Rabbi Roodyn

In a world where you can be anything, be kind. This quote from Jennifer Dukes Lee is trending, but for tragic reasons. We live in a cruel world, and if you live online, it’s a very cruel world, where anonymous individuals can say the most spiteful things.

What are we meant to take from this?

It’s common to have the luchos up in shul and indeed we have our own version here, but they only ever have a few words on them, just to jog our memory, but they are nothing like the real thing.

Now take a look at them, the luchos were split into two groups of five, with the first set being between us and Hashem, the second set are between us and each other.  Whilst they look very neat, in truth there was major disparity between the text on the first tablet and the text on the second one.

So in true Blue Peter fashion, here’s one, or two! I made earlier luchos rema pano a3.pdf

The 16^th century Italian scholar, the Rema mi Pano makes this observation and tells us something remarkable. In order to preserve some kind of aesthetic balance between the two tablets, Hashem so to speak altered the font size of the second tablet, so that the text would indeed fill the space!

This means that when Moshe came down the mountain, the words that stood out, that shouted louder are bein adam le chavero.

Which bring us to the first letter of our parsha which primarily deals with the laws governing interpersonal relationships, ve eleh hamishpatim. And these are the laws. These laws says Rashi are connected to the event that happened before. It’s a vav hachibbur. It connects us back to Mount Sinai. Just as the ten commandments were given on Mount Sinai, so too were all these pieces of social legislation. Our parsha ends back at the mountain with another account of the giving of the Torah. Without going into the chronology of the events, its clear that these Misphatim are a key element in the process of the giving of the Torah.

Perhaps this teaches us that Torah is all about chibbur, connection, relationships – with others, with Hashem and with ourselves.

In fact if we read the luchos across rather than down, we will notice that they parallel each other. Belief in Hashem corresponds to Do not murder, because humanity is created in the image of G-d.

If we look through our daily lives we will notice that we actually do very few Torah mitzvos that are between us and Hashem, most of our mitzvos are between us and other people. Yes, we say shema, daven, men wear tallis and tefillin, we learn Torah, we bentch, but how much time does that take. Most of our day revolves around human interactions, ve ahavta lereyacha kamocha, giving others the benefit of the doubt, acting with honesty and integrity in our financial dealings, speaking positively about people and the list goes on and on.

The Rambam explains that Hashem gives us relationships with others in order to teach us how to have a relationship with Hashem. Or as Rav Yisrael Salanter, the famed founder of the Musar movement said, yenem’s gashimius is mein ruchnius, ‘Taking care of someone else’s physical needs, is an act of spirituality’,

The details and laws of Mishpatim fill many of the vast masechtos of shas, they are the backbone of the Talmud, they form the core curriculum of any Yeshiva education. The essence of them is to develop a sensitivity to others, to be attentive to their needs and to see every human being and their property as being worthy of profound respect.

Don’t just perform acts of kindness as a religious duty, rather the religious duty to develop a sensitivity, to genuinely care about others, to respect them regardless of who they are or what they might do.

This is the lesson of Jewish spirituality that is sandwiched between two accounts of Maamad Har Sinai.

Or as chazal said אמר רב יהודה האי מאן דבעי למהוי חסידא לקיים מילי דנזיקין (Bava Kama 30a) one who wants to be a chassid, to reach the highest levels of spirituality should learn and live by these laws.