daven this Shabbat about it, and read the parashah over and over! And if you feel more like the Netziv, well, do the same singing and dancing and davening! But also pick up a Torah commentary and read up about your questions; ask your parents and siblings what they think; listen to your rabbi's sermon. And have a wonderful and peaceful Shabbat.