A Taste of Shabbos – Parashat Mishpatim

Mishpatim is replete with down to earth, interpersonal laws like borrowing and lending, and guarding people’s property. Many apply the quip to this parasha: ‘After the ecstasy, comes the laundry.’  In other words, after the transcendent revelation at Sinai where, as Rashi puts it, the three million were as ‘one person, with one heart,’ the Jews came back to the everyday world of damages, thievery, lies, and yes, even enslavement. All these worldly problematic situations apply on many levels, but sadly they may still continue to exist on a literal level till the Messianic age. So, lots about money here, and much about property and borrowing and loans, but in the middle of it all there is another reminder about Shabbos. What’s it doing there, especially since those other issues are not supposed to concern us on the day of rest? Also, very close to the Shabbos reminder, is a unique command, ‘from a word of lies, keep yourself distant.’ What can be the connection? Here is one perspective: If we circle back to the Ten Commandments, we find that if we look at them five by five, we find the mitzvah of Shabbos corresponds to the prohibition of bearing false witness. Ah, now we can find a connection. Shabbos is about testifying to the truth of existence, and is the opposite of being a false witness, where the ultimate lie is to act as if the world functions on its own, independently of a higher power. In fact, ideally when reciting Kiddush, a person should have first taken time for self-reflection and any necessary Teshuva, because saying Kiddush is meant to bear witness to Hashem’s creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. Now, a transgressor of Torah law is disqualified from being a witness. However, the Talmud tells us that when reciting Kiddush with proper intention, the reciter is forgiven for all transgressions!

This brings us back to the unusual opening set of laws in Mishpatim regarding a Hebrew slave. This law is specifically for someone who stole and needed to become a slave- or more like an indentured servant- to pay off the theft. But then there’s a curious caveat- if he still wants to remain a slave after seven years- his ear (lobe, not inside) must be pierced- why? Rashi tells us, the ear that heard on Mt. Sinai- to ME the Jews are servants and not servants of others. In other words, the nation cried out, ‘Naaseh v’Nishma- we will do and we will hear.’ However, this one, the thief, didn’t do right because he didn’t hear correctly. Now the Shabbos connection can be made. The Torah gives two reasons for keeping Shabbos- because G-d rested from creation, and because He took the Jews out of Egypt, to get the Torah. As G-d originally told Moshe- I am taking you out so that you will SERVE ME (and no others) on this mountain. Furthermore, the synchronicity with the number seven in relation to the slave and Shabbat is not an accident. In fact, Rashi comments that the impact of resting is meant to remind us that even in a Shmita year, the seventh year where the land of Israel must also ‘rest’ and lie fallow, we still need to observe the seventh day of the week. In fact, if we recall that Shabbos is a taste of the world to come, in the entire Jewish calendar of our lives, some sages point out that we are in the ‘Friday afternoon’ of the six thousand years of history, before the seventh millennium called ‘the day that is a complete Shabbat.’ During these six thousand years, we have been like servants who struggle to do what’s right as we battle resistant forces without and within that try to challenge and distract us from fulfilling our purpose in life. However, these struggles are meant to increase our yearnings to become the best people we can be. Shabbos is intended to give us an inkling of how to go through this process between the six days of laundry and the seventh day of ecstasy. May this mini training process finally reveal our objectives of open rejoicing with all the goodness and happiness that this world, called G-d’s special garden, is meant to contain.