5771 פרשת משפטים

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us many of the Halachos that relate to financial dealings with other people and our responsibilities to not damage the belongings of other members of Bnei Yisroel. The Torah begins the Parsha with the words “Vayleh Hamishpatim” meaning “and these laws”.

 The Parsha begins with the word “and” which means that there is a connection between the end of Parshas Yisro and the beginning of Parshas Mishpatim. The commentaries explain what the connection is between the two Parshiyos.

 Rashi explains that the connection is to teach us that just like the Aseres Hadibros were given on Har Sinai so were all the other Mitzvos.

 The Siforno gives a very different explanation. He explains that the last one of the Aseres Hadibros is do not desire what your friend has and this week’s Parsha will explain what belongs to your friend.

 If we look at this Siforno a little more closely we can ask the following question.

 If we look at the first Halachah of Parshas Mishpatim it relates to Eved Ivri, this does not seem to relate at all to showing us about what things we should not be envious?

  In order to answer this question we need to first understand who the eved ivri is that the Torah is discussing. We know that in this Parsha when the Torah is discussing the laws of the eved ivri it is discussing a Jew who was sold due to the fact that he stole and did not have the money to pay it back. What caused a person to steal is that he was envious of the possessions of another person. Before the Torah can go into detail and discuss all the Halachos that relate to ownership, a person first must understand the repercussions of what happens if they are envious of another person.

 This Siforno can teach us a very important lesson. The Torah which does not have an extra word felt a necessity to write a whole Parsha discussing Eved Ivri to remind Bnei Yisroel what the repercussions of envy are. The reason is that we have a natural tendency to be jealous of what others have. One way for us to try to control that emotion is to know in advance the awful repercussions that can come if we give into it.

 If we can focus and try to control our feelings of envy we should merit to appreciate what we have which will bring us to true feelings of joy in this world.

5770 פרשת משפטים

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah discusses the laws that relate to many of the Mitzvos between man and his fellow man. One of the laws that the Torah discusses is that of a person who intentionally kills another person. The Torah proscribes his punishment by saying “he shall die, he shall surely die.”

 The Ohr Hachayim asks, why does the Torah when explaining the punishment of the murderer use a double language of “he shall die, he shall surely die’?

 The Ohr Hachayim answers that God punishes people whose sins require the death penalty in two different ways. For some sins the person receives the punishment directly from God (ie without intervention by a court made up of humans) and for some sins God gave Bnei Yisroel a special Mitzvah to be His messenger to carry out the punishment. What the Torah is telling us here is that the person who is being killed by Beis Din and the person who is put to death for his sin directly by God without the actions of Beis Din are the same as they are both being punished by God for their sins.

 If we look at this Ohr Hachayim more closely it seems to be perplexing. Why would the Torah need to tell us that the punishment meted out by Beis Din is also from God? It should be obvious that this is the case since the reason Beis Din is giving the punishment is specifically because that is what the Torah tells them to do.

 In order to answer this question, let us first explain one idea that relates to the purpose of God giving people punishments. One idea is that the punishment is meant to be a Kappara for the sin committed. In fact we know that before someone is put to death by Beis Din he is encouraged to repent so that he can get a full and complete pardon for his sin.

 This being the case, we can now answer our original question. In order for a person to feel the need to repent before they are about to be put to death for his sins he must feel that he transgressed a great sin to God and thereby deserves this penalty which will clean his slate. However, the fact that Beis Din is meting out his punishment could enable doubts to creep into his head that this is not truly a punishment from God but rather a travesty of justice. If this thought enters his head it could prevent him from doing a proper repentance. It is for this reason that the Torah is telling us that the only reason Beis Din can kill him is because he is guilty of the sin and the Beis Din is God’s messenger to carry out the punishment.

We see from here how incredibly strong our natural tendency is to view things that are obviously clearly from God as being done by man. This Yetzer Hara can cause us to miss out on the constant daily messages that God is sending us to help us change our ways for the better.  We should work on ourselves to use this idea to actually begin to look more closely for the daily messages from God and use them to grow closer to God.

פרשת משפטים 5769

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah discusses many mitzvos, of which the majority relates to actions taken between man and his fellow man.  One of the Mitzvos that is brought down is the laws relating to damaging another person. The Torah tells us that if a person damages his friend or steals from him, he must repay him with the best fields that are in his possession. The Rabbeinu Bechai explains the reason behind this requirement:

 If a person who damages or steals from another person would not be forced to repay the person with the best of his fields then everyone would go out and steal his friend’s expensive items and pay him back with his not so good fields. It is for this reason that the Torah tells us that if a person steals and must repay the person he stole from with the best of his property. This should give the person pause before he acts and will get him to think to himself why should I steal, I will end up losing my really good property.

 If we look at this Rabbeinu Bechai more closely we can ask the following question. The reasoning of the Rabbeinu Bechai seems difficult to understand. If a person is going to steal then he assumes that he will be getting away with the action. If that is the case then telling him that he will have to pay back the stolen object with the best of his property probably would not effect his actions. Furthermore, if he actually did think about being caught, then that alone should cause him to think about his actions more carefully and realize that what he was about to do was wrong.

 The answer would seem to be that many times a person’s desires for physical pleasure and financial benefit are so strong that they not only can blind him to the wrongness of his potential actions but also can cause him to ignore the potential risks involved in the action. However, if there is a potential financial loss at risk from the same action, it can cause a person to rethink his actions.

 This is what the Torah is telling us here. There are times in a person’s life that he will encounter a tremendous desire for something where it will be incredibly difficult to fight the Yetzer Hara. In those times it is imperative to use every weapon in our arsenal to fight the Yetzer Hara. One weapon is to concentrate on the physical harm that could come to us as a result of this action. If the knowledge that the action we are considering taking is a sin is not strong enough to prevent us from doing it, then the thought of losing something dear to us just might be.

 In today’s day and age where the desires facing us on a daily basis are incredibly difficult we need to arm ourselves with as many weapons as possible to fight it. Before we take any action we should make sure we consider the potential loss both in our relationship to God and in our lives in this world. If we can do that we should have the strength to conquer our Yetzer Hara and merit to live a life full of torah and mitzvos.                

פרשת משפטים 5768

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us many of the laws that relate to the interactions between man and his fellow man. Among the laws that are mentioned in the Parsha are the laws that pertain to thieves. The Torah describes to us 2 different types of thieves with each one having its own set of laws. The first type of thief is what the Torah calls a ”Ganav” is a person who sneaks into a person’s house at night to steal so he won’t be caught. The second type of thief what the Torah calls a ”Gazlan” is what we would call a “stick up artist” someone who will go over to a person in broad daylight and hold them up for their money. The Torah tells us that one of the inherent differences between a ”Ganav” and a ”Gazlan”  is that when the ”Ganav” is caught; on top of paying back the value of what he stole he must pay a special fine called ”Kefel” which is double the value of the stolen object. A “Gazlan”, on the other hand, when he is caught does not have to pay the fine of “Kefel”.

 The Mechiltah is bothered by why should the punishment of the two type of thieves differ, they are inherently both thieves? He answers this question the following way:

 Raban Yochanan ben Zacai answered a “Gazlan” equates the honor of the servant (other people – the servants of God) and the master, while a “Ganav” gives more honor to the servant than the master. The “Ganav” makes it as if the eye of God does not see and the ear of God does not hear.

If we look at this Mechilta a little more closely, we can ask the following question:

1. The reason we say that the ”Ganav” is worse than the ”Gazlan” it is because the ”Ganav” shows fear of only man and not God while the ”Gazlan” doesn’t fear anyone. However, for just that reason the ”Ganav” should be considered better than the “Gazlan”. The ”Ganav” who at least has fear of people might change his ways, but the ”Gazlan” who would appear to be so evil that he isn’t afraid of any punishment would seem to be so far away from ever recognizing that there is a God out there who is watching and cares about his actions?

The answer is that our assumptions are inherently wrong. The natural assumption is that a person who is at least afraid of man would actually be able to repent easier than someone who fears nothing. However, we see from the ”Mechilta” that the opposite is true. A person, who fears man but not God, is actually farther away from repenting than someone who has no fears at all.

 The reason for this is that when a person has no fear at all, that enables him to sin. However, if a person works on himself to feel shame and fear of the consequences of his actions, he is not limited to feeling that only to man, he can have those feelings in relation to God too. However, someone who already has those fears and doesn’t relate them to God shows that he doesn’t believe that God is really watching him. That inherently brings him further away from God.

 Most of our lives, we spend trying to impress people with our actions and certainly to hide our sins from other people. However, many times we forget that God cares about our actions more than anyone else in the world. Having a fear of people and not God is a sign that we are forgetting that God is really watching us constantly. As we see from this מכילתא a person in this situation would have a hard time getting close to God. It is for this reason that we need to remind ourselves constantly that God is watching us and really cares about our actions. If we can do this, we can merit growing much closer to God and increasing our fear of God.

פרשת משפטים 5767

 In this week’s Parsha there is a very interesting Midrash Tanchuma that can teach us a very important lesson.  The Torah writes the following:

When you see the donkey of your enemy struggling under its burden you should help him reload the donkey.

On this Pasuk the Midrash Tanchuma says the following:

 Rabbi Alexandri said that there were 2 donkey drivers walking on the road who hated each other. The donkey of one of them was struggling under its load. When his enemy passed by and saw the donkey struggling, he said to himself it says in the Torah that if you see the donkey of your enemy you should help him. He will go back and help him and they will begin to talk about how best to adjust the donkey’s load. The man whose donkey was struggling thought to himself “I thought he hated me, see how he loves me, he saw me and my donkey in trouble he helped me”, due to this thought they enter the inn and eat and drink together and become friends.

 There are 2 questions that can be asked on this Midrash.

1. We all know that there are times when someone asks us to do something which we do not really want to do. Even though we will do it, the act won’t necessarily be done with a smile on our face. In this case, even though the person knows that it is a Mitzvah to help , he won’t necessarily show a big smile on his face when he helps his enemy adjust the donkey’s load. If that is the case, then how is it guaranteed that by doing this action it will bring the 2 enemies to become friends?
2. The person, whose donkey was struggling under its load, should also have known that his enemy was only helping him because of the מצוה, if that is the case then how will his action of helping bring the 2 enemies to be friends?

There is a Machlokes among the commentaries on Chumash on the explanation of the words ”Azov Taazov Imo” in the Pasuk when discussing how you should even help your enemy whose donkey was struggling under its burden.

 The explanation that is given by most commentaries including Rashi, is that ”Azov Tazov” means to help and in this case it means to help your enemy unload his donkey.

  However Onkelos gives a very different interpretation. He explains the words ”Azov Taazov” as follows:

 Leave what is on your heart about him.

 What Onkelod is telling us is that in order to properly do this Mitzvah you must remove all the bad feelings that you had in your heart towards this other person and help him.

If we use the interpretation of Onkelos, we can now begin to answer our questions on the Medrash Tanchuma. Since in order to properly do the Mitzvah, a person has to remove all his feelings of hate from his heart;  then when he comes to help his “enemy” he will be helping him with a true happiness and not begrudgingly. Furthermore, even though his “enemy” also knows that this change occurred because of the Mitzvah, since he really changed his feelings towards his “enemy” it won’t matter any more to him why the change came about.

Using this understanding we can not only understand the Medrash Tanchuma, we also get a tremendous insight into the ability of a person to control their feelings. According to Onkelos when a person sees his enemy’s donkey struggling under its load he must leave his feelings of hate. In this situation, a person can’t go home and work on himself for a few days to remove the feelings of hate, then go back and help him unload his donkey, it must be immediate. Nevertheless, according to Onkelos a person can remove his feelings of hate on a dime.

 The question for us is how do we reach this level of removing our feelings of hate towards people who we dislike for what they have done to us?

 I believe the answer lies in a different Mitzvah. We know there is a Mitzvah to judge a person with the benefit of the doubt. When a person harms us, we must say to ourselves that he/she did not purposely want to harm us. They made a mistake, they weren’t thinking, they had a tough day and just lashed out. These are just some of the reasons that can cause someone to do something to us that we would consider hurtful.

 If we can always try to judge people with the benefit of the doubt we will see how quickly our dislike for people will dissipate and we should merit to see the rebuilding of the Beis Hamikdash which was destroyed due to baseless hatred.