Mishpatim

With God's help you and I are going to begin studying a new weekly portion, the portion Mishpatim. It begins with chapter 21 of the book of Shemot. This portion is unusual. Unlike other portions, in which we read some narrative, a story about some events that happen to the Forefathers, to the Fathers or to the people of Israel, here we will read, in essence, a code, a list of Divine laws. To some it will seem that this list is disorderly, but we will sort this out little by little. The Decalogue has already been given, but the two tablets have not yet been born, nothing has been written on them yet. This is the very beginning of God's communication with the people and the very first laws (not commandments, but laws, there is a difference) which the Most High gives to the people of Israel. Let us read and little by little figure it out.

The word mishpatím – is the plural of the word mishpát (court), in the modern understanding precisely court proceedings or a sentence. A sentence as a unit of language can be interrogative, exclamatory, declarative, a literary sentence or a complete, formulated thought. What does the Most High say to Moshe here? He says: “Here are examples of laws, examples of statutes and of decisions of some concrete situations, which you will lay before the people of Israel, through which you will teach them to recognize, in general, what Divine Law is.” When people try to teach a computer to recognize faces, male or female, they show it many, many faces mixed together and mark them: this one is male, this one is female. Gradually a neural network forms in it, and the computer learns (this is how artificial intelligence is created) to recognize faces. I am saying this in a very simplified way. The human brain, a child's brain, works in exactly the same way. You and I, any one of us, tell a male face from a female one on the basis of experience, on the basis of having seen many faces. For example, seeing some apple, we can say that it is an apple. Or, on the other hand, seeing an eggplant, we will certainly not take it for an apple. And here the Most High says: “Here are examples, here are samples of laws, on the basis of which the people of Israel will learn to apply them afterward.” We will examine further on how this works. And so the Most High begins to list his laws, exemplary model laws.

It is amazing that the Most High decided to begin with this law. Not with “unity, equality, fraternity,” not with some slogans, not with “if you are cooking borscht, pour some for your neighbor; if you smelled plov at your neighbor's, grab a plate and go over to him” – no, with “if you buy a Jewish slave.” The conversation will be about the most socially vulnerable group of the population, about slaves. What was happening in the world? A person could sell himself into slavery or be resold as a slave (we are not talking about slaves who were captured during a war). A person who found himself in debt, found himself in a difficult situation, in deep need, could sell himself into slavery. He would come to the owner, to his potential master, and say: “I want to sell myself into slavery.” He would be paid some sum, let's say 600 thousand rubles (an approximate equivalent), and he came for his whole life under the owner's command. From that moment on he did any work the owner wished, in exchange for shelter, food and clothing, in exchange for his upkeep. That is how it was in the whole world, that is how slaves were bought. Many people, using the need, using the economic difficulties of their neighbors, of those close to them, of their fellow tribesmen, bought them as slaves and in this way grew rich on someone else's need. In the whole world slaves became slaves for life, but they could save up some money and buy themselves out. We read about Roman slaves that they bought themselves out, often for very large sums of money. But here – you can buy him, however after six years he will go out to freedom without payment. You can pay him, but you take him and conclude an agreement with him: “You, slave, receive a lump sum of some money, come under my unlimited command, but only for six years.” In fact, it is not quite so. A slave may not be punished physically, he has to be provided for economically. If you have one pillow for the two of you, then you must give it to the slave, and there are many, many more laws that define this. A slave may not be forced to wash your feet or to do some degrading work; a slave has a whole range of rights, with this verse everything is only beginning. But most importantly, he becomes your slave only for six years. This is first of all a protection of the slave: a person, even a slave, must know that his slavery has an end.

It happens that a married man sells himself into slavery, but naturally does not sell his wife. The Oral Torah says: “In this case the owner must provide shelter, clothing and food also to the wife and her children: if she has five children, then to five, if six, then to six. He has the right to demand of them that they do some work, engage in some handicraft and so on, but that is already as with hired workers.” That is, if the owner buys a married slave with a family, he acquires a whole mass of problems for himself: he must feed his whole large family, and after six years the whole family will leave him. Not to mention that the woman, the wife, may leave even before that, if she so pleases, since he did not buy her. And there is one more option:

This is a case that is not very understandable to us from the point of view of our modern morality. It is the case when the master says to the slave: “While you are a slave here, here, marry this foreign woman (in no case is this a Jewish woman, because a Jewish woman may not be given in marriage in this way). If you want – have children by her (the owner profits from this: his slaves multiply). But when the six years of your slavery are over, then you go out, and you leave them.” This is in fact a dilemma of incredible weight. We say here: “And if he says: I love my wife?” It is not so easy to go out to freedom and leave your wife, even if she is a foreigner. That is: even if he came alone and the owner married him off, he still goes out alone. And although, of course, we know, tradition condemns a person who stays in slavery in such a situation, still, think about it, leaving your wife and children is not so easy.

That is: “Everything in this situation suits me, here they feed me, give me drink, clothe me. It is not a given that in freedom I will earn that much, and here I also have a wife and children, whom I love (this may be the complete truth), I am attached to them, I do not want freedom.” And what then?

Here one can understand the word elohím either in its direct meaning – God, or as the judges of that place. That is, this person must testify before the Most High: “I understand exactly what I am saying, I accept exactly all the consequences of my decision.” Or he is brought to the judges, and he testifies, and after that what happens happens. The word lirtzó'a means to pierce, martzé'a – is an awl, a “piercer.” The word le'olám (forever) in this case means until the jubilee year. In the jubilee year everyone goes out to freedom, no refusals are accepted there.

If a person has decided to stay, he is brought to the doorpost and branded. The brand remains on the ear, the brand remains on the doorpost. If the person changed his decision, decided to run away, he can be brought back and, as an identifying mark, shown: here, look, here is his height, here is his ear, here is the piercing, here are the traces of the piercing on the doorpost. And no identity document is needed, no fingerprint examination is needed: there is an ear print, of the ear that is marked this way. Many commentators ask: “Why precisely the ear?” and say: “This is that very ear which already at Sinai heard: you are My children, heard: I brought you out of slavery, and the person wanted to go back into slavery.” Well then, if you please, ear, suffer. If such faith is born from your hearing, then that is how we will mark you. But there is also a simple understanding: an ear is very convenient to present as proof. All the eastern peoples also put brands on animals' ears. If in Israel a car accident happens involving a camel, immediately some passing Bedouin appears, cuts off the camel's ears – and the camel's owner can no longer be found or punished. Here, of course, it is not a camel but a person, and many thousands of years have passed, but the principle is the very same: the ear is branded.

In verse 7 there is another situation that is astonishing for our times.

This can be understood in different ways. The commentators have this understanding: “She will not work outside the house, she may not be sent to the forest for firewood, may not be sent fishing, may not be sent out at night for beer, because the girl is little,” amá in this case is a minor girl. A minor girl was sold into slavery so that she would help a little around the house, babysit someone, maybe do some kind of handicraft. But the point is that she is, in essence, intended later on to enter into marriage with her master, and the Torah speaks about this. One can clutch one's head and say: this is horrible, this is sexual slavery! It really does sound horrible, it really is a horrible situation, but here one needs to understand that the Torah is not given to a people of righteous ones. The Torah was given, is given to former slaves, to a not particularly developed community with certain views on life. And today, both among the Arabs and among many peoples of Central Asia, to give a girl in marriage to a rich man, so that she improves her situation or the situation of her family, is a perfectly understandable thing. And they do give them, this happens in the countries of Eastern Europe too, in general this always happens in poor countries. The Torah is given not to a society of angels, not to a society of holy people who have nothing to do with this world, but is given to society as it was then. The essence, the meaning and the secret power of the Torah is that society should change. Thank God, we have lived to see the time when daughters are not sold among the people of Israel, there are no slaves, the people has grown. But in order for it to grow, the Torah came down to its level, and the Most High did not disdain the people at the level at which it existed then.

So, a person could give his minor daughter into slavery. A slave (éved) – is one who works (ovéd), a worker. Amá, as distinct from éved, is more a nanny, human hands, the one who does something with her hands. But the point is that a girl, coming into a stranger's house, must be protected from any encroachment on her person. And she can no longer simply be let go just like that. And in verse 8 we read this:

That is, the girl has grown up, she turns 12, or she shows the signs of a woman: hair on the fingers, on the first phalanx of the fingers, nowhere else on her body is her hair checked, of course. If she has grown up, and it is time for her to marry (yes, yes, back then they married that early, at 12, and at 13, and at 14), but the owner did not like her, he can turn to the family and say: “Try to buy her back, I will give you a discount, buy her back.” But if it does not work out, he may not betray her, his slave woman, by selling her to a foreigner. Despite the fact that she was sold to him as a slave woman, he must keep faith with her, he has no right to sell her to a foreigner.

That is, if he decides that this young woman is more suitable for his son, then he must give her a dowry, buy her a dress and do everything necessary that is due to a young woman in such a situation, everything that her parents would have done.

That is, if the owner wants to take himself another wife, then he will have to observe three conditions: she'erá – this word means festive meat food, that is, worthy nourishment for her; kesutá – according to many versions, this is festive clothing for her; onatá can be understood as her time, that is, he will not stop paying attention to her. Some commentators speak of this in a very simplified, a very natural sense – he must satisfy her sexually. Other commentators say: “No, this is about attention, about the fact that he must give her time, must find time to listen to her and to be with her, despite the fact that he has taken himself a second wife.” Still other commentators say that time here is her leisure, that time which she spends on herself, and that means cosmetics, oil (means of anointing), jewelry and so on. There are parallels to this in texts, in the laws of other peoples, where it is said that a man who leaves his wife must keep providing her with food, shelter, clothing and oil (oil in the sense of cosmetics). Here too it is said that even if a man has decided to take himself a second wife, he must not deprive the first one of all this.

What these three are, we cannot really understand. Possibly this refers to the very beginning of the conversation: if he cannot settle with her by having her bought back, give her to his son or take her as a wife, then she goes out for free, he is obliged to let her go. Or possibly what is meant is that he does not agree, does not take upon himself the obligation to support her constantly on the three points we spoke about: to feed her well, to dress her beautifully, to present her with jewelry or to pay attention to her. Let me remind you that here we are talking about a girl from a very, very poor family. According to the Oral Torah, a person has no right to sell his daughter, to give his daughter into slavery, even if he has only a blanket; if he has at least a blanket, he may not sell his daughter. One has to be left with absolutely nothing at all in order to sell a daughter. The Most High says that even a girl from such a family, in such a condition, is protected by the court. This girl and this slave are so important to the Most High that he starts the first conversation with the people of Israel around this: does not speak about the laws of the king, about the laws of respect for the authorities and so on, but begins the conversation with the very, very simple, the very, very lowest layers of society.

The punishment for death is death. The Most High is not against the death penalty, as you might think when reading in chapter 20 the commandment lo tirtzách (do not kill). No, a murderer may be killed and, as the Most High says here, even must be killed. But in verse 13 we read:

For example, a person accidentally dropped a stone, a person fired, thinking that he was shooting at a bear, and hit another person – who knows what other reasons there may be. There is an interesting midrash that in the land of Israel, among the road signs, there were only signs to the cities of refuge, that is, all the Divine signs point to places of salvation, places where one can be saved: God leads a person to salvation. If a person killed unintentionally, he can be saved from death, from the avenging relatives, in the cities of refuge.

In the Tanach we read similar stories: a malicious murderer is punished, even if he cries out for mercy, even if he came and grabs the horns of the altar and says: “LORD, save and help!” So says the LORD here.

The commentator says: “If he inflicted some bodily injury on them.” Is there a bruise? Is there, God forbid, a fracture? That's it, the person deserves death, regardless of whether they died or not, because there is the commandment to honor father and mother. Family values are very important, therefore there is a very strict punishment for a person striking his father or mother. Father or mother are above the law in the sense that a person is not punished with death for a simple beating, but for beating his father or mother – he will surely die. It would seem one could say the opposite: well, mother and father will forgive, if he beats them, that means he loves them… No, not the opposite, although to some it may seem logical to say so, but whoever strikes his father or mother will surely die.

A person who engages in kidnapping fellow believers in order to sell them into slavery will surely die. We spoke about this in detail at 20:13, when we examined the commandment lo tignóv (do not steal).

What does this mean? It is when a person says: “May it be so to you! May such and such happen to you!” Or he says things against, slanders his father and his mother. That is, the respect for father and for mother is so strong that even for a verbal curse, for some evil words, a person still deserves death. Pay attention that the commandments are arranged as if unsystematically, one could have placed this law right after the one striking his father… The Most High arranges this differently, as if jumping from topic to topic, so that we follow not the topic but the voice, one could say, the overall handwriting of the Most High.

That is, he will pay sick leave, so to speak, an unemployment benefit, but he will not be punished by death or by some other penalties. Why? Because this happened in a quarrel; a person seized, gripped by a quarrel acted this way.

These are the first laws of the Most High that we see here, the first laws that we are getting acquainted with here. And we will still get to the conclusion that the people of Israel will draw from all of this. Each of these laws, I think, has relevance to us too. Even though we, of course, do not sell daughters into slavery, we encounter girls whose protection and patronage have been placed upon us; people who are in a difficult economic situation and whose patronage has been laid upon us. And we must make decisions ourselves about how we are to treat these people, if we are to treat them according to God's laws.

Here comes a little bull, butting (21:20–22:3)

So, we said that the weekly portion Mishpatim is unusual in that it does not contain a description of events. It consists of various legal examples, various court decisions, on the basis of which any reader can form an idea of how the courts of the Most High are arranged in relations between people at all levels of the existence of God's people.

This person deserves death if the slave and the slave woman died immediately under his hand.

Much is unclear at once in a single verse. First, why is it written “he survives a day or two”? If he survives a day, then it is already clear that he will survive two as well. Why write “or two”? “A day or two” – this means more than one day, that is, a little more than a day, like a year and one day. If he lives more than twenty-four hours, that is, does not die immediately. What is the essence here? A person struck with a staff, and when people strike with a staff, they know that one can unintentionally kill with it. A staff is the kind of tool with which it is easy to strike; the hand does not hurt when you strike with a staff. That is how in many schools of eastern martial arts they first teach striking with a stick, so that a person is not afraid to strike, is not afraid to hurt his own hand. When a person strikes with a staff – the hand is not afraid, it does not hurt, he does not feel the difference in force and can inflict greater injury. One can strike in such a way, in such a place, as to kill a person immediately. If he killed immediately, then he is subject to judgment. If the one who was struck lived more than twenty-four hours, that is, the body was not dealt injuries that brought immediate death in their wake (this is a peculiarity of jurisprudence: immediate death is death within less than twenty-four hours), if there is no immediate death, then the one who struck is not subject to the death penalty. Why? It is written: ki chaspó – it is his money. Interesting, what does it is his money mean? This expression has two understandings. The first understanding says: “Because a person may beat a slave in order to prevent his own economic loss. He needs the slave, and if the slave is lazy, refuses to work, sabotages something, the slave has to be managed somehow, and therefore one can find some justifying circumstances in the fact that a person struck his slave.” Although this is not a permission, it is a kind of justification, a mitigating circumstance. The second option: killing a slave causes a loss to the master himself, that is, a person will not beat a slave who is his property. In those times a slave was the master's property. And just as a person today does not want to deliberately wreck his car, at that time he did not want to deliberately kill his slave. And in such a case the killing speaks of a certain unintentionality of the events. Our section (these two verses) speaks of certain mitigating circumstances and the absence of an intention to kill. In verse 22 a completely different story is before us:

The word netz means eagle or hawk. Two people were fighting, brawling, clashed, and in the fight unintentionally pushed a woman who happened to be passing by. They got into a fight, sank so low that they pushed a pregnant woman. We are speaking of that age when a woman who had a miscarriage could die from loss of blood. Here she had a miscarriage, but she herself did not perish. What happened from the legal point of view? At that moment the child that is in the woman's body, a small embryo, – is like her internal organ: after all, it is in the womb, attached to it by the placenta and, in essence, is one of the organs of her body until the moment of birth. Thus, when unintentional harm is done to a woman – it is like bodily injury with respect to the woman. We are not now examining, the Torah is not now examining, what happens with respect to the child. If this were done deliberately, we would be speaking of killing the fetus, but the event under discussion is treated by the legal process as bodily injury with respect to the woman. And the court's duty is to exact money from such a person. A person may say: “But I did not mean to push her” or “I did not push her so hard that she would have a miscarriage, and maybe she is in general a woman who often has miscarriages…” No, here it says that the judicial system itself must intervene and make the person pay what the father demands. How can one demand money, how can one put a value on a miscarriage? And here, however cruel it sounds, the principle of a “price list for people” operates. We read a lot in the Torah about the ransom for a soul depending on age and health. For example, how much more expensive was a pregnant slave woman sold than one who was not pregnant? Many similar examples.

So, the husband can assess the damage that was caused, and this damage is compensated financially. If we said that this person who inflicted such injuries on the woman must be killed, shot, put in prison, have his hand and foot amputated, have an eye gouged out or something else, the family would not have any compensation for the damage. The family would receive nothing, and it would receive no relief if that person suffered punishment, and the Torah, one could say, reduces everything to money, regulates everything in an understandable way.

This court, this judicial process, it must certainly be said, – is mercy also toward the criminal. The criminal has the opportunity to wipe this guilt off himself, to return to society, because he too is a creation of the Most High. And we are not interested, just as the Most High is not interested, in the death of the sinner. One can regard this however one likes, but this is how the Torah formulates this law.

And further on, general rules follow. Rules which, one could say, among those who argue with the Torah, among the opponents of the Torah, have become a byword among the nations (among the pagans in the literal sense of the word).

These are the kinds of rules being listed, and one can understand this – many understand it exactly so – that if a person gouged out his neighbor's eye, his eye may also be gouged out. And so up to two times. After the third, if he gouged out the eye of some third person, he is no longer punishable. Hands are also two, and feet are also two. Burns, of course, can be inflicted on a person endlessly. And probably there would have been the position of a “burner” – a person who would repay for burns; he would have branding irons, and he would burn with them. And one would have had to burn exactly as many burns as the person had inflicted on the victim. This probably would have had to be a jeweler's art. In exactly the same way also the “breaker.” There would have been such a master executioner who would break to order ribs, thighs, the neck of the femur or the little finger. That is how all this can be understood, and that is how it is often understood. What use the victim would have from this process is completely incomprehensible. And meanwhile the injured person who lost an eye or a leg also lost his ability to work, in essence lost the possibility of providing a living for himself and his family. In those times there was no disability allowance, there were no social payments. In the first book of Melachim in chapter 20 there is an invented story about a slave who was left in someone's care, and there the understanding of this word táchat, which we translated as for, is expressed completely clearly. It also means instead of. That is, I must give a person an eye instead of an eye, not my own eye, but some compensation for it. And we know that already in the times of the Second Temple these verses were interpreted precisely so. And we also know that the sages did not consider this a midrash, the sages considered this the simple meaning of the Torah. Look for the basis for this in chapter 20 of the book of Melachim: at the very end of the chapter there is a story that “your soul will be instead of his soul, so you will give a soul for a soul,” that is, you will serve, do service in place of this person, and your people will be instead of his people.

So, one must understand that the word táchat is very rarely used; it means to be instead of something, to give instead of something. That is, the value of an eye instead of an eye, the value of a hand instead of a hand. Again we say: “Oops! Here everything comes down to money.” Yes, often everything comes down to money. And again this is mercy toward the criminal and, in this case, mercy toward the victim, because if one simply gouged out the criminal's eye, the victim would not be able to go on living at the expense of the criminal's gouged-out eye. Judgment, in the Jewish understanding of carrying out judgment – is always mercy both toward the criminal (who can rid himself of his guilt before society, before the one whom he harmed, close the circle for himself) and toward the victim. Of course, mercy shows itself in different forms, but one must remember that judgment can also be mercy, and the rules of compensation for financial damage are a general rule for the whole canon that is called Nezekin – the laws of damages in Judaism.

In verse 26 we will read the development of this idea. We said, for example, last time that if a person strikes his neighbor, he is subject to death. But if this blow is dealt to a slave, as we read at the beginning of this chapter, then there are certain mitigating circumstances and the person is not subject to death. The relations between neighbors and the relations of master and slave differ a little from each other. This in no way means that a slave has no rights, but, having explained the situation in general, the Torah again speaks and explains using the example of a slave:

It is interesting that in Hebrew an expression has formed for “to barely get out of something,” that is, “to go out for a tooth and for an eye,” to get out, so to speak, with one's last strength, to break free from something. Why the eye separately and the tooth separately? Because there are only two eyes, and damage to an eye is very serious damage. A tooth is smaller damage. A person is not even assessed as a worker by the number of his teeth. To the master it makes no particular difference how much he eats. A tooth after all differs in the level of damage, and it is worth saying here that even because of small damage caused to a slave, the master is obliged to let him go to freedom. The price of any organ: a finger, an ear, a tooth – is freedom. A slave has a right to his body. If his body is damaged in some way, he goes out to freedom. And we are now talking about the relationship between person and person, about intentional crimes, about unintentional crimes, about when a person intended it and it happened, or it happened by accident.

The Torah describes various situations, but the world consists not only of people; in the world there is also people's property, property can also cause harm, and we read about this further on:

The ox has an owner, and through the owner's negligence or perhaps through the negligence of the man or the woman – it does not matter through whose fault it happened – the ox gored a person, and the person died. Here there is no evil intent of a person, there is not even unintentional killing on the part of the owner of the ox; one can say that this is a natural phenomenon, but the Torah says that the ox will be stoned with stones, that is, it will be killed in such a way that it cannot be eaten, and the owner of the ox will be clean. As his punishment he received the loss of the ox. An ox is rather expensive property, it could turn out to be everything a person has. One can picture this story differently: if a person, because of a malfunction of his car, an unexpected malfunction, caused an accident, then all compensation for the damage comes at the expense of the insurance company, in essence, one can say, “at the expense of the car,” if it is an accidental malfunction which the person really could not have kept track of. I am simplifying very much, simply comparing, so that the laws are understandable. The Torah speaks not only about oxen, but what it says applies, generally speaking, to a dog as well. And when we say: “If he struck with a staff,” then it is clear that if one strikes with rebar or nunchucks, the rule of the staff applies here too. The Torah gives us concrete court cases so that we see the general picture. Exactly so also with the ox.

Again, if a person knows that his car is faulty, some piece of his equipment is faulty, and he did not keep watch over it, did not take care to repair it, despite the fact that he was warned, despite the fact that this malfunction had already made itself felt, he not only loses his property but is also subject to punishment. In this case we seem to begin to talk about the death penalty, but in verse 30 we read:

And again: we do not want the death of a person, even when he sometimes deserves death, therefore he is given the possibility to give a ransom for himself. If he had already been warned about his ox, if he had already been warned that his actions could lead to a disaster, but he did nothing to take care of the safety of those around him. Here we are speaking about when in accidents, in some misfortunes, something or someone is present whose will we cannot watch over, but we can only watch over it itself, look after it, so that it functions, so that it exists safely.

One more interesting question arises: if an ox that gores is immediately stoned and not eaten, then where did we get, in verse 29, such a repeat-offender bullock who manages to be goring both since yesterday and since the day before yesterday, and the owner is simply warned? Well, this is the case when the ox gored someone or tried to gore, but without serious consequences, or threatened someone. Or this ox was simply suspected, and they did not know whether it was really this ox, and they warned several owners. There are different options. Well, there are, after all, warnings that, for example, in certain cars there is some faulty system, in certain appliances one must watch something in particular, and in our case it is roughly this kind of situation. What should we do when not everything depends on us? We must in this case do what depends on us.

 31. If it gores a son or gores a daughter, it will be done to him according to this judgment.

Why is this written for us? This is written for us so that we extend what we have just learned to children as well. Children, one could say, like hooligans, can suddenly jump out into the street, throw themselves under the wheels, who knows what else they might get up to. Perhaps they were waving a red revolutionary banner in front of this bull, and the bull got furious at them. Yes, I know that bulls do not distinguish colors, this is just a metaphor. That is, perhaps the child made the bull angry… It does not matter. Whether a boy, whether a girl, whether a Negro of advanced years – it makes no difference, this judgment is passed on the owner of the bull, and one cannot say to the pedestrian, the passerby or the boy: “You yourself are to blame.”

In this case by male slave and female slave is meant a stranger, that is, a male or female slave from other peoples, because for “Soviet slaves”iThe Russian says “Soviet slaves” here, in quotation marks. This is probably a slip for “one's own slaves”, meaning Hebrew slaves from one's own people. It is translated literally. there cannot be such a judgment: they have relatives. But a slave who is taken from foreigners, perhaps he was captured somewhere as a result of a war, has no relatives, no one is dependent on him, and apart from the master he has no one. 30 shekels is the standard price for a statistically average slave. If it suddenly turns out that he knows Chinese, can play the cello or walk a tightrope, his price goes up, but on average the standard price of a slave, without taking his abilities into account, is 30 shekels. And 30 shekels is 30 measures of silver: the sale price of a slave and not only the sale price of a slave.

And the bull is stoned all the same. That is, if this happens to a slave who is only the master's property, then the master is compensated for the damage. Accordingly, if it is a car that crashed not into the master's slave but into his cart, into some property of his, if it is damage to property, then the value of the property is compensated. Compensated out of what? Well, once again out of the car insurance, if one translates this into modern language.

In verse 33 it again speaks of situations when death occurs not intentionally but through negligence. And so:

That is, causing damage to property through negligence.

34…the owner of the pit will pay money (the one who opened it), and the dead animal will be his.

That is, the owner of the pit pays the owners of the donkey or the bull the full value of this animal, and the animal itself stays with him. If through our fault some property of a person was damaged, then we pay him the full value, and the property itself stays with us. If we accidentally broke someone's cell phone, we must pay the value of this cell phone, and the broken phone itself stays with us. Well, of course, we are not now taking data protection into account.

Two bulls got into a fight. Here are two bulls that are both uncontrollable, neither of them has reason, nor any intentions, nor any fears. Everything is divided. That means, if some damage was caused to property half and half, then that means the damage is also divided in half. If this damage is connected with bulls, with dogs or with something we cannot control. But again, as we said last time:

In verse 37 it is already a completely different story:

Why such a difference? There is a very interesting remark on this point. When a person steals a bull, he drives it with a switch and leads it somewhere. Most often, when a person steals a ram, he carries it on himself. In this there is an element of shame, of fear. The person endures some suffering, he walks around with this ram, with this sheep or with this goat, it is very unpleasant for him, he is ashamed, and for this he has a mitigating circumstance. For a bull that a person drives, the repayment is fivefold, and for a sheep that he carries on himself – fourfold, because in this there is shame that the person has already endured.

We will read one more small piece of chapter twenty-two, which begins with a completely different case, one could say, with a case of self-defense:

At night a man was checking his cellar, discovered a tunnel in the cellar, discovered that there is a thief there, got scared of him: the thief might kill him, who knows what to expect from a thief. And, fearing for his life, for the purpose of self-defense, the owner killed this thief. And he is not subject to punishment, since he killed for the purpose of self-defense.

That is, if this happens in the light of day, and we see that this is simply a thief who wants to steal something from us but does not want to kill us, does not threaten our life, then he may not be killed; everything stolen can be recovered from him. After all, we know that this is a tunnel, and perhaps not only what the thief has now (what is on him) went missing, but the whole sum of what was stolen, the sum of the damage can be charged to himiThe Russian verb here usually means “to write off”. From the context it means that the whole damage can be charged to the thief, so it is translated that way.. And if he does not have it, he turns out his pockets and says: “Well, I drank it away, I drank it away, I partied it away or spent it on my sick mom,” then in this case he is sold into slavery for his theft, and here the motive does not matter.

That is, if a ram, or a goat, or a bull was found with the thief (alive, not alive – does not matter), he pays a double price as one caught red-handed. If a person who ran off with what was stolen pays a sum four or five times larger, as we read, then here, with a tunnel, if the thief was caught, if he managed to drag something off, he pays a double price in live rams, live sheep, live goats. At the price of live ones.

And so, we have read a rather large passage with various judgments. And it speaks not about concrete cases, the Torah speaks not only about a thief in a tunnel, not only about a person who killed his slave; behind this we must reconstruct, try to see the general scheme, the general principles of the Most High's justice.

We will continue reading from verse 4 of chapter 22. I will repeat what I have already said: this weekly portion does not contain a description of events, but consists of a list of laws that are examples, models for building a legislative system, for building law in the society of God's people. And we read law after law, example after example, so that a general understanding forms in us of how and why it all should be arranged.

Who are the tramplers? These are small livestock, for the most part rams; they trample everything they do not eat, they pack the soil down very tightly behind them, it becomes difficult to cultivate, the crops perish, and irreparable damage is done to the fields. Wild boars do the same thing too, but boars, naturally, are not in a person's power. That is, if I drove my rams (through carelessness or on purpose) onto someone else's field and ruined it, I must compensate with land of equal value. But I cannot say to the person: “I have a plot a little south of Salekhard, there you can make yourself a vineyard, I give it to you with all my heart as compensation.” No, I must pay and give my best vineyard or my best field, even if this field is better in quality than the one I damaged. Because a person must pay for his inattentiveness.

The second example is also about inattentiveness or carelessness:

That is, it is necessary to pay some monetary equivalent (as assessed by the judges) of the market value of the wheat, or of the haystack, or of whatever was damaged. There is no extra payment here, it is not a double payment, not a fourfold payment, but a payment of the full equivalent. Fire, of course, is much less controllable than oxen, or than livestock that tramples fields, but with it caution is also required; for carelessness one has to pay. When I carelessly burned a campfire and my neighbor's field caught fire, I cannot say to my neighbor: “Well, sorry, it's force majeure, it doesn't depend on me.” It does depend on me. A roughly similar situation – when I flooded my neighbor's apartment or accidentally set it on fire.

That is, a situation when someone, leaving for distant lands, left his grandfather's silver jug, a set of silver spoons and 500 dollars in cash with one of his friends and asked: “Please look after this, I will come back and pick it up, because I cannot take it with me on the road,” and all of it was stolen from his house. A very unpleasant situation. I picture myself in the place of each of the characters of this story: I left something dear to me with someone, some things, my great-grandmother's silver candlesticks, I come back, and I am told: “The candlesticks were stolen.” On the other hand, I also picture myself in the place of the person with whom these candlesticks were kept; they were stolen from him, and he has to somehow justify himself. It seems he wanted to do a good deed, and he turned out to be guilty.

What does neighbor's work mean here? It means that he not only did not take, did not steal this object, but also did not use it. That is, if I leave my candlesticks or my hand plane with someone, there is a difference whether this person will use them in his household or not. If he started using my hand plane, left it somewhere and the hand plane was stolen, then here negligence is already evident. The person did not think about fulfilling my request completely.

Let's say I came to a person and say to him: “Give back my candlesticks.” And he says: “Alex, forgive me, your candlesticks were stolen, forgive me, I didn't keep an eye on them.” Let's say I did not believe my friend and say: “Let's go to the judges, you will swear,” and he swore. Then a witness appears and says: “I saw how this ‘radish,’ this bad man, was burying your candlesticks under his barn.” That is the situation here. That is, there is a witness, there is an accuser, the judges listen, look. If the accuser was right, if this person who reported the theft is really found guilty, then he will pay a double share to his neighbor. And if the witness points to another person, to the thief who really stole, not to the master, God forgive, then here the one who stole will pay the double share. But the direct meaning – if after all the master of the house in which my things were kept is found guilty, then in this case he will pay the double share. If, however, they were stolen from his house, but it is proven that he did not take them, is not involved in it, then this is a case of force majeure.

One more example, which, it would seem, does not differ in any way from the previous example:

Again there is no witness, but after all I entrusted it to this person, there was trust between us; therefore, if it began with trust, let's also finish with trust – an oath of God will be between the two.

What is the difference? Why in one case, if it was stolen – well then, it was stolen, sorry, and in the other, if it was stolen – he will pay. The difference here is that in the first case I asked the person: “My friend, please keep it for me, free of charge, as a favor, keep my thing for me.” In the second case I gave the person my young bull, my lamb, so that he would graze it, I set him a monthly wage for being a shepherd, and he is not doing me a favor, but receives money from me. That is a big difference. Therefore, if it was stolen from him, that means he watched poorly and did not keep watch. But if it was taken from him and torn to pieces and he can prove it, then he does not have to pay me for it, he does not have to compensate me for it. Why so? I do not expect that the shepherd I hired will throw himself chest-first onto a pack of wolves that came to him for a ram. And I do not expect that he will walk into the bullets of bandits who came to take a young goat from him. Therefore, if he simply through inattentiveness or oversight allowed a theft – that is one thing. But if he did not risk his life, somewhere gave in to robbers, then that is something completely different, and in this case he, of course, is not obliged to pay. I myself would not always walk into someone else's bullets for a lamb, all the more I cannot ask my hired man to do it.

Here the situation is this: a person wants to borrow something from me and says: “Alex, give me the lawn mower (for example), I want to mow the lawn.” That is, my neighbor came to me and said: “Neighbor, give it to me.” I gave it to him, he left, went to mow the lawn, accidentally tried to mow a brick, and the lawn mower “kicked the bucket.” So this person must pay me. If, however, I myself went with my lawn mower to mow my neighbor's lawn – did not just lend it, but was nearby when my lawn mower broke – then he owes me nothing, he does not have to pay compensation. We read about this in verse 14:

That is, if I, Alex, went with my lawn mower, I will not be paid for damage to the tool. But if I was hired for money and told: “Go and mow the lawn, and you will get paid for it” – I don't even know how much I would charge for mowing a lawn, but believe me, a lot – then this “a lot” has to be paid to me. That is how it happens in a society of decent people.

Now let's talk about cases that are out of the ordinary.

Mahór (the price for a bride), bride-wealth or dower – this is some sum that the groom pays to his future father-in-law for his daughter. The word occurs rarely in the Tanach, but nevertheless it is there. The father-in-law can ask for any sum, any price, but for the bride price there were nevertheless some, let us say, standard market prices. The situation is terrible: in essence, the girl slipped once, agreed to this. Pay attention, this is not about rape here but about seduction, about a man persuading the girl with some sweet talk. But now he is responsible for her, he must pay the father the mahór (the bride price) and marry her. He is obliged to marry, unless what we read about in verse 16 happens:

That is, the father refuses and says: “You are no groom for me, you do not have the status,” or for some other reason, but this very mahór must be paid to him all the same. According to some information that has come down to us, this was somewhere around 40 shekels in silver at that time. Times changed, and there were cases where some girls would not agree to make the consecration (kiddushin) for less than a sack of gold, we read this in the Talmud, in the tractate of the same name, Kiddushin, and then for such girls the dower was, accordingly, larger. Such is the situation, and such is its solution.

Again we see that the approach of the Tanach, and therefore the approach of the Most High, consists in this: after any transgression (however bitter and sad it may be), not to drive the person out of the city by simply stoning him, but to solve the problem somehow, so that people can go on existing in society, be full members of society, return to the people of God.

But it does not work out this way with everyone, therefore in verse 17 we read:

What does mechashefá mean? Who is a sorceress? The root of the word, kaf-shin-pei, is the same as that of the word kishúf (witchcraft, magic). In essence, one can understand the word kishúf in modern language as corruption. Magicians, wizards said that there are very many powers, there are very many workers, officials in the divine world. Indeed, there are many angels and many powers through which God acts. And instead of coming to an agreement up above, doing everything by the law and by the lawful price lists, one can (on a low level) give someone a bribe, hire a policeman to have an innocent person arrested, give a bribe to a jailer to have a guilty one released. This is a parallel with the spiritual world. A mechashefá is a corrupt dealer who knows the “ways in” in the spiritual world, a kind of hacker, that is, a person who tries to hack God's laws, bypassing the law. There are things that exist, that work, but it is forbidden to use them. From the outset they proceed from the assumption that God's will changes, the Divine authority is denied. Higher powers and the right to decide are given to those who have no right to decide. Hence all sorts of witchcraft, spells, hexes, casting the evil eye, lifting curses and so on. All this can be kishúf if it is not directed to the Most High. Any action directed to spiritual powers other than the Most High is magic, and such an action is forbidden.

What is the difference from, let us say, medicine? God established in some way that if we take a certain substance, then it acts on our brain in such a way that our headache goes away. He established this and permitted it to be done. Brain biochemistry is not a power, it does not possess an independent will, we do not endow it with will. We do not ask: “Headache, go away!”, we do not turn to an angel of headache. We act on certain processes in the brain, chemically, exactly the same way as we eat or drink.

Massage, let us say, also belongs here. We act on the muscles, physically relax them and the like. If at the same time we were to turn to the gods of strength or to someone else, this would be idolatry and this would be kishúf, this would be magic. Therefore a sorceress or mechashifá is the one who breaks the Divine laws, who looks for loopholes in the Divine world. Most often this is a myth, most of them do not have any real effect, and all this is deception. But it spreads the belief that the Divine servers can somehow be hacked, that the Divine storehouse can be entered by unlawful means.

It is also worth paying attention to the fact that the word mechashifá is in the feminine gender. Some commentators say that most often women engaged in this business, but this is not so. There are very many treatises on magic, including Jewish treatises on magic, which were written by men. Pharaoh's magicians were men, Nevuchadnetzar's magicians were men. And, generally speaking, it is hard to pin this business on women. The word mechashifá in this case is a collective form of the language, as people say: the fish is running, the fish is biting – not one fish is biting, but a lot of fish is biting, or the bird is flying south, that is how people speak in modern Russian too.

This applies to both men and women. To many it will seem a completely unreal, fantastic case, but even in our days this phenomenon has not been eradicated, it is widespread (I do not know whether in all countries, but I have heard of many cases more than once). Some peoples, by the way, are not even ashamed to talk about it openly. Apparently, in the times when the Torah was given, this was an even more widespread phenomenon. We read both Canaanite laws and Assyrian laws that forbid this. At the same time, there are several bas-reliefs, several drawings that depict this. Apparently, there were disputes in the East about the ethics of this act.

That is, to no God except the LORD may one offer up a sacrifice, this is a fairly clear phrase. Why is it written specifically about a sacrifice? In order to put the emphasis on the fact that the offering of sacrifices is, in fact, such a service of worship of other gods, and for this there is the death penalty – chérem. And this is not simply the death penalty, it is a death penalty accompanied by a curse. This person is accursed, it is impossible to have contact with him, he is a curse for all his surroundings, the very fact of his “non-death” lies on society as a curse. That is, the word chérem does not simply mean a sentence to death or a curse, but a curse that falls on all who are around and on all who are nearby.

Some distortions of justice may seem right or lofty. For example, if there is a court case, some lawsuit between one of your own and a stranger, it would be nicer, more human, “our way” to decide in favor of your own and to disregard the stranger. And the Most High says: “Let your judgment be just, do not judge against him with prejudice, do not delay his case, do not ignore him, because you yourself were a stranger.” That is, remember how it was for you. In exactly the same way in verse 21 too:

There is a parable about a bad judge, an unjust judge, who dragged out the case with a widow. A widow will not bring a gift, a widow has no rich relatives who could somehow get you promoted. And dealing with her is a thankless little job, sometimes her lawsuits are petty, her claims are worth pennies, even though they are important for her. And the judge wants to deal with bigger, more grandiose cases that bring more fame, that bring him together with interesting people. And the Most High says: “Do not torment, do not treat the widow and the orphan this way.”

That is: “If you torment her with tormenting and she cries out with crying to Me, then I will hear her with hearing.” There is a mounting intensification.

In verse 24 it will already be about something else.

Of course, this is about interest here, but not only about interest in monetary terms. There is such a concept as avák ribít (dust of interest). For example, if a person owes me money (and I know that for some time he will not be able to repay me the debt, or I have only just lent to him), I can right away start asking him: “Give me a ride to such-and-such a place, help me hang a picture at home, help my wife carry the bags from the market.” I demand small services from him which he, by virtue of his obligation toward me, cannot refuse. This is also interest. If before he did not address me with the formal “you,” and now he does, or bows when we meet – this is also interest, and this too may not be done, not to mention that one may not lend money at interest to a poor neighbor.

That is, if you took a person's cloak as a pledge for debts, do not keep it with you overnight, return it to him before night, because this is the clothing with which he will cover himself at night, you cannot deprive him of his last covering. In the morning you will take it again, and so every time: you will hand it out for the night, take it back in the morning, that is the kind of pledge you will have.

In this case the mercy will be toward him, not toward you, because you are not merciful.

This is where our talk ends; there is very much of all sorts in these pieces of the mosaic put together, so that we learn, understand more deeply the design of the Most High's justice.

This passage is quite small, and it contains commandments concerning the purity of the people of Israel, the purity of its judicial system. We will not see here, practically will not see any punishments for violating these laws and penalties for violating these laws, because the punishment for departing from impurityiThe Russian literally says “the punishment for departing from impurity”. This may be a slip for “departing from purity”, but it is translated literally. – is impurity itself. The punishment for losing dignity – is the absence of dignity. And these commandments speak of how to keep holiness, how to be worthy, belonging to the people of Israel. And we will begin with verse 27 of chapter 22.

One can say: “Do not curse the judge or the Judge,” with a small or with a capital letter. Of course, this is not about just any judge and not about just any leader, it is about those who bring God's law into society.

When we were finishing the previous passage (22:26), we spoke about a person from whom a cloak is taken during the day for debts, and he may be indignant and say: “How can this be, what kind of laws are these? Well, fine, I owe, but what am I supposed to do now – not go out on the street during the day? And what a disgrace, this is an infringement of my rights!” The other person, who lent him money, may say: “I give him the cloak every night, and because of this he can go for years without giving me back the money?” Both are indignant and berate the justice system. And this commandment, the one written in verse 27, consists, as it were, of two parts: do not berate the judges who pass judicial sentences; do not berate the head among the people who is responsible for upholding the rule of law in your country. This is not always easy.

A good acquaintance of mine worked at an electric company in Israel. And he had the kind of job where he came to cut off the electricity when a person had not paid the bill for a long time. And he literally, one could say, every day was subjected to numerous curses from all those he came to. Although, if you think about it, what was the electricity cut off for? So that others, those who paid, could receive it at the same price. And often we are forced to pay for something, to part with some money, with some property, with some freedom for the sake of preserving the rule of law, for the sake of preserving law and order or simply order in the world, in the world around us. This may force us to berate the government.

This does not mean that one may not criticize any judge if he takes bribes, because we know that there is such criticism, it came through the prophets too. This does not mean that one may not berate those in authority, and there are very many rebukes of those in authority in the Tanach. But when the people attack the justice system, a true, properly functioning justice system, when the people criticize those who call on them and regulate their life according to God's law, then famine comes. We read about this in the book of Rut: “And it was the time when the judges were judged, and there was famine in the land.” This is what the commandment in verse 27 is about.

One could say this: “Well, why should I hurry to give Him my vegetables, fruits and other produce, He is not starving, Glory to Him, He has no need of anything. And what difference does it make to Him? For Him one day is like a thousand years, a thousand years like one day. What difference does it make to Him whether I bring Him my first yield, my first fruits today or in three weeks?” And the Most High says: “No, do not delay. Do not delay what is due to Me. Do not delay your expression of gratitude to Me.” Gratitude – this is one of the pillars of our whole submission to the Most High, of our cooperation with Him, gratitude for what the Most High gives us. In everything we have, we see His hand, and among other things through the teruma, through the first yield, through the donations we express gratitude to the Most High. And the point is not that He stands with a watch and an empty plate and waits for us to bring Him our two little melons. He waits for gratitude from us. Gratitude, as it were, empties our full cup so that the new wine of blessings can be poured into it.

The second part of the verse – the commandment about the firstborn. We have already spoken about this commandment. Further on the Most High will speak more about livestock.

seven days it will be with its mother, and on the eighth day give it to Me.

This does not mean that the firstborn must be given precisely on the eighth day. It means that the firstborn comes to consecration after the eighth day. If we cannot give it right away or we want to feed it up some more, strengthen it, we may do so. But the firstborn already becomes consecrated to the Most High. And before the eighth day it may not be taken away from its mother.

A very strange statement. What is the connection between holiness and torn meat? Between the holy – those who are “taken as a share,” who belong to the Most High, servants of the Most High – and meat that can be finished off after wolves, lions, tigers, hyenas, jackals, and… who else roams around there? The Most High says, to put it in today's language: “Do not look for leftovers in the garbage dumps, do not finish eating out of garbage bins.” Why then is it written “give to the dog”? This means that one may process, one may use some meat that we found, but it cannot be our food.

There are two kinds of prohibitions regarding certain objects in Jewish tradition. The first is isúr achilá (prohibition as food), when something is forbidden as food but may be sold. The second is isúr ana'á (prohibition of use), something that is forbidden to sell, from which it is forbidden to derive any benefit, you cannot even light a stove with it. For example, chametz (leaven) is forbidden on Pesach, and we cannot even burn a dry bun to keep warm: on Pesach one may not use chametz in any way. And there are many different cases of both kinds. When we read here: “give it to the dog,” this means that we are forbidden to eat it, but we may make use of it.

With this chapter 22 ended, and we begin reading from verse 1 of chapter 23.

If you do not know what information has come to you, a lie or the truth, do not start spreading it. Suppose you liked that some person is thought of too badly or too well, you immediately believed this information and start spreading it everywhere. Today, when a rumor can be spread with the help of a repost, very many people repost, share someone else's post on Facebook, on other social networks. They share a pile of unverified information about this or that person they do not like, and about whom it is easy to believe that they committed some terrible, terrible crime.

For many months already, for example, such information has been circulating on the web that the Pope of Rome said that the Bible must be changed, and nobody bothers to check: what kind of information is that, somewhere there, on the Vatican's website, and what the Pope of Rome really said and what he did not say.

So, do not spread false gossip. What is the punishment for this? None. The punishment for this is that you will live in a society in which people spread false gossip.

What does “give your hand to the evildoer” mean? Again, if people want to falsely accuse by slander someone whom they hate, remove him from power, deprive him of opportunities, stop some plans of his, then may one slander a person whom we cannot get rid of in another way, and whom we – well, really dislike? And the answer: no, one may not. One may not make such alliances. Let your judicial system rest exclusively on the truth.

Sometimes we want to be with the majority; actually, we almost always want to be with the majority. And when we read that a billion Chinese can't be wrong, and when we see pre-election social polls, very many people want to join the majority; it is a natural desire. But when there is a mass condemnation of someone for something: I haven't read Solzhenitsyn, but I condemn him, then it is forbidden to join that. It is forbidden to follow the majority toward condemning someone.

On the other hand, if we want to save someone, to deliver him from punishment, to acquit him, and there is such a wave, one may join this wave. Mercy is exalted over judgment.

In the Jewish judicial system it was arranged so that the first to speak were the judges or participants in the court proceedings who sit as far as possible from the judge. That is, the least of the participants in the court proceedings begin to speak, then a little older, a little older, a little older, until it comes to the judge. Why is this done? So that there would not be, so to speak, these yes-men, simply “yea-sayers.” Do you know what the people's assessors in a Soviet court were called? They were called “nodders,” because they only nodded, and that was their whole function. So then, don't be a “nodder” in court, don't submit to the majority. If you have become a participant in a court hearing, have become a participant in a court proceeding, then go into it, try to figure it out, to express your own opinion, don't look at the opinions of other people, of the other participants in the proceedings.

Let's say a poor man is in a lawsuit with a rich man. And maybe the poor man is not right at all, but how sorry we feel for him! Well, what, will the rich man be any the poorer, what are 250 shekels to him? But for a poor man that is a whole fortune. And we may by mistake incline the court toward the poor man, because the poor man is more sympathetic to us. We may also incline the court toward the rich man, because the rich man is the prospect of getting a bribe, but the reverse is also very bad. Let your judgment be judgment, look at what people have done, judge them by their deeds. Not by who cries more, not by who is poorer, but by who is right and on whose side the law is.

Next we will talk about members of one people, kinsmen, neighbors, between whom a court case takes place.

If your enemy has lost something, has suffered some damage, that does not mean that toward him one need not behave in accordance with the generally accepted law, by the generally accepted rules. If one is required to return a lost item, if one is required to help a person who has found himself in trouble, then this must be done regardless of what complicated legal relations have bound you and this person. The court is separate, and belonging to God's people stands completely separately.

That is, even though the one who hates you is next to you, you must help him exactly as you would simply help your fellow citizen. Court matters, all the showdowns, all the hatred, leave for the house of judgment. Despite the court proceedings between you, you remain brothers, so behave like brothers. This is one of the guarantees of the purity and holiness of the people.

With God's help we continue to study the weekly portion Mishpatim. Since in this portion we have no plot, no sequence of events, there is no need to go back to the content of the previous talks, and we begin reading from verse 6 of chapter 23, in which the Most High addresses the judges of the people of Israel and gives them this command.

We have already mentioned the law that one may not incline the verdict in favor of the poor man out of pity (23:3). That is, if we know that the poor man is not right in his case, but he will suffer, whereas the rich man – what damage would it seem to be to him? And we feel sorry for the poor man, and out of pity we will want to distort judgment. The Torah forbids doing this. What is our present commandment about? The commandment speaks of the fact that we may think: “This poor man, this beggar, of course it was he who stole the watch, of course he could not have lent his neighbor 100 dollars – where would he get 100 dollars?” And, looking at the poor man, at his poverty, at his destitute situation, we already somehow decide who is right, who is guilty. And the Torah says: “Don't do that, don't judge a person with bias, even if he is a poor man, even if he is a destitute person. You do not know all the circumstances; look carefully into the poor man's case just as you look into any other cases.” And in exactly the same way one must treat a case when two poor men are suing each other and you may say: “An hour of my work in court is worth more than the cause of their squabble, what next, I have no time to figure out who stole a rolling pin from whom.” No, figure it out, because you do not work for money, you are a servant of the Most High; go into the cases of the poor.

Of course, this is about the court. But about which cases exactly? For example, we are hearing the case of a certain man who is suspected of theft. And there is a suspicion that he is an evildoer, that he is guilty of some other things, and we may say: “But there we can't put him away, there we have no evidence, but here we can call false witnesses and accuse him.” The Torah says: “Turn aside from words of falsehood, keep far from falsehood,” even if you cannot convict him and it seems to you that it is a big omission to let go a person who could have been convicted on a trumped-up charge, since he can't be caught for his main sin. The Most High says: “Do not lie in court, I will deal with everyone who is unrighteous and will not acquit the evildoer.” There is a great deal of reasoning on the subject of whether one may lie at all. And it goes so far that people say: “If a person is hiding a Jewish family, and the Germans came and ask: Are there Jews? – Well, sorry, brother, I can't lie, so I'll say there are. And, forgive me, it would not be Christian to lie.” Jewish tradition says: not only is it sometimes permitted to lie, but sometimes it is even necessary to lie. For example, when we come to a wedding and take part in praising the bride. And we must not say to her: “Well, your legs are crooked, but your eyes are blue,” truthfully and to the point. Or like this: “Your legs are crooked and your eyes are crossed – well, sorry, I'm going to give you the plain truth.” No, one must praise the bride, because we proceed from the fact that she is beautiful in the eyes of her groom. Here is another case. We meet a person, and he says: “Look what a wonderful T-shirt I bought at a sale, 5 for 100.” And we answer him: “You're such a sucker, around the corner these T-shirts sell 6 for 100, you really got taken.” No, if a person has joy from a purchase, there is no need to tell him that he bought something not very good. Or a wife asks: “Isn't it true, I look ugly today, I've gotten terribly fat and I'm all puffy?” – think, is it really worth telling her the truth? Sometimes this can be dangerous for peace in the family.

Even if we know that we are being given a bribe so that we acquit an innocent person, so that justice is done, it is still forbidden to take a bribe. This is a very strict prohibition, because the very fact of receiving a bribe, the very fact of the presence of, let's say, corruption in the judicial system already distorts the judicial system. There is a story about Rabbi Yishmael, he was a rabbi of the third generation of the era of the tannaim, who sat in court. He had a worker, a man who leased some plot of land from him and as payment brought the fruits of this land every Friday. Well, once the man came on Thursday and brought Rabbi Yishmael fruit. Rabbi Yishmael said: “Why did you bring it on Thursday and not on Friday?” The man said: “It's just that I have a court case today, I'm coming to you for a trial, and I thought that while I'm at it I'd drop off a basket of your own fruit for you.” Here Rabbi Yishmael does not even take any bribe: it was his own fruit that was brought to him – a day earlier, a day later, it makes no difference. Rabbi Yishmael said: “I think that I cannot judge you, I will set you before other judges.” And he tells that he went and listened to how the case was resolved there, because even this basket of fruit made him biased. This shows that bribes in the judicial system are dangerous, they distort the whole judicial system. As soon as they appear, truth disappears from society altogether. Social law, the laws of society rest on the incorruptibility of judges.

What do you think, which commandment is repeated most often in the Torah? It is not the commandment about the Sabbath, it is not the commandments do not murder, do not steal: it is the commandment do not oppress the gér. More than ten times the Torah repeats this commandment to us in different variations, referring to the fact that we know the soul of the gér, we were in Egypt, we remember what happened in Egypt, we remember what it is like to be a stranger. Say, my ancestors once lived in Hungary, in Poland, in Spain, and I remember what life was like there, I remember what life is like on the bank of the Rhine and what the morning air of Budapest smells like, although I hardly remember this in reality. But since every year, every day, every hour, in every generation we go out of Egypt, we feel this pressure, this desire to break out of the confines of the familiar. This is a feeling that we must keep; and as a compass, as a testimony to this, we must not oppress the stranger.

There are different opinions regarding who this stranger is. Is it someone who became a proselyte, who joined the Jewish people, or someone who settled next to us as a neighbor? Many different nationalities live in Israel. There is the Circassian community, the Gypsy community, the Armenian community and many different other communities, not Jewish ones. How should one treat them, how should one have treated them in the times of the Temple? And in any case the Torah says regarding all strangers: “Do not oppress, do not pervert judgment regarding the stranger, do not judge against the stranger, because you must remember the soul of the stranger. Do not forget the stranger in yourself, not only yourself going out of Egypt, but do not forget the stranger too.”

Today there are many farms in Israel, in restored Israel, that keep this commandment. Near Ben Gurion Airport there is a large mandarin plantation. In the seventh year it stands full of mandarins, because the trees bear fruit, but nobody picks them. Anyone can come, a poor person can stop, go in and take of the fruit. Some kibbutzim in the north organize buses so that people go and pick cherries in these kibbutzim, because they themselves may not pick for sale, the land must rest. Of course, not all kibbutzim, not all farms do this. Therefore in the diaspora, abroad, outside Israel, one can see an amazing scene in the seventh year, when a Jew asks: “Is this Israeli celery?” He is told: “Yes, Israeli.” And he says: “Then I will not buy it.” Because people are afraid that someone there, in Israel, does not keep the seventh year, and one may not buy of his fruits. Those who keep it write: “We keep the Shmita (the seventh year),” and then, of course, they simply have no fruit that year. All in all, many, many beautiful stories are connected with this, and I can say that the farms that stop their work for a whole year do not report losses connected with this, and things go fine for them.

One could say that since for us the whole seventh year is already a Sabbath, then in this year we will not particularly keep the Sabbath, it is a Sabbath anyway, why sabbath in it on top of that. If we are doing some construction or repair work, patching greenhouses here, patching cellars there, then we work without a break, at full throttle, because, first, it is only a year, second, it is a Sabbath anyway, and everyone around is lazing about anyway. No, says the Torah, this does not release you, the Sabbath does not release you from the Sabbath, and even if you have the seventh year, the Sabbath is relevant for you.

A strange request, right? What is this about? The Most High says: “These are My laws; if someone comes to you and says: I don't know how it is with you, but for example in Denmark… but for example in Norway… but for example in the States… but in the liberal community… but all of progressive humanity… but here with us in North Korea… – do not listen to anyone. These are My laws, keep them, do not even think of keeping the laws of some other gods. Why? Because I showed you who I am, what I did for you, what the essence of My covenant with you is. Therefore, if someone lures you into another legislation, don't, do not even think about it, do not even consider the name of these gods.”

The word régel literally translates as foot, but here shalósh regalim – these are three strikes, three steps, three times. This is about the festivals, as we will understand from the next verses, at which one must come before the face of God. We made an agreement with God, God gave us many laws that we can develop, apply, on the basis of which we must draw near to Him, grow in holiness. Three times a year there is a check-in meeting, there is a parade at which we look: “Ah, there he is, God, recognized? Recognized. There he is, Alex, recognized? Recognized.” Let us read what the Most High says.

That is, if you come to the Most High, then bring an offering, bring a thank offering. On Pesach, as on the other two festivals in the year, when the people of Israel had to pass before the face of the Most High, the gates of the Temple were opened (when there was a Temple), and everything was opened straight through up to the Holy of Holies. The whole people could pass by and look from afar into the Holy of Holies, look at the Divine presence, at the ark of the covenant, at the altar, at the stone – at everything that was there at that moment. The Divine presence looked from the Holy of Holies at the curious, surprised, cheerful and not so cheerful faces of the Jews who passed before it, and so three times a year we met with the Most High. And the Most High says: “Do not come to Me with empty hands.”

Pay attention to the phrase betzét hashaná (at the end of the year). There is this dispute: why, supposedly, did the Jews distort the calendar, and Rosh haShana (the new year) for us is at the beginning of the seventh month, and not in the first month, as it should be? And comrades celebrate the biblical new year separately from the Jewish new year, separating the Jewish from the biblical. There is betzét hashaná (the end of the year), there is the festival of Sukkot (the festival of gathering in the harvest), the completion of the year. The completion of the year and the beginning of the year overlap a little, therefore it is precisely in the seventh month that the year both ends and begins.

Three times a year we have a meeting, we synchronize the clocks of our inner holiness with the Most High. The Most High inspects his people like a king at a parade before whom the army passes. All these laws are given to us so that we keep a certain state, and we must present it at these festivals. A separate and very deep topic – the festivals of the LORD.

This means, in the simple understanding: on Pesach first remove all chamétz from the house and only then bring the sacrifice. Why so, what is this about? We can say: fine, in society there is order, I can offend my neighbor Chaim, I can accidentally burn the field of my neighbor Vitya, but how can I offend God? Very often you hear from people: “Well, what difference does it make to Him? What difference does it make to God what I eat, or what difference does it make to Him whether I bring a sacrifice on leaven or bring it with sour cream? The main thing is that it is from the whole heart.” The Most High says: “In sacrifices to Me there must be order.” That is, simply remember, know that there is a Temple order, it must be guarded.

Regarding the forbidden fat I want to say the following. When people read in the Torah about the prohibition of fat, they say: “Well, that's it, fatty food may not be eaten, the Torah forbids it.” The Torah forbids the fat that is around the internal organs, the kidney fat, which in a male bull or ram connects the kidneys and the testicles, and in a female connects the kidneys and the reproductive system. This is a huge piece of fat that must be cut off, it may not be eaten. The fat that is on the ribs, the fat that is in the flesh of mutton or beef may be eaten, this fat was offered in the burnt offering. The kidney fat was raised onto the altar, and if it remained near the altar, it had to be burned before morning. Now there is no point in going into details, in this case they are more for the priests. Here one simply needs to understand that the Most High says: “In My Temple too there are laws, and in relations with Me one cannot improvise in everything, this will not always be good.”

Here is another verse that is a stumbling block for many. What then does it mean in the simple sense? Well, in the simple meaning one can say just that: “Do not cook a young goat in the milk of its mother.” That is, one should not pour milk into a pot, put goat meat in there and cook it; this is what is forbidden. Other commentators say: “Yes, this is what is forbidden, this is connected with the fact that the pagans had such sacrifices, when they offered a young goat in milk as a sacrifice.” And this is not only (although also) about cooking a young goat in the milk of its mother, but in general about all pagan forms of sacrifice. The classical Jewish tradition says today that it is forbidden to cook dairy and meat together, to eat dairy and meat together, that after meat one may not eat dairy right away, but only after six hours, that one must separate the dishes, and some other separations exist as well. This is already modern halacha. And one can argue about whether this is pshat, the simple meaning.

One more variant of understanding the pshat, of understanding the simple meaning, can be grounded in a different understanding of the word levashél (to cook). This word means not only to cook, but also to bring to maturity, to ripeness. That is, one can keep a young goat for a long, long time on the milk of its mother, make it suckle milk, and then its meat will be softer and more tender, there will be more of it, and in this way we will get a delicacy, just as by a special kind of feeding geese their liver is made bigger. That is, this is some kind of interference with nature, with changing the anatomy of the animal, a certain torment toward the animal for the sake of making the taste of its meat better. This too is an understanding of the pshat, and most likely this understanding is the most correct one.

What then about the law of separating meat and dairy food? Here I would say this: one must understand that any person who was born into a society merges into its laws, and today for the people of God it is generally accepted, for the sake of the Most High, to separate dairy and meat. This has become part of the service of the Most High, and who are we to give it up? There are two reasons not to observe this. The first – is love for something meat-and-dairy, be it cheeseburgers or pelmeni with sour cream (to each his own), and the temptation is great, I agree with you. The second – is the desire to be holier and to say that this way I act in God's way, and not according to Jewish tradition. But such a position (eating cheeseburgers or pelmeni with milk in order to set oneself against Jewish tradition) does not add holiness. For me there is no dilemma in this, although I understand that, most likely, the understanding of the sages – is not pshat, but for me it is better, it is more comfortable for me, it seems to me more pleasing in the eyes of the Most High to be with the people in this respect and to separate meat and dairy food (as far as possible, of course).

With God's help, we continue to study the weekly portion Mishpatim. And what we will read today will be amazing and will differ very greatly from everything we read in the weekly portion before this. Everything we read before were examples of Divine laws and commands about how one should, legally, in God's way, resolve this or that situation in which we may find ourselves. Starting with verse 20 of chapter 23 we read something completely different, the Most High's address changes completely.

So many amazing things at once in this one short verse. Who is this angel? Why does the Most High, Who brought the people of Israel out of Egypt with a strong hand, Who is glorified by the fact that He Himself, God Himself brought his people out, suddenly send an angel? And when there are such serious, difficult questions, it is clear that over the long history of commenting on and reflecting on the Torah many different attempts to answer them arise.

On the first question – who this angel is – some commentators say that the word angel here should not be understood literally. Perhaps this is about the Torah, actually, about the book of the Torah, which will be Israel's guide throughout its entire history. Perhaps this is about the ark of the covenant. The ark of the covenant – is like a tank going ahead of the infantry and, as the midrashim describe, leveling the sloping and leveling the mountainous, turning everything into a plain, such powerful machinery. It is also said that this is about the good inclination (yetzer ha-tov), which is sown in a person, which acts in him and moves the person to choose good.

Some commentators say: “Why not understand it literally? If the word mal'ach, angel is written, then one must also understand it as angel.” In many places of the Tanach, in other sources, the Most High acts through an angel. Only this must be not just some simple angel, not a rank-and-file angel. This must be an angel of the lower orderiThe Russian literally says an angel of the “lower face” or rank in the hierarchy of angels. This sits oddly next to calling Metatron the head of the angelic chancellery, so it is translated literally. in the hierarchy of angels, for example, Metatron. Metatron – is the head of the Most High's entire angelic chancellery. The word metatron can in a certain sense be interpreted as connected with the verb lintór (to guard), or lishmór (to keep), as is written here, lishmorchá (to keep you). That is precisely why the commentators see Metatron here. What Metatron is or who Metatron is – that is a separate story, even several books have been written about it, including in Russian. But we cannot go into this: if we dive into this topic, we will not soon swim out of it.

One more commentary, supporting the angel version, says that the angel here is the archangel Michael. The archangel Michael, as he is called in the book of Daniel, – is the minister for the affairs of Israel in the Heavenly chancellery of the Most High. It was precisely this Archangel, as the commentators say, who also appeared to Yehoshua, the son of Nun, before his battle at Yericho. When there are many versions, then it is clear that nothing is clear.

The second question – why does the Most High, who brought Israel out with a strong hand and who is glorified by having acted Himself and not through intermediaries, send an angel here? Let us remember (20:18–19): when the trumpet sound rang out, a long trumpet sound, and the people of Israel were to go up the mountain and unite with the Most High, see Him face to face, rise to a completely different level of relationship with the Most High, then the people were afraid. The people were afraid and said to Moshe: “Let you be the intermediary between us and the Most High. Everything that needs to be passed on to Him from us, you pass on. Everything that needs to be passed on to us from Him, you pass on, we trust you. Forward, Moshe! We ourselves are afraid that we might die from such close contact, from such closeness with the Most High.” Someone may say that this is cowardice, that this is some kind of indecisiveness and little faith, but when a person says: “Get out of my boat, for I am a sinful man,” this is not quite a manifestation of unbelief, it is also a manifestation of humility, of fear. If we do not fear God, then we too are in big trouble. Therefore one cannot say unequivocally that this fear is such a great vice of the people of Israel; do not hurry to throw stones at the Jews of the standing at Sinai, they were really scared. And the Merciful Most High says that from the beginning of the ages, from the creation of the world, one more mode of governance has been provided for: “I can speak in the prophets, I can speak in the Son, I can speak through the Holy Spirit. I by My mercy will act through revealed and unrevealed intermediaries, who will interact with you, and you will be under their guidance, and they will guard you. And if you are not ready for Me to go, then I will send an angel who will guard you and will bring you to the place that I have prepared.”

This whole chapter is fundamental for mysticism, for angelology. And one can talk endlessly about this place, about what kind of angel this is, where and how we meet these angels in our life. But we are trying now to study concisely, therefore I suggest that everyone reflect more deeply on this topic on their own. And further the Most High commands:

That is, if you rise up, if you revile this angel in whom My name is, then he will not bear your sins. Only the Most High can forgive sins. When we communicate through an angel, a problem arises for us. An angel is a conductor of the Most High's will, but he is a “semiconductor.” He can deliver to us an audio letter from the Most High, some message from the Most High, but we cannot turn to him in prayer. He is an angel, he is not the Most High, and in prayers we need to turn precisely to the Most High Himself. An angel also cannot forgive sins, just as a hired salesperson does not have the right to give a discount. In order to ask for a discount, one has to turn to the management, because the salesperson – he is only a salesperson, although he knows all the information about the prices and everything like that. And although an angel possesses enormous power, enormous authority, and what he says is the words of God, he is not the ears of God, only the mouth of God.

You may enter their temples, see some grandiose structures, see some huge stone creatures, huge idols, and you may, God forbid, think that they possess a certain power. On the territory of Israel archaeologists constantly find traces of some pagan temples, and although today these look like such pitiful ruins, one can imagine what impression this could have made on a person at that time. Any person who moves to another country looks at how the inhabitants of that country act, how they live, observes their traditions. And sometimes he becomes curious to try the same thing, to try to do the same as they do. And the Most High says: “Do not do, do not act according to their deeds, do not adopt their customs.” But not only do not bow down to them, but also do not say that this is the cultural heritage of the country – let's leave it, it is part of history. No, in this case you are inheriting the land, and on you lies the commandment to leave no cultural trace, no continuity of traditions between them and you.

Water implies not only water, but all drinks – both wine and oils; the Most High will bless everything and will remove sicknesses from your midst.

That is: “You will be a healthy society of long-lived people with healthy children, with a large proportion of young people, if you do not serve foreign gods, if you do not go to these slabs, to these graven images, to these idols. And I promise that I will do this, therefore there is no need to turn to them, I am the Guarantor. Even though the angel brought you, and the angel has certain powers, in some sense broad, but not unlimited, I promise you that I will bless you. Even when I act through an angel, remember that it is I who act, that the source of blessing is I, the Blessing One, the Infinite, the Almighty, the Most High.”

The word tzir'a is also quite surprising; in modern Hebrew it means wasp. It can also be translated as bumblebee, as horsefly, as some insect that stings and destroys. At the same time it can be translated as a skin disease, as some kind of eczemas, abscesses, which swoop down, attack the enemy, but to a greater extent this is about bumblebees, about some small but very annoying force. Bumblebees, of course, are not small as insects go, but they are fairly small creatures compared to a person.

Three peoples, right? It is no longer seven peoples that are mentioned here, because these are the ones that live on the eastern side of the Jordan; the Canaanites live on both sides of the Jordan. That is, these very bumblebees, horseflies, whatever they may be, will not cross the Jordan. At the same time the Most High says this:

The Most High, even though He is the Most High, the Almighty, the All-Powerful, says: “I will act, one could say, at your speed. I will gradually empty this country as you take it, so that the land does not become desolate, so that there is no empty land around you in which the beast of the field rules.

The Most High says: “As you advance, the angel will walk ahead of you. You will not have to run after him through bushes, through gullies; he will walk at the speed at which you can walk. I will drive them out gradually.”

What is the Most High speaking about here? When the expulsion does not happen at once, when we see that the Most High does not drive out the peoples at once – and here they seem to be, the so-called Palestinians, who do not even exist as a people at all, here they have called themselves a people, they live here next to us. And one very much wants to say: “Let's conclude an agreement on peaceful life with them somewhere in Norway, let's come to an agreement.” The Most High says: “Even if this expulsion happens gradually, I will drive them out; do not make a covenant with them, do not make a covenant with their gods. That this process happens slowly is in the order of things, it is for your safety, for your self-confidence and, partly of course, for the testing of your faith. Therefore do not conclude an agreement with their gods, do not hurry.” Very many of Israel's troubles happened because they did not wait just a little, just a little longer, be it the untimely exodus of part of the people from Egypt (according to the tradition we spoke about in the commentary on 13:17), or the story of the golden calf, when they grew tired of waiting for Moshe, or Sha'ul's sacrifice, when he did not wait for the prophet. Somewhere they concluded an unnecessary peace, somewhere something else. The Most High says here: “Do not hurry to conclude a peace agreement with them, I will drive them out.”

Therefore do not hurry, do not hurry to make a covenant, do not hurry to adapt to some conditions of this world where the fulfillment of God's promise is delayed or if it seems to us that it is delayed. Where we see not the open hand of the Most High but an angel of God, do not hurry to distrust.

So, in the previous parts of our weekly portion we read the instructions that the Most High passed on through Moshe to the people of Israel regarding the foundations of the judicial system, regarding the principles of resolving various disputed situations, and we also read the promise of the Most High about the Angel whom He promised to send before the people of Israel. In chapter 24 the Most High speaks to Moshe about the preparation for the ascent of the mountain.

Not everyone will go up the mountain. The people will mostly remain in the camp, as the people had asked: they did not want to go up, did not want to ascend the mountain. Moshe, Aharon, his two sons and 70 elders will go, will bow down to the Most High from afar. Then, as we will see, Moshe will send the elders back to the camp and will go up accompanied only by Yehoshua ben Nun. Yehoshua will go up to the middle of the mountain. About this we will yet read, about all of it. So, Moshe has, on the whole, finished the audience with the Most High.

All the words – this can also be applied to the prophecy about the Angel. All the laws – these are, actually, the laws of mishpatim, which is exactly what our weekly portion is called too. And all 600 thousand people answered him in a harmonious chorus, as if they had rehearsed for two weeks: “All the principles that the LORD has established, we will fulfill.” Here the concept davar – word is used, about which it is said: “In the beginning was the Word”: word as command, word as instruction. An analogue to the Greek logos.

All the listed laws Moshe wrote down. Actually, the book of the covenant – is an agreement between Israel and the Most High. Here we read Moshe's amazing daily schedule on the eve of his ascent of the mountain. Pay attention: Moshe is 80 years old, he is not young, he is, of course, still a sprightly old man, the Most High preserved his vigor and fullness of strength for him, and nevertheless he does amazing things. So, he got up in the morning and built an altar under the mountain. He could build the altar either from unhewn stones, that is, he had to gather a sufficient quantity of unhewn stones, or heap up the altar from earth. In any case this is lengthy work. This is what Moshe did, one could say, before breakfast, having woken up early in the morning. How much time this would take me, I cannot imagine. I, of course, am no stonemason at all, not a man of physical labor, but Moshe is not a stonemason either. Besides that, and this is interesting, Moshe does this himself. Moshe – is the leader of a huge religious community, the rabbi of a synagogue that has 600 thousand men. And he did not say: “Mordechai, Chaim, Itzik, tomorrow morning by 5 in the morning build me 12 altars of an engineering system, so that we can bring a sacrifice on them.” Moshe himself gets up early in the morning and builds these altars.

The commentators say that these young men – are the firstborn of the elders, the firstborn of the noble clans, because in those times there was not yet the Tent of Meeting, there was no service of the kohanim, and, as we understand, the firstborn served. Most likely 24 bulls were sacrificed: for each tribe, by each monument, by each stele, one bull was brought as a burnt offering and one bull – as a peace offering. So, let us write this down in this kind of notional daily planner of Moshe that we are putting together: wake up in the morning, build an altar, 12 monuments, send young men for bulls, sacrifice 12 bulls. And how much time would you set aside for yourself for such a task?

The word agan means a large basin, a huge bowl. We know from the Ugaritic chronicle that this vessel itself weighed 30 kilograms. It was such a huge cistern, and it really was used for pouring out the blood on the altar. It had to be filled with blood quickly, since blood is a very perishable product, one has to act with it very nimbly. So, Moshe filled two bowls.

Which book of the covenant? It is what he wrote the evening before. That is, the next item on the program (besides the fact that Moshe divided the blood, poured it into the bowls, gathered all the people) was that he also read and interpreted the book of the covenant to all the people.

And the people answered: “We will do and we will hear.” A very interesting formulation. Very much is said about it, there are very many commentaries on this topic, again both mystical and simple ones. Na'ase – is what a person does, his means of conversation with the Most High. We speak, we pass on, we transmit some information when we do something. We listen when we receive information, we are inactive when we listen. That is, our action, our impulse toward the Most High is born before His command. With our first action we express readiness to give ourselves over into covenant with the Most High. And the Most High says: “If you will hear with hearing…” First we decide to listen, we become all ears and then we hear what He says.

There are commentators who say: “Threw on the people can be understood as threw for the people.” Indeed, it can be understood this way. One can understand that Moshe poured out the second part of the blood on the altar for the people. Why? What is wrong with the understanding that Moshe sprinkled the people with blood? Actually, nothing is wrong with it. We read that the kohanim too are sprinkled with blood. But the people are 600 thousand persons, and to sprinkle 600 thousand with blood – that is technically very hard to imagine. Nevertheless we are speaking about miraculous events, so let us not depart from the simple meaning. Moshe sprinkled the people with blood. And all the words that we studied in the portion Mishpatim – are an agreement, the text of an agreement between the Most High and the people of Israel, which in this case is sealed with blood.

The commentators say: “The agreement is made and sealed in three parts, by circumcision, by washing (we spoke earlier about the fact that the people had to wash themselves and prepare) and by sprinkling with blood, because there cannot be sprinkling without washing, only a clean person is sprinkled.”

What is the essence of this covenant? It can be understood in different ways. Some say: “The essence of the covenant is in an imprecation. Just as this blood has been shed, so my blood will be shed if I break this covenant.” That is, a person felt his clothing being covered with blood and said: “If I break the covenant, then just as this blood was shed, so let my blood also be shed.” In other words, it is an oath. Others say: “It is sanctification. Through the sprinkling with blood the people of Israel has been raised to a special level of holiness, and being on it is necessary in order to serve the Most High.” And the simplest, the most obvious way of understanding this text: this was generally done in the East, and in the commonly accepted context it is a kind of becoming kin. Through this blood, part of which is poured out on the altar, with part of which the people of Israel is sprinkled, a blood covenant is made: Israel has become kin with the Most High – we are of one blood with Him. And in this way the covenant was made. Before us is one of the most important events in Jewish history: in the history of Israel and in the history of the people of God.

Naturally, the commentators immediately hurry to assure us that those who came saw only an image of the God of Israel, a certain glory of the God of Israel.

 Polished brick of lapis lazuli – this is one of the variants of translation. Other commentators say: “Sapir is white, therefore it is written ‘the whiteness of sapphire, white as sapphire,’” and they compare the whiteness of sapphire with the whiteness of pearl. Still others say: “No, sapphire is actually red,” and they too bring examples of its description. Therefore a difficulty with translation always arises. And very often people ask me: “Alex, which translation is better?” And often, translating at sight, you think: “And which translation is better?” I can allow myself the luxury of leaving three variants of translation. A translator who makes a written translation cannot, does not have the right, does not have the possibility to allow himself such a luxury. He is forced to choose some one of the variants. And this is not always possible, sometimes the variants are of equal value. We will see this again practically in these same verses. So, what is livnat sapir? Does it mean the whiteness of sapphire? Or does the word livna mean in this case a worked, polished stone? One cannot say unequivocally. Different commentators bring completely fair arguments for one side or the other. And even the explanation that follows – pure as the depth of the heavens – does not help us, since the sky can be red at dawn, the sky can be white, bright, the sky can be, indeed, the color of lapis lazuli, blue in color, and this leaves us in some bewilderment. Right at the most interesting place (it is so very curious to peek and see how it looked) we are left in such linguistic bewilderment.

The word atzil – noble, highborn – is an amazing word, it is, in my opinion, used only here, if one looks at all of Scripture. What is this about? People really feared that they could die if they saw God. Here we see that out of mercy the Most High did not stretch out a hand against those who were with Moshe, despite the fact that they saw His image. And they saw God. And they ate, and they drank. And here we again fall into the trap of a difficult translation. Some commentators say: “They saw the image of God, and they ate and drank it. They tried to eat it and drink it, they fixed their eyes on it so intently that they wanted to drink it and eat it.” Other commentators say that they saw the image of God, but despite this (unlike Moshe, who for 40 days on the mountain will not eat and drink, as if having moved into the angelic world with heavenly laws) they remained with earthly laws, where food and drink are necessary. And then eating and drinking mean simple food and simple drink. Again the text leaves us with different variants of understanding, and how to translate – is for the translator to choose, how to understand – is for the one who understands to choose. Closer to me is the understanding that they drank and ate the very image of the Most High, because this also has New Testament parallels.

The words Torá and lehorotám – to instruct them – are words with the same root. The word Torá can mean to shoot, to direct (when a person shoots, he gives acceleration to something and sets a movement in a certain direction). The word Torá can mean to string on a thread, to line up in a row, to arrange someone in one way or another. Some (one can consider this a midrash) interpret the word Torá from the word or – light, this too is possible. The Most High says: “I will give instruction, which I wrote for their instruction.”

Moshe and Yehoshua separate here, they will go up the mountain of God.

 That is, Moshe leaves the camp, apparently, for 40 days and leaves Aharon and Chur in his place as deputies. For Moshe it is very important, let us understand this, that the court be preserved in the camp, that the possibility of turning to the court be preserved, the possibility of turning for some Divine answers, for a decision from the Most High. Moshe does not even leave the court to those whom, as we remember, Yitro advised him to appoint: the officers of thousands, officers of hundreds, officers of fifties, officers of tens. No, Moshe left the chief ones, that is, the court does not go on vacation because of the judge's leave. For Moshe it is important that an acting leadership remains, vested with authority.

The cloud hid Moshe, but his meeting with the Most High does not begin yet, Moshe will wait.

Pay attention: here there are certain parallels of something being accomplished on the seventh day, beginning with the creation of the world. And the giving of the Torah also takes place with a six-day preparation. Moshe prepares for six days, on the seventh day the Most High calls him to go up to the top of the mountain, to enter the presence of God.

The sons of Israel saw something like a flame on the top of the mountain, where Moshe had gone up. Probably this added to their fear, horror, trembling, it is hard to imagine oneself in their place.

In the weekly portion Yitro we read about how the people of Israel received the Torah and ascended, rose to a very high level of holiness. It would seem that with this level of holiness one could be a heavenly being and move forever to the heavenly land, live next to the angels at such a level of holiness. But our weekly portion Mishpatim begins to teach us that this holiness must be carried in our earthly body, must be realized in our world, in everyday life, in the very, very simplest matters.

The weekly portion begins with questions of acquiring a slave, of the attitude toward a slave, the attitude toward the one who depends on you, over whom you are the boss. What to do with a person who has stolen, how to treat the needs of a wife (up to and including her satisfaction). In every detail of worldly, everyday life the holiness of the Torah must be manifested. Everything is described by law, and at every moment of our life we can see how we should act according to the Torah, how to act in accordance with the revelation of holiness in this world.

And when we read this, there may arise such a fear or worry that everyone must be the same. Since the laws are standard for everyone, the laws are the same for everyone, then people too must be the same. They must dress the same, speak the same, think the same. After all, the law is the same, which means everything must be the same.

In chapter 23, in verse 2 we read:

This verse can be divided into two parts.

Do not follow the majority to evil. There is a situation when it seems to us that the majority of people think differently from us. But they are the majority, they are smart, they are educated, and, although the heart says: “They are mistaken, they are doing evil,” one can talk oneself into it and say: “Who am I to argue with them? Who am I, why do I need this?” – and follow them, because a billion Chinese are not mistaken, a thousand rabbis cannot be mistaken, I will go after them. But the Torah says: “No, do not follow the majority if you think that they are mistaken.” The Talmud speaks about how this is applied in court: one cannot pass a death sentence on a person by a majority of one vote, it cannot be decided by a simple majority. To pass a death sentence, there must be a majority of three votes. We must not agree with the majority only because it is the majority, must not adjust ourselves to a certain standard, we must not think like the majority.

But our verse also has a continuation.

And if you are asked about your opinion, do not give an evasive answer. That is, do not think: here it is, the majority, and what will they think of me now, what will they do to me now… If you have been asked about your opinion and your opinion is opposite to the opinion of the majority, do not be ashamed, do not be afraid: you are obliged to express your opinion. You are obliged to be yourself, obliged to show your faith, your opinion, because you – are a creation of God, and if something has been put into you, some other understanding, then it is the Most High who put it into you.

The unity of a people is possible only when you can express your opinion without fearing that it will not be heard now, maybe it will be heard later. Do not be like everyone, do not adapt yourself to everyone, you are obliged, you must be yourself. Both in thoughts and in conversations you must not fear anyone, but you are also obliged to give another person the right to be himself. You must understand that there may be another person – smart, sincere, not bought, educated, thinking differently from you, and even differently from the majority of your fellow believers, the majority of your friends.

The Torah teaches that the unity of holy people – is the unity of different holy people. This very difference, the inner truth, your own inner truth, your own revelation of holiness must be guarded.

In general, speaking about the weekly portion Mishpatim, it must be said that this is the favorite portion of the Jewish sages. In this portion there are very many different laws: about a thief in a tunnel, about loans, about compensation for damage… Simply numerous laws. Many sages, when they speak about this, express themselves in the spirit of: “How beautiful is our Torah.” And indeed, here one can see much of what was revolutionary law for the time of the giving of the Torah; much of what made the laws of the Torah different from the laws of the surrounding peoples. Thus, for example, in the laws of the surrounding peoples there was a difference depending on against whom a crime was committed. The sentence for a person who stole a goat from a priest or a king was different from that for a person who stole a ram or a sheep from a commoner. So it was among all peoples, and only the Torah makes no difference in this. The Torah is also the only law that forbids lending money at interest. And at the same time, understanding that these laws differ greatly from the laws of the surrounding world, one cannot share the joy of the sages in everything.

In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul speaks about the fact that the law was given because of transgressions. What is the essence of what Paul says? If a person lives by love for the Most High, if the Most High is King for him, then such a person does not need a law about what to do if he has stolen a sheep: he simply will not steal it. If a person loves the Most High, he will not lend money at interest, there is no need to forbid him this.

Therefore the Torah is indeed the law given because of transgressions. That is, man turned out to be incapable of standing in the holiness to which he is called. The people of Israel turned out to be not even ready to speak directly with the Most High. The people of Israel asked that Moshe be a mediator. The people of Israel could not accept the Most High as King. We see that Israel constantly grumbles, now about one thing, now about another. And when we now speak about the fact that this happened with Israel, we must understand that this is an example of, on the whole, the entire nature of humanity, the nature of any person.

And because the people fell away in this way (and in the person of the people we are again speaking not about Jewish nature, but about universal human nature; it was not Israel that fell away, it was humanity that fell away), it was necessary to give a ladder by which one can climb back up to the Most High. In this sense the law is good, because it allows a person who has sinned to return again to holiness. If a person, forgetting the love of God, has stolen a sheep, then he is not doomed to eternal renunciation of the Most High, he can return through compensation for the damage. Therefore Paul says that the law is good.

But what then is not good? What is bad in this whole story? It is human nature. Human nature, which did not allow God to live in man, turned out to be not ready to commune with God. And for this reason transgressions were committed.

What then is the path for a believing person? It is clear that it is better for a believing person not to get into a situation where he has to repay the damage for a sheep. For this the commandment “Do not steal” is enough. Even from the moment when Mashiach was revealed to us, we can find in ourselves that sometimes we fall away from the Most High. And the apostle Paul says that we sin much. Thanks to the sacrifice of Yeshua we today need not seek a sacrifice for sin in the Temple. Nevertheless, sin still remains sin. God does not live in a sinning person. Such a person can restore the Divine presence through repentance. But since among us, modern believers, transgressions still occur, for us believers the law is still relevant. Because we are only just working out our salvation. In us the war against sin is still only being waged. Therefore the law is still good for us, just as Paul writes about it.

But, reading our weekly portion and admiring the wisdom of these laws, we must understand that the giving of these laws – is a mercy of the Most High, shown to us for victory over the sinful nature, mercy toward sinners. If the mercy of the Most High truly evokes admiration, then the sinfulness of man, which we too have not yet overcome in everything, evokes sorrow and regret. The plan of the Most High was nevertheless fulfilled – Mashiach came to this earth and offered himself as a sacrifice. But at the same time we have not yet done our part. That is, our nature has not yet been finally changed. Therefore one can admire the mercy of the Most High.

The portion Mishpatim (21:1–24:18) is full of commandments connected with Jewish jurisprudence. It contains a little more than fifty commandments, and it is in fourth place among all fifty-four portions of the Torah by the number of commandments, specifically practical commandments.

This portion begins with the words of the Most High, who turns to Moshe and says: “These are the commandments which you shall set before them, tasím lifnehém – you shall set before their faces.” What does this tell us? And why does the Most High not say: “I set before their faces,” but literally speaks of the mediation of Moshe? Among the people, among God's people – first among the Jewish people, then in a broader sense – there exist two types of soul, two levels of soul. And before going deeper into this topic, I will say that we are not speaking of higher souls and lower souls. Any soul in its growth can reach any level. The midrash Tana Devei Eliyahu says that the last of the pagans can begin to grow and surpass the high priest in holiness. But from the point of view of growth, there are two levels of souls. Some souls, and there are very few of them, reach such a level of comprehension of the Most High that they not only know that the Most High governs the world, rules the world, but it is literally given to them to sense the presence, to enter into contact with Him, to connect with Him. The other part of the souls is in such a state that they know about the Most High, they know just the same that He governs the world, but they have not yet been given this very seeing and knowing of the Most High through which one can reach direct contact with the Most High. And so for such “beginner” people the guidance of Moshe is necessary. This teaches two things at once: on the one hand, a person can grow and rise starting from any level, and on the other hand, no level gives us the right to exalt ourselves over others. And Moshe serves these commandments the way food is served to people. Moshe, like a waiter, waits on the lesser ones so that they may see the commandments, serves as an instrument so that they may come to know the Living God. Yeshua also speaks of this (Matt. 20:26): “Let the greater among you be your servant.”

The Mishna says that Moshe passed the Torah on to Yehoshua ben Nun, he passed it on to the elders, and then a long, long tradition preserved for us both the Mishna, and the Talmud, and numerous midrashim. It often happens that people from messianic communities leave them and go to the synagogue, saying: “There they, the Jews, have answers to all questions, and here with us our questions are not answered.” Why does this happen? All the years, starting from the time of the Mishna, the sages wrote down the experience of communion with God. This experience took shape first in the Mishna, then in the Talmud, then in numerous books for understanding the Talmud. Thus, when we come to talk with a rabbi, we are talking not with one person but with many, many generations of people who sought and came to know God. But this is a double-edged sword: from the time the sages began to write down the Torah, they systematized the experience of knowing God, but the knowing of God itself ceased. Imagine that you are interested in the Pushkins. You go to a store and buy the book “Pushkin in the Memoirs of His Contemporaries.” And you read the memoirs of all his friends (both Küchelbecker and many others), and you may form some kind of picture of Pushkin. But Pushkin died long ago, while the Most High is alive. The Judaic tradition keeps an enormous experience of communion with God, but for the most part, for many rabbis this experience is already in the past. On the basis of past encounters the sages keep impressions of this experience and knowledge about God. God forbid that we neglect this, it is very important and useful knowledge, the tradition is based on it, and that is why it is passed on from generation to generation. And it is valuable and infinitely important to learn from rabbis, to get to know the Jewish point of view. Especially important are the methodology and logic – the way we come to know, the way we perceive the world. But at the same time, through Yeshua we have been given an enormous advantage. Yes, on the one hand (Paul says so too), it is an enormous advantage to be a Jew, because they are keepers, keepers of experience. On the other hand, faith in Yeshua gives us the opportunity to draw near and become acquainted with the Most High. Using the example of Pushkin, it is as if you knew the living Pushkin and as if you read about Pushkin in the memoirs of contemporaries. Through Yeshua, through faith in Him, we can have living communion with God, rise to the levels of comprehending Him, and can (without exalting ourselves, God forbid) with enormous care serve those who have not yet comprehended Him. But, on the other hand, this does not mean that since we believe in Yeshua, we automatically already comprehend God, and God speaks in us. The encounter with God is an enormous, long, hard work on oneself, the transformation of oneself into a vessel in which God will dwell and which will penetrate into God. As they say: “Not only do you know God, but God also knows you.” This is very important.

And so it was approximately this task that was laid upon Moshe. But if Moshe is called ish elohim, man-god, then in Yeshua the God-man became incarnate. This is a completely different level of the presence of the Divine in a person, that is, through Yeshua a far greater revelation of the Most High was revealed. And the important thing that we can draw from the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Yeshua, from the sacrifice of Yeshua, is this: that through Him (if we have been crucified together with Him, have died together with Him and will rise together with Him) we receive access to the Most High, will be able to have living communion with Him.

When a person, not having such communion, not receiving from the Most High an answer to his questions, turns to the synagogue and there really does find answers to his questions, then it is not hard for him to leave this, said in quotation marks, “non-working” Yeshua and go to the synagogue. But if we rightly understand the sacrifice of Yeshua, then we have living communion with God. And, having this communion, we can serve the lesser brothers – those who are only striving for this communion. And this, in fact, is what the portion is about.

Now a little about the commandments themselves. At the very beginning of the portion the Torah speaks about slavery, and this is surprising for us. At present slavery has officially been abolished throughout the world. But no society is built, is born in one day. The Torah is not a revolutionary document that immediately transforms a person and humanity. The Torah is given to us for work on ourselves. The Torah educates us so that we educate ourselves, so that a society that has educated itself renounces slavery. One can say that the laws of slavery were given to us so that they would afterwards be abolished, because the desire of the Most High is the abolition of slavery in the world. What is this about? Yeshua, answering the question about divorce, says this: “Moshe (the law of Moshe) permitted you to divorce because of your hardness of heart.” As we said at the beginning, Moshe was like a waiter, and he had to bring the meaning of the Torah to those who do not understand, to those who fall short. And since they were still hard of heart, he permitted them certain things. And in the same way slavery was permitted.

Another important, revolutionary detail that the Torah proclaims in this portion, an important commandment, is the death penalty: the Torah says that anyone who kills must be killed, if he killed with premeditation. Why is this revolutionary? We may say: but long before (or not long before), in the laws of Hammurabi, the death penalty for murder was already written down. But the laws of Hammurabi distinguished between rich and poor, divided people by social estates. Therefore one who killed a person from the destitute estate could get off with simply a fine. In just the same way, one who killed someone else's slave simply compensated the owner of the slave for the damage. In this case the Torah says that completely regardless of estate, completely regardless of financial standing, a person answers for the murder of another person, answers with his life. The Torah takes a very high level and says that even a kohen can be taken from the altar, that is, even a kohen gadol, although this is the highest status at that time among the people of Israel. One can pull him out of the Holy of Holies in order to put him to death, if he killed someone.

There is a commandment in our portion over which many stumble: this is the commandment tooth for tooth, eye for eye. This commandment provokes a great many disputes. At first it seems to people that it is meant literally: if a person gouged out someone's eye, then his eye is gouged out, if he tore off an ear – his ear is torn off, cut off, and so on. By this logic it turns out that if a person gouged out someone's two eyes and as  punishment was himself left without eyes, then he already has a season ticket for the future, and he can calmly gouge out the eyes of anyone he likes, as many times as he likes. As in the advertising slogan: Buy two, get one free (buy two and get the third one free). But, fortunately, this is not so. In this commandment the Torah speaks about compensation for loss. A person who has been left without an eye can lose his job, that is, suffer damage, can lose his livelihood, both he and his family. Therefore God says that a person who has received an injury must receive financial compensation. What good is it to a person whose eye was gouged out if the offender's eye is gouged out too? It will not help him bring home a livelihood, will not help him feed his family, and will not even help him get treatment. That is exactly why the Torah speaks about monetary compensation.

Here is an occasion to note that many say: “Look, they say, Jewish law, it is all about money and about money.” The thing is that money corresponds in our world to an element of the mercy of the Most High. If everyone works voluntarily, how will work be valued? The grace of the Most High is in this: that with the help of money, through finances as a common measure, as a common agreement, one can agree on the value of labor. Like any grace, like any good thing, this thing too can be used for harm, and it is often used for harm, so to speak, for an alternative grace. But still, money – is a manifestation of mercy. There is no prohibition, there is nothing bad in demanding compensation, demanding money for one's work, receiving money for one's work, looking for a better salary, seeking success for one's business, getting rich, prospering and so on. The Most High cares about this. The only thing one needs to remember is that the source of money – it is with the Most High, the source of grace – it is with the Most High. And, of course, to rely on God and not on money, which Yeshua also speaks about in the example of the rich man, the camel and the eye of a needle. By the way, let us note in parentheses: there was never a needle gate in Jerusalem, there is no historical information about it, it is simply an old tale like that, and Yeshua really does say such an unbearable metaphor about the camel and the eyes of needles.

Another important commandment that we will talk about with you is the commandment not to follow the majority to evil. What does this mean? Often, by our human nature, we do not want to find ourselves in the minority. Something seems just to us, but looking at how the majority decides, we also want to decide as they do. It is especially hard to defend one's position alone. The Torah says that a person should not join the majority only because it is the majority. One must not consider oneself wrong only because the majority of people think otherwise. But this is a general instruction for life. And in our section the Torah speaks about the court.

What is the situation, what is the particularity in the case of the court? A Jewish court can consist of twenty-three (the Small Court) or of seventy-one people (the Great Court). And when the court decides to condemn a person to death, to pass a sentence by a majority of votes – for example, twelve against eleven, then it is not decided by such a majority. In order to truly condemn a person to the death penalty, there must be thirteen against ten in the Small Court or thirty-seven against thirty-four in the Great Court. This is the so-called qualified majority. Simply with a margin of one vote one cannot take a person's life, because this too will be following the majority to evil. And what happens if in some court consisting of twenty-three or of seventy-one, everyone unanimously decides to condemn a person? In this case the person is declared innocent and set free. Why so? Because such an outcome means that the judges did not pay careful attention to acquitting the person. Imagine that law students are present at the court. If one of these students expresses an opinion in defense of the accused, then he is immediately brought into the court, because the court prefers mercy to punishment. If there is some possibility to acquit, then the person who can do this is given the opportunity to join the court immediately. And this is very important.

On the other hand, right here the Torah says not to pervert judgment for the sake of a poor man. There is always a temptation to pervert judgment for the sake of a rich person, to please a rich person. It is clear that this is bad, and the Torah also speaks about this when it commands to renounce bribery. But there is also a danger of taking pity on a person, on a poor man who stole from a rich man, and forgiving him, saying that the rich man has plenty anyway. The Torah forbids this. But in everyday situations we too often make the same mistakes. I was told an anecdote, a story, let us say, about a family that moved from Russia to Belgium. They had a boy of three to five years old, who quickly learned the language, settled in and went to kindergarten. In light of the peculiarities of Russian or family upbringing, in case of a conflict he immediately hit his opponents in the face, to the horror of the Belgian kindergarten teachers. Naturally, each time the parents were called in, and at some point the parents had a talk with him. Some time passed, and the teachers again called the parents to the kindergarten and said: “Your boy, he suffers from everyone, everyone hits him, and so on. Maybe he has improved, but somehow he has improved too much.” The parents began to talk with the boy, and the boy answered them: “I understood,” he said, “that the Belgians, they always take the side of the one who shouts the most. So in arguments I still hit my opponent in the face, but immediately raise a cry, as the most offended one, and they take my side.” Such a silly human habit – to sympathize with the one who shouts the most – can lead to our sympathizing with a person simply because he is poor or presents himself as poor. Our opponents and the opponents of Israel in the peace process also like to put their poverty on display, and Europe in exactly the same way shows them mercy. God is not a pacifist, and God is merciful to the righteous, and not to the beggars. Merciful to the beggars too, providing for them, but not in matters of judgment. The same laws are applied to a person regardless of class, regardless of status.

The same also concerns Mishpatim 22:20 and do not oppress the stranger and do not afflict him. This does not mean, as it is often interpreted today, that strangers must immediately observe everything, as Jews observe. It means that in court we do not oppress the stranger. If a stranger stole, he does not get more than others. If someone stole from a stranger, this likewise does not go unpunished, just as if someone stole from a Jew. That is, a just court in all respects. The court seeks out and relies only on the testimony of witnesses worthy of trust, respected and honest, having a good reputation. There must be at least two of them in order to condemn a person. Moreover, in order to apply the death penalty to a person, these people must first come to the potentially condemned person and say to him: “What you are doing deserves the death penalty.” This is called “warning.” If they did not warn him, then he is not subject to punishment. The courts try as much as possible to avoid the death penalty. The courts try as much as possible to fulfill the instructions of the oral Torah, of the sages: every time to judge a person toward acquittal, every time to try to find a justification. To explain a person's position, to understand him and to try not to condemn him – this is the position that the Torah commands. That is why Yeshua also commanded us to pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” And at the same time, when the death penalty is needed, it must be applied. As we have already said, there must be at least two witnesses, but these cannot be women, the court does not accept testimony from women. And one of the reasons is that the one who testifies against a person himself takes part in his execution. And in order to spare women, for whom, in the view of the sages, execution contradicted their very nature (it is the same as picturing a woman gravedigger), the sages exempted women from testimony. That is, not because she is so frivolous, not because she is so foolish, but because she is so tender and needs greater protection. And all this we have just been saying about the commandments for the court.

Another commandment that we can consider is the commandment do not let a sorceress live (mechashefá lo techayé). Whom do we call a sorceress? What is the meaning of sorcery? Today there are very many sorceresses, or witches, or people who could be suspected of this. If you came to a person, asked him something, and he gave you some herb, then he is perhaps a doctor. If we came to a person for advice, and he gave us advice, then he is perhaps a rabbi, perhaps a teacher, perhaps a psychologist. Who is a sorceress? Where is the line between witchcraft and wisdom, between witchcraft and, let us say, sensitivity, when a person senses the Most High (we spoke about this at the beginning), between witchcraft and prophecy? The word mechashefá (sorceress, witch) goes back semantically, from the point of view of Jewish interpretation, to the word lehachchísh (to deny). If a person who gives us advice, to whom we turn for help, leads us away from the Most High, denies God's governance of the world and from this position says: “God has punished you, but I will help you” or “Here we can control the will of the Most High,” this person is called a sorcerer. The word mechashefá is used in the feminine gender in a collective meaning, as, for example, the word fish: not one fish, but precisely fish in the plural, a lot of fish. So in Hebrew one can say mechashefá with regard to all sorcerers and all those who engage in such things.

Another commandment that greatly outrages feminists is the commandment about a girl who has been seduced and who is then given in marriage by the decision of her father. The outrage of feminists, and not only of them, is natural. Any person will be surprised and say: “But why does the father decide for the young woman?” And if we read carefully, we will see that the young woman has already been seduced, she is already seduced, and in such a state she sometimes cannot decide reasonably, she is not objective, she is already, one can say, enchanted by someone. Yes, of course, she is given freedom, and she can decide for herself. But it will be more correct if the father intervenes in the matter, who will be able to talk with her potential bridegroom a little differently than she herself. He, in any case, can be more objective. And the young woman herself, because she is seduced, is thereby deprived of the free will to decide for herself.

In conclusion I would like to speak about how the Most High speaks with Moshe and promises him to send an angel before the people. There is a wide spectrum of opinions as to which angel exactly this is. Some think that it is the angel Michael, some think that it is Eliyahu, others say that it is the Torah and the Law, some say that it is Metatron. When I was looking for the answer in the commentaries, I found about ten different opinions. And we will not talk now about what angel this is. One can go off into mysticism, one can give some simple explanation – for example, that these are the kohanim. That is not the point. Here is what God promises to the one who will obey the angel: “If the people follow the angel, if the people listen to his voice, then there will be none giving birth prematurely and none barren in your land, the number of your days I will make full.” That is, the Most High says that from birth to the very deepest old age He will accompany us and bless us with health, from conception itself, when there may still be a danger of miscarriage, to deep old age. Today we see this blessing of the Most High, we see many people who live to a deep old age. If earlier a person could live to forty years, to fifty years (in Pushkin's time a fifty-year-old man was already considered a little old man), then today, in our times, we see even eighty-year-old people playing basketball. And we can say: “Well, there you go, progress has reached such heights, science has reached such heights…” But behind all this we must not forget that health, longevity, strength in old age and successful births – all this depends on the blessing of the Most High. This is the meaning of what the Torah says here. And for His healing, and for the health that He gives, we must first of all bless Him Himself, and only then medicine. Invisibly He helps us, while visibly the hand of the physician acts here. Speaking of myself, I can say that I have seen a very great blessing from the Most High recently, when after a long illness I was able to get up from bed. Just a few years ago Israeli doctors said that I had only a few days of life left. But I can still be here, with you, talk with you, and you can listen to me, and for this, glory to the Most High.

Summing up the portion, concluding this talk, what can we say? The Torah says that the greater among us must be a servant to the lesser, because the source of our “greater” is our communion, our knowledge, our comprehension of God. The Torah is given to us in order to grow. It is not given to the spiritually grown-up, it is given to spiritual children so that they may grow up. The Torah introduces the death penalty not because it does not value a person's life, but on the contrary, because it values a person's life. The Torah says that a person, being capable of falling under influence, must not follow the majority, must always, up to the very last moment, seek a justification for another person. The Torah says that one who leads a person away from the Most High also deserves the death penalty. Note that the Torah never prescribes the death penalty for any economic crimes. The death penalty is introduced only for those who destroy a person, his body or his soul. The Torah says that a person must make decisions in a state of spiritual health, therefore a seduced maiden cannot decide for herself. And the Torah says that not only financial well-being, not only prosperity, but also our health, the level of our science – all this depends on the Most High, glory to Him forever.

The weekly portion speaks about how to live after the giving of the Torah, how to build laws in the new society, how to build relationships between a person and his neighbor, between a person and the Creator after the giving of the Torah. Probably two or three tractates of the Talmud are devoted to the analysis of the commandments that are set out in this portion.

We will talk about just two verses (25 and 26) of chapter 23 of the book of Shemot: “And serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will turn away sickness from your midst. There will be none miscarrying and none barren in your land, the number of your days I will make full.” These two verses I would like to analyze, to look at them from different angles from the Hasidic point of view, and to see how relevant they are in our life today.

Many ask the question: why does the verse begin with God turning and saying: “Serve the LORD your God”? The logical continuation would be to read: “And He will bless your bread and your water, and I will turn away sickness from your midst. There will be none miscarrying and none barren among you in your land, and the number of your days I will make full.” Well, or for everything to be in the singular “you.” Why do we read such a strange shift: “Serve the LORD, and He will bless your bread”?

There is a very important aspect in joint service, because it is impossible to serve the Most High without caring for all those who serve the Most High next to you, or for those who perhaps do not yet serve the Most High. All Israel are guarantors for one another. All Israel, all God's people, are responsible for one another. And therefore the service of Israel is service as a community. This does not mean that one has to go somewhere and necessarily serve in some community. It means that in a person's service there must be care for God's people, and not only for oneself.

There is such a great trouble in the spiritual work of every person as self-satisfaction or being pleased with oneself. A person can say: “Well, what about me? I study enough, I listen to a whole three lessons a day, I read Scripture a lot, I do a lot of good deeds, I have various ministries, and, by and large, I am pleased with my relationship with the Most High.” The question is: are there people next to you who need your help and need you to take care of them? If you are pleased with yourself, do for others, and this will become what brings blessing into your home. That is, joint service brings blessing into the personal life, into the personal affairs of a person. Participation and care for the needs of the people (not necessarily, I repeat, showing up some number of times a week at some community), participation in the service of the people, bringing the people closer to service – this is an important condition for a person's personal blessing.

Here there is probably also an aspect that the well-known commentator Kli Yakar speaks about (Rabbi Efrayim-Shlomo bar Aharon of Lunchitza, who lived in the 16th century). He says that joint work, joint service of the Most High is good. It is good to stand up for prayer together, as a large community, if needed. But at the same time bread, water, home food, household sustenance, everyday life must belong to the family. Boundaries must be set here, that is, life cannot be exclusively communal.

In Israel, at the very beginning of the existence of the State of Israel, there were kibbutzim (a collective farm, a colony), in which people often argued whether a person may have an electric kettle at home. That is how common everything was! Children grew up in a special dormitory for children, and the kibbutzniks ate only in dining halls. They had no private, home kitchens. But this project is a utopia. Yes, indeed, it is good to work together, it is good to serve the Most High together, but at the same time bread, water, health – this is some kind of personal space that we must build, and into which we bring the blessing from this service in society.

Mei Shiloach, another Hasidic commentator, says that in one's service of the Most High one must take others into account, and there are two approaches to this. If a person is imperfect in something, and he thinks, and is shy, and sometimes may say: “Should I even speak, maybe someone will say it better than me? Let someone who is better than me say it. Let someone who can do it better do it. Maybe I should not rush to answer all the questions, but wait, maybe there is someone else who will answer?” This is one quality. There is also another quality. If I understand that in some area I am truly knowledgeable and successful, if I am invited to lead prayers, or to preach, or to give some teachings, and I truly feel that “yes, I am good, I am succeeding in this area, I can do this well, and the people expect that it is precisely I who will do it,” then here too there is a manifestation of a kind of fear of God, of care that others too may develop. Therefore, even if you are, so to speak, cool in some area, you need to give room to others, so that the skillful may be revealed. You need to let those show themselves who perhaps do not think the way you do, who may think completely differently. Give room to someone who is young, who is not so smart, who is not so skilled, perhaps not so talented (or it seems to you that he is not so skilled and not so talented). You need to let others develop. Care for the development of others, care for the spiritual growth of others – this too is part of what the Torah speaks about here, as Mei Shiloach understands it.

When it is written va'avádtem (and serve together), what is meant is to involve, to encourage into service those who perhaps are not so talented and not so capable, not to see a threat in them, but to see a help in them, to see potential in them. Why is this part of the fear of God? Because we care not about our own success, but about the success of the Divine plan. And the success of the Divine plan is that the Torah, that our skills, that our knowledge pass from generation to generation. As the saying goes, “you can run very fast, but run alone, or you can run slower, but all run together.” And this va'avádtem (and serve) says that one must serve the Most High together, pulling up the weak, sometimes stopping for the sake of the weak, sometimes letting the weak go ahead, so that they become stronger. And if a person engages with this common whole, cares for this common whole, then he is blessed personally.

This is not only in everyday service, as we see it, somewhere in some matters in which it is obvious that this is service to God. But this can also be on the highway: for example, when we are going along the road and driving a car, we can drive in such a way as not to take anyone into account at all, as though we are the most important person on the highway; this is also behavior in the family, and in general everywhere. Therefore the general rule: “If you want to receive a blessing – think about the other.”

Further the Torah says: “There will be no one miscarrying and barren in your land.” This is interesting. If we speak about the simple meaning of these verses, then one needs to understand that very often it happens that to some married couple who cannot have children, “advisers,” “well-wishers” come and say: “Maybe you have some sin, maybe you did something wrong there, maybe you are somehow behaving incorrectly?” This is sometimes, probably, useful, if people themselves ask about it. But we see, here it is said that this depends on the common service, on the general state of society, not on some personal standing. Maybe also on the personal, but it is said: “If there is disorder in society, then there will be one miscarrying and barren in your land.”

Hasidic teachers do not always read words as they are written. When we read the word land (éretz), we connect it with the word ratzón (desire). Why is the land (éretz) called so? Because it does the desire (ratzón) of its master. If you throw a cherry pit into the ground, a cherry tree will grow; if you plant tomato seedlings in it, tomatoes will grow. A person, the people of God, is also called land (éretz). In the book of the prophet Malachi (3:12) we read: “And all the nations will say that you are happy, and you will be a land of My longing (a land of My desire),” – thus says the LORD. That is, service to the Most High is connected with our desires.

What is barren? Barren – this is when we do not want, we have no desires at all. We seemingly do not even understand what we live for. We seemingly live, but do not understand what for. Miscarrying – this is when we want something, but we do not succeed in fulfilling this some-thing. And the Most High says: “If you keep this rule, serve the Most High together with the people, take part in the communal service, then this too will be fulfilled. You will not have a barren one, you will not have a miscarrying one. You will be full of desire, you will be full of desire to live, of some ideas, of some motivation, your desires will be realized.”

And what does the number of your days I will make full mean? One can say that the simplest understanding of this is you will live as long as is allotted to you. But one can live what is allotted in different ways. If a person is allotted seventy-five years, it is clear that he sleeps, eats, occupies himself with something else. But there is gross and there is net, that is, how effectively does a person live these days of his? And if a person is ill for several years, lies in a coma, is paralyzed – this, after all, is also the allotted number of days. How usefully, how effectively do we spend our days, how do we live them?

It happens that a person decided to go and buy himself shoes, for example. And the bus came on time, the store turned out to be open, in the very first store the very first pair that he wanted to try on fit him, everything fit, and he managed the purchase of shoes in an hour. The simplest everyday situation. And it happens that he will fuss for half a day, walk around, all in vain, he does not manage to do what would seem such a simple thing. The founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, gave people a blessing, a blessing in time: “May your time be blessed. God grant that you manage everything in time, so that no minutes, hours of your life are wasted in vain.” This is very relevant for our time, when time slips through our fingers.

Another Hasidic commentator, the Sfat Emet, the admor, the teacher from Gur, says: “In the word mispár (number) one can see the root sapír (radiance). May your days be filled with radiance.” Every day in your life there will be some discovery, you will learn something new. You heard some small teaching, read some verse and understood it in a new way. It happens that for years you read one and the same thing and suddenly, unexpectedly, you begin to look at it in a new way. You heard some song, and suddenly it spoke to you, you heard some teaching and received something new for yourself. Every day to learn something new for yourself, to see something new for yourself.

Day here can be understood as a vessel that can be filled with some light. What did you learn today? Today is a day that will happen only once in history. Only once in history is there this day, and the Most High has a special gift for you for this day, a special radiance, a special understanding that you must receive for yourself. A special lesson that you can learn, notice. Maybe to see something new in your city.

One can take up as a good habit to observe with what the LORD wants to gladden you, with what the LORD gladdens you on this day. You went out into the street and, it happens, the mood is gloomy, it could not be worse, but you heard, saw (each one something of his own): someone the rustle of leaves, someone a little sunbeam of light that breaks through the leaves... And notice what gladdens you! Go and count what gladdens you, try to see in this a meeting with the Most High, in what gladdened you, in some little, little events. Children show this very well, when for someone splashing through a puddle is a joy. To see some little joys that the Most High sends you, to see how many times a day the Most High has taken care of you, and with these sparks, with these little rays, as with light, to fill your vessel.

One rabbi told that every day he comes to work and every day he sees what new is being built in Jerusalem, how Jerusalem is growing. Look at what is new with your colleagues at work. Maybe someone bought something new, someone did something new. Rejoice for him, bless him. Look for such a way of finding something new. May your days be filled with such light!

Rabbi Nachman speaks about this from another side: “Life is like such a little shelf or an endless-endless candle holder that can be filled with candles. Every day is like one of the candle holders in this big-big lamp. How many candle holders will remain unfilled? Will you be able to put a candle in every candle holder? To fill each of your days with some light with which you shone for others? To do something for others with your light. To discover something new in the Torah, something new in the understanding of Scripture.”

The Most High says: “I command you today.” To see what the Most High has commanded you today, what you can do for His service, for spreading His light, what you can do for this today? We sometimes look at some successful, famous people, famous teachers. We can look at them and think: “How did they manage all this? How did they manage, and they did not even have a computer, they had no transportation. They still managed to do something else besides writing books, meeting with people, answering questions, reading books, studying. Some even managed to get a good sleep!” For example, Shlomo ben Aderet, besides meeting with a multitude of people, writing a pile of books, also managed to take an hour's walk every day! He set himself such a rule.

There is a well-known tale about a professor who put into a jar first big stones and asked: “Is it full?” Then also small stones, then also sand, then also water. How effectively do you fill your day, how effectively do you fill your “little jar,” how effectively do you pour oil into your lamp? This too is a very important question.

And what is the point here? Why did we begin speaking with self-satisfaction? When you serve yourself, it is easy for you to say: “Well, I have enough to live on. I have already achieved, I have already earned as much as I wanted, and I have already kept the commandments as I wanted. I have already reached some spiritual level! Wonderful, as I dreamed!” Once a man from Brazil came up to the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Menachem Mendl Schneerson), when he had only just become Rebbe, and said: “I want to donate a million dollars for spreading your teaching in Brazil.” He came up with his son for a blessing. The Rebbe said: “Well, I hope you do not expect that I will be satisfied with this. You gave a million, may your son grow up and give two million.” The point is not that the Rebbe wanted money for chabád. It was not about that, but about the fact that a person, even if he has done something (and here there is such a very deceptive thought, one can dream: “Here, someday I will come and give, lay down for my rabbi, my teacher, for my community, for my friends, for those who are in need, I will lay down a million dollars!”), and seemingly one can be satisfied, even some dream has come true here, but the Rebbe says: “No! Strive for more, because in this way you are not satisfying your own dreams, you are not satisfying your own desires, you are serving before the King of kings!”

You serve before the King of kings in exactly the same way in family life too, constantly. One can say: “I gave my wife this,” and she asks me again: “Do you love me?” I did this too, and she asks me: “Do you still love me?” This is some process, where I cannot say: “I have already taken good care, I have fulfilled it,” because here I am not caring about myself.

And a person who really engages in service engages in what he has been sent for. No, this does not concern the fulfilling of commandments, it is not written down in a little book how many commandments I have fulfilled, how many I have done; how much I fulfill that for which the Most High created me, how much I fulfill my mission in this world – this is the fullness of my days, this is that true delight of communion with the Most High which the Most High gives in my life. Non-imitative, not when I imitate others, but precisely my service, precisely what I must do.

I will finish with this Hasidic story. The Rebbe of Chertkovo once, after the Sabbath, was cleaning up at home. He had a small broom and a small dustpan. The Hasidim saw this and said: “Rebbe, is this some kind of Hasidic act? Is this a blessing for something?” The Rebbe said: “There is nothing miraculous in this, I am simply helping my wife.” For a very long time afterwards every Hasid would still take a broom at the end of the Sabbath, after the Sabbath strike it against the dustpan and say: “There is nothing in this, I am simply helping my wife.” There is this kind of imitative action, when you do not do what the Most High requires of you, but you saw it with someone, you started to imitate someone.

Through this imitation of something drawn in front of you, you turn away from what you yourself are called to. And the blessing is that what you are called to, your calling, your talents, your “glowings,” that they all shine for the world, that your whole potential is revealed in this world! This is the secret of the blessing: “the number of your days I will make full.” The Most High as if sits and fills the days of the righteous one. There is help, everything works in favor of a person who is in such service: the bus comes on time, and the shoes turn up on time, and everything else happens. This is the kind of blessing the Torah speaks about here.

There are, of course, other views too, and other understandings. I have only, so to speak, again, in order to “throw some firewood onto the little campfire of thoughts,” brought the understandings of some Hasidic teachers.

In chapter 23 of the book of Shemot, in verse 5, we read an amazing passage. The verse itself is somewhat difficult to translate and to understand, although the commandment is very simple. Therefore we will bring several different understandings of this verse. So:

That is the verse. One of the translations closest to the truth, I would say, sounds like this:

5. If you see that your enemy's donkey has fallen under its burden, then do not leave him alone to unload. Unload together with him.

In most translations of this verse the word help is used. But in the original, as we see, there is no verb la'azór (to help), and the whole talk is about unloading. Several times in our verse the verb la'azóv (to unload, to leave, to untie, to abandon) occurs.

One of the most ancient translations of the Torah, the Aramaic translation of Onkelos, interprets it like this:

5. …unload what you have in your heart against this person, and then unload together with him.

That is: one must not, it is not worth it to help a person if you hate him. If you help a person together with your hatred, overcoming it, somehow helping him through the hatred, then at best it will look as if you are sort of lecturing him, saying: “Look how you are toward me, and how I am toward you. Look how I help you, because I am not like you. I hate you too, but I love God. And it is for the sake of the Most High that I do this for you. Look how much better I am than you!” Or it will be help with such a face that, of course, it will be hard to accept. Onkelos's understanding has this meaning: before helping to unload the donkey belonging to a person whom you hate, get rid of, free yourself from the hatred, and then you can be together with him. Then you will feel compassion for him, for his trouble, for his donkey, and then you can unload together with him. Before unloading the donkey, unload yourself.

Other commentators pay attention to three words in this verse that are rather hard to translate: vechadaltá me'azóv lo. There is a kind of inner struggle in a person – to help or not to help. Here is a person. On the one hand, it is clear, after all, that he is in trouble, his donkey barely copes with its burden, and one ought to help him. On the other hand, I really cannot stand this person. And so, you saw this person and have already passed by, rode past on your donkey. Or, if we put it in the language of our time, you met a person who has punctured tires, met him on the highway – and have already driven past. Of course, one ought to have helped, despite the fact that he is such-and-such. But what can you do? I have already driven past, I cannot now, breaking the lane rules, turn across the double solid line. That is dangerous for all drivers. That is dangerous in general. Fine, God will help him, and besides, I hate him. And if not, then it serves him right. According to this understanding, according to this commentary, this commandment is addressed to the person who saw his hater's donkey buckling under its burden and has already passed by. And the Torah says to this person: go back, stop and help him unload. When you looked at this person whom you hate, you could not make yourself stop and help him, that happens. When you look into the Torah, you can help him. The Torah restores peace between people. Looking into the Torah, you understand that ultimately the spiritual root of this person is the same as yours. And you can see how the Most High created him. And the Most High did not create him so that you would hate him. The Most High created him for service. And maybe, if you help him and somehow bring him back to service, this too is a path, even when you have already passed by, when you have already slipped past.

The sages of the Talmud ask the question: where could a person whom you hate, and his donkey, come from at all? How can one hate a person at all? After all, you have the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself,” the commandment to love your neighbor, to care for your neighbor. And the whole weekly portion Mishpatim, if it comes to that, is overflowing with care for one's neighbor. Where did hatred suddenly come from? And there are two answers to this question, two classical answers – two.

The first answer is this: yes, of course, one must not hate one's neighbor; but what can you do, after all, many, if not all, are trying to manage NOT to hate him. Yes, we hate, despite the fact that it is forbidden. And in cities where driving through a red light is prohibited, people drive through red lights. And people who know that one must not lie, lie. And people who know that one must not hate, hate. What can you do, it already lives in your heart, this hatred, which is what prompts you not to help. But even if you hate this person, stop all the same and help him. Again, one can put it this way: when you look at him, you do not want to help him. But when you look into the Torah, perhaps the hatred disappears.

There is also another option. The other option is, let us say, ideological hatred. It happens that a person who is driving along the road sees another person about whom he knows that he is a criminal – a villain, a murderer, perhaps a rapist, a pedophile, a thief. But only he alone knows, there is no other witness. He cannot prove anything. He knows that this person is, for now, committing crimes with impunity. And such a person, in the opinion of the sages, may be hated. Naturally, there is some hatred, some bad feeling toward a criminal. And again here the Torah says: despite this, it is not for you to punish him, not for you to deprive him of help, not for you to deprive this person of care.

Besides that, the expression ki-tir'é (if you see) is very important in this verse. How easy is it for us at all to see the grief of a person whom we hate? We couldn't care less about him! And if some Hitler suffers from a toothache, then I sincerely do not feel sorry for him and, it seems, it serves him right. I stand by it that it serves him right and that I do not feel sorry. Hitler is a radical example like that. But there is a neighbor who seemingly is not Hitler at all. But we cannot see him. What can we see? We can see the donkey. We can see that this person has a donkey, which, actually, in this story is the one who suffers. Not the person himself whom we hate, but his donkey. And because of our hatred it cannot get rid of its suffering, it may perish. And in the same way it may happen that it is not the donkey who suffers, it is the wife, the children of this person who suffer. How boundless can our hatred be, how far can it spill over onto this person's near ones, onto his donkeys, onto his cats? It has happened that someone killed the dog of a quarrelsome neighbor woman or the cat of a mean neighbor woman. To what extent can we run into the fact that our hatred is uncontrollable? How confidently can we say that we feel some negative feelings toward precisely this person, but we feel nothing bad either toward his wife, or toward his dad, or toward his daughter? How precisely can we choose the object of hatred and say that we dislike only this person? But the donkey, of all things, has nothing to do with it here. And maybe, through helping the donkey, we will somehow come closer to this person. In fact there is no great trouble in helping a villain or supporting a villain. There is trouble in learning from a villain. If you simply help him, there is no harm in that.

I must (in parentheses) say a very important thing right away. The word sin'aá, which is translated as hatred (the established translation of this word as hatred), does not mean such radical hatred as it sounds in the Russian language. The meaning of this Hebrew word is most likely to dislike such a person. As an example one can read 21:15 of the book of Devarim: “If a man has two wives, one he will love, and the second he will hate...) To hate – this is, of course, to love less, to dislike. But let us talk about hatred. In fact the Torah does not speak of such a radical, violent, unbridled feeling, as it is used in the Russian language. But… what can you do? We cannot say that this feeling is completely foreign to us. It happens that we are seized by literally hatred in the sense of hatred, and then care for the entirely innocent donkey of a person we hate is relevant, and still the commandment remains.

Also, naturally, it is important to recall that there is an interpretation of the word chamór (donkey) that is connected with the word chómer (the material world). And a person may say: “Of course, spiritually I would help him. I would give this guy a sermon, so that he repents, so that he comes to know the true God, so that he gives up all those things for which I dislike him. But in the material world I do not want to help him. He has spiritual problems, and let him first fix his spiritual problems.”

And there is such an understanding, such an interpretation of this commandment: “No, you should still take care of the material, even if you dislike this person for spiritual reasons, even if in the spiritual world, in the spiritual area he has to correct, correct and correct. And there is also another understanding: “Leave the material, leave your attachment to the material, your carnal hatred. Overcome this hatred, more precisely, leave, drop this hatred, throw it off, unload yourself of this hatred. Go and help your neighbor's donkey and through the donkey help your neighbor, who perhaps will no longer be a person disliked by you, and you will truly gain a neighbor.”

Such are the different levels that are revealed in the understanding of this commandment.

Together with the weekly portion Mishpatim, a prophetic passage from chapter 34 of the book of the prophet Yirmeyahu, from verse 8 to the end of the chapter, is traditionally read. In order to understand better what this is about, it is necessary to make a historical preface.

So, the first half of the 6th century BCE. The kingdom of Israel has already perished, many Jews, former inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel, have fled (some to Judea), have become impoverished, are forced to be slaves. In Judea the situation is not joyful either. Nevuchadnetzar, the Babylonian king, is besieging Jerusalem and many cities of Judea. Judea has one unreliable ally left among the earthly kings – this is Pharaoh Chafra, also known as Iachebre. At this time King Tzidkiyahu rules in Jerusalem, and he is thinking about what to undertake, how to find a way out of the terrible situation in which Judea found itself. Most likely, he will not be able to undertake some military mission, and he is looking for where, how to somehow mend relations with the Most High, to find favor in the eyes of the Most High and, maybe, through this favor to receive deliverance both from the Babylonians and from Egypt – from all the tributes, all those taxes that the Egyptians demand, and the siege takes away, and everything else. And the king decides to set the slaves free. According to Jewish law (we read about this precisely in the weekly portion Mishpatim (21:2)), after seven years of slavery a Jewish slave must go free. Must by law, but, evidently, this was almost never observed. And now let us read the story from verse 8 of chapter 34.

Such a wonderful idea came to Tzidkiyahu. Tzidkiyahu is a king without much authority, but here people listened to his advice.

Why such sudden unanimity among the people? First, indeed, this deed is, of course, pleasing to God. But there are two more reasons. The first – a slave is needed when there is agricultural work; he works in the fields, in the gardens, in the olive plantations, where something needs to be done, where this work is needed. Since Babylon is besieging the city, there is no work for the slaves, and there are very many slaves, they have to be fed somehow. And why feed slaves who cannot work? There is one more reason. In the city it is necessary to build defensive structures, all kinds of fortifications that would withstand a siege, and if the slaves build them, then the masters will have to support these slaves, pay for their labor. But if they are set free, then they will receive money, receive payment from the hands of the state. Again, it is more profitable at this moment to get rid of the slaves. That is, here there are three reasons due to which the people, the slave owners, agreed to set the slaves free. A little later we will find out how they did this before God.

What happens at this time? At this time Pharaoh Chafra, also known as Iachebre, whom we mentioned earlier as Tzidkiyahu's ally, decided to advance in support of Jerusalem. And Babylonian intelligence reported accurately, the Babylonians learned that Iachebre is coming to Jerusalem with some army. They decided that Jerusalem would not run away anywhere, lifted the siege and moved south, to meet Pharaoh. In Jerusalem they almost started celebrating victory and decided: well, that's it, now the siege is gone! You know, there is a joke like this, a story that is told in numerous variants, when a person, well, let's say, is looking for parking, and circles around for a long time, and tries to find parking, and says: “LORD, if You help me now, then I... Oh, stop! That's it, I already found one,” and parks. Roughly the same situation arose here: people saw that the siege had been lifted after all, and we foolishly let the slaves go. And people went for an evil deed. We read this in verse 11:

That is: “How good, we were lucky that the siege is gone! But now, after the siege has stopped, workers are exactly what we need, and we, fools, let them go!” And, since God had helped them anyway, or since they had arranged things well even without God, they decided to return these slaves to slavery. And they returned them. This, actually, is the background to the word with which the Most High addresses the prophet Yirmeyahu.

The Most High says: “Remember, at the very beginning I brought you out of the house of slavery, and then I made a covenant with you, saying...” – and here we will see a reference to what, actually, is said in our weekly portion Mishpatim:

How did a person end up in slavery? If he turned out to be destitute, he had absolutely nothing, he could end up in some household where he worked for six years, they had to provide him with food and the necessary, fairly decent social conditions. At the end of seven years he had to be sent away with a gift, with some kind of “start-up allowance.” That is how it was supposed to be, that is how the Most High commanded. Slavery could exist, it was permissible, but it was supposed to somehow correct a person and in the end put him on his feet. And the Most High says that this law was not really observed at all.

That is, from this we see that they did not just decide this offhand, they made a covenant in the Temple, made such an agreement among themselves that everyone would set the prisoners free. This was done before the face of the Most High, in the Temple of the Most High.

In other words: “You listened to Me, did what is upright in My eyes, but it turns out that this is not quite upright, it is something kind of crooked: as soon as the siege was lifted, you immediately dragged your slaves and slave women back by force.”

Now the sword, and pestilence, and famine will attack your land, you, freely, without fear.

We know from the story with Avraham that this is how a covenant is often made. This symbolizes: if I break this covenant, cut me in half like this calf. People did not just promise, they made a vow in the Temple before the Most High that they would set the prisoners free, and passed through the halves of the calf, that is, they did this ceremonially, pompously before the Most High.

The word sarís (I often dwell on it) in the modern language means eunuch, the verb lesarés means to castrate. But in ancient Hebrew it can mean bodyguard – the one who carries the head or guards the head, a “head-guard,” or a silovik (in the Russian political vocabulary).

20 And I will give them into the hands of their enemies and into the hands of those who seek their souls, and their carcasses will be food for the bird of the heavens and for the beast of the earth.

And here, so to speak, is a miracle, a surprise that the Most High gives to those who hoped that he had already “found parking.”

Read also: Yitro, Teruma, covenants and weekly portions of the Torah.