Two Minute Torah Podcast

Mishpatim 5768 by Rabbi Shalom Kantor

Shalom, my name is Shalom Kantor, KOACH-Hillel campus Rabbi at Binghamton University in upstate New York and I want to welcome you to another great edition of KOACH’s Two-Minute Torah; a project of the College Department of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Over the winter break I spent one week with a group of students from Binghamton University in West Virginia working in severe poverty stricken coal mining towns. We were there on the one hand to help build or refurbish homes but on the other hand we were also there to work with a group of young adults who had all dropped out of school and gotten into some sort of trouble with the law…

We worked side by side with these young men and women on these housing projects, and even though we were there for only a week, we got to know them pretty well. We learned many of their stories, how they had gone astray and what they were doing to get their lives back in shape. The stories were amazing but… what was most amazing was that they all shared a certain element.

For almost all of the people that we worked with they had no stable home. Many of them had been kicked out of their parents home at early ages, and some really did not know who their parents really were.

They had no role models to look up to or help to guide them in how to get along within the larger society. They had all ended up letting the poverty of the region lead them to a life where they became a burden on the society–hence they ended up in this program which was in many ways a social rehabilitation program, often involving some sort of adoptive parental figure who helped get them back on track.

So what does this have to do with Parashat Mishpatim, a parashah which is about how to set up a new society for the newly freed Israelites? Well, our Parashah starts off with laws concerning Jewish slaves. Now wait a minute, didn’t the Israelites just leave slavery—didn’t they just escape the cruel life of bondage and the dismal lives of having masters over them?

Yes, they did… and that is exactly why G-d gave these laws to the Israelites at this crucial time. The only life that they Israelites knew at this point was a life of servitude. They only model of a society that they Israelites had seen was one of master and slave. Hence it would only make sense that as the Israelites went to set up their own society they would institute a similar structure, as people tend to replicate that which they saw and absorbed through their child hood.

G-d started this section with the laws on how they would treat their slaves. G-d did not desire a replication of the Egyptian Society where there was total domination and subjugation of the slave population by their masters, rather G-d desired a society where justice was at the center of the social structure, where people would be treated with dignity and honor. G-d realized that the Israelites could not totally do away with the concept of slavery, as that had been a central social institution in the Egyptian society from which they had just escaped. So G-d turned the institution of slavery into a form of social rehabilitation. The slaves were in essence adopted by another family in order to help get them out of the financial situation they had fallen into and get back to being a productive member of the larger society.

May we all be blessed with realizing how fortunate we all are to be in our positions and realize that at times in our lives their may be others who simply need a new chance and some help finding a person to look up to and place to call home.