Taste of Limmud
Parshat Mishpatim
This parshah is very different from the previous five in this book as it has very little narrative. Instead it contains a whole series of laws on a wide range of issues, including those relating to the damages (fine) to be paid if an offence is committed. It ends very differently with Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the tablets and the Torah. He remains there forty days and forty nights.
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Parashat Mishpatim – Elliott Malamet
Elliott Malamet teaches Jewish studies and religious education at York University in Toronto, and the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto. He is consulted worldwide on matters of Jewish education. He is the co-founder of Torah in Motion, an organization which explores the interface between Judaism and the modern world.
The complexity of Jewish ethics is never better illustrated than in the terse discussion in this parshah of a topic of intense contemporary moral interest, that of abortion.. The Torah only refers to an unintended abortion, but the relevant verses set the tone for thousands of years of halakhic debate: “When men fight and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results (lit. “her fruit shall depart from her”), but there is no ason, the one responsible shall be punished as the woman’s husband shall cause to be assessed ... But if there is ason, then you will give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth...” (Exodus, 21: 22-25).
This passage speaks of an accidental miscarriage suffered by a woman in the course of fight between her husband and another man. But the Torah distinguishes between two situations, one where there is ason and one where there is not. I have purposely refrained from translating this Hebrew term; historically it was the status of this single word that divided Judaism and Christianity regarding this issue. Jewish tradition understood the word to mean “misfortune” or “fatality”, and since the passage informs us that the fetus has obviously died, such a fatality must be referring to the outcome for the mother. In other words, were the mother to survive the fight and simply suffer a miscarriage, the incident was essentially treated as a “property crime” (as crudely offensive as this may sound to modern ears) with the punishment being a fine paid to the husband. But if she too were to die, then it was considered a capital crime and the punishment for the guilty party was death. There is a clear difference between the “personhood” of the fetus, and that of the mother, in Jewish tradition.
When the Torah was translated into Greek, however, ason was revealed in the Septuagint as “form.” The word was applied to the fetus and not the mother, and for Christians, the text was delineating between a fetus in the earliest stages of the first trimester which “did not yet have form”, and the subsequent development of “form” in the fetus. Dr. Rachel Biale notes that for Christians, “killing an unformed fetus was not a capital crime but aborting a formed fetus was. Even that distinction was abolished in later Christianity because the soul was believed to enter the fetus at the moment of conception, and thus aborting a fetus even prior to the fortieth day meant dooming that soul to hell since it could not gain salvation by baptism.”
One often hears talk, often inaccurately, of a general Judeo-Christian morality, but the radically different paths the abortion discussion took points to much more intricate distinctions that developed over time in the two religions. Abortion on demand, for any reason at all, is not a Jewish value, but neither is abortion considered murder within Judaism in the way it is consistently referred to by conservative Christians. Our parsha reminds us that Jewish ethics is grounded in language and its interpretation, and popular slogans about Jewish morality are no substitute for a careful reading of the sources.
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Another Voice – David Aaronson
David has served on many charitable boards and is currently serving on the board of LimmudLA where he is also chair of a new event call LimmudLA Campfire, which will be a Limmud like weekend retreat at a Malibu Mountain summer camp site the first weekend in Nov. 2010. He is a Certified Outreach Fellow for the Union of Reform Judaism and has created and conducted several classes and workshops as well being a presenter at this year’s LimmudLA Feb. 12-15.
Mishpatim has the most amazing recorded encounter with God in Chapter 24:
“Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel;
And they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet a kind of paved work of a sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And upon the nobles of the people of Israel He laid not his hand; also they saw God, and ate and drank.”
Later in Shemot 33 Moses pleads with God so that God should show His glory and face to Moses. Here is part of the dialog that denies this request:
“And he said, I beg you, show me your glory. And He said, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And He said, You can not see my face; for no man shall see me and live.”
This very apparent contradiction is solved by the rabbis by stating that the verses in Chapter 24 must be taken metaphorically. It is the act of eating in a holy realm that feels as if we are actually seeing God. Can we now question where are we to apply this metaphoric rule? Is there a spirit of the law and/or a letter of the law that must be considered? Are there indeed secrets that must be discovered in each generation? For Devarim 30:11-14 instructs us clearly(?):
For this commandment which I command you this day, is not hidden from you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it? Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it.
Translations are from the Soncino Talmud and Tanach CD version.
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