Dvar Torah on Parshat Mishpatim

My grandson, Tzur, is approaching his second birthday. For the past few months, he has been using the word שלי – mine – an awful lot.

Now, he has three older siblings, so he certainly does need to assert himself, and he is doing a great job of it (and his siblings are very warm and loving towards him, so it’s all good), but I find it remarkable that such a young kid, even one with the exceptional intelligence and sensitivity which typifies all of my offspring, should so quickly and emphatically understand the notions of mine and yours, and assert his rights of ownership. He may not  always get it right, and has a tendency to say that whatever he wants is his, and has in fact claimed that my son Uri’s motorcycle is שלי  (he’s gotten over that), but he certainly, very early on, got the idea of ownership.  

Mishpatim is an interesting parsha. It signals the end of the first part of the Torah, which is largely driven by narrative concerns, and begins the more legalistic section. It is basically a sampling of a very wide range of laws, concerning the treatment of slaves, many different types of property and personal damages, borrowed, lost and stolen items, kashrut, holidays, etc., etc. One traditional way to understand this potpourri of legal material is that it is a kind of overview of the Torah, communicated to the Jewish nation as they are about to accept, or, possibly, reject, it. First, in last week’s parsha, Yitro, they received the basic Ten Commandments, and now they get a taste of the entire range of dos and don’ts.

This is the way the Ramban (Nachmanides, 13th century Spain and Israel) sees it. He explains that the Ten Commandments can actually be seen as the blueprint, the inspiration, for all 613 mitzvot; each one of the Ten is like a seed, from which, naturally, the other mitzvoth grow. Mishpatim drills down to the details.

The question is: why does Mishpatim jump so quickly from the heights of Mount Sinai to the gritty realia of everyday property law? Why do we so abruptly shift from the exalted laws concerning our relationship with God, the Sabbath, etc., to the mundane rules for slave-owners, material on theft, laws of ownership, damages, etc.?

The Ramban exacerbates the problem by explaining that all these laws stem from the last of the Ten Commandments – Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s house…his wife…servants, ox, etc. He says that the Torah, right after the Ten Commandments, in last week’s parsha, expands upon and elucidates the first two commandments, about believing in God and not worshipping others, and now here, at the start of Mishpatim, the Torah jumps, in its ongoing elaboration of the Ten, to the last of them, to not covet that which is not yours. The question therefore is: why go from the first two to the last, most every-day of commandments, to respect others’ property? Why skip all the ones in the middle – the Shabbat, honoring one’s parents, not testifying falsely, etc. - and go right to what seems to be the least dramatic of mitzvot – not to covet the property of others?

Furthermore, the Ramban’s explanation of how these laws are an elaboration of “Thou shalt not covet” only seems to create another difficulty. He explains it this way: by knowing and assimilating all the laws which revolve around property ownership, one comes to respect the very notion of ownership, of what is yours and what is mine, and thereby – listen to this – will not covet that which is not his or hers. Really?! This flies directly in the face of some very popular notions, which see in capitalism, which itself obviously stresses and honors the idea of ownership, the very source of covetousness, rather than its cure. A common argument claims that if we were to soften our insistence on “yours” and mine”, if we shared more, spread the wealth around a bit more, people would be less jealous of the property of others, which would be a disincentive to theft, selfishness, and the very covetousness the Ten Commandments forbid. According to the Ramban, the Torah is saying precisely the opposite: clarity about property ownership, and about my responsibility to respect the fact that other people have a right to their things, and that I have no right to take, mistreat, or damage them, and that I will be punished, fined, and will have to make restitution if I break the rules, actually reduces covetousness. A stress on the dos and don’ts of property ownership actually diminishes our desire and tendency to act inappropriately in these areas, makes us less likely to covet. How does this work?

I think my grandson, Tzur, has the answer.  As he teaches us, we are born wanting. Food, love, warmth, comfort, protection, we want, and need, all these things, from the moment we are born. From this natural and appropriate interaction with the world around us stems the שלי – it’s mine - approach to life. We take the healthy approach of every newborn – give me what I need – and apply it to whatever looks attractive, interesting, useful, or just shiny and colorful to us. The Torah, like any good parent, understands that this can’t go on, and that every child must learn that some things belong to others, will break if treated in certain ways, or are not good for us. The laws which open parshat Mishpatim reduce our infantile response to covet whatever looks good to us, in exactly the way parents educate their children away from babyish selfishness, by explaining that there are other people, who have their things, their needs, their property, and we must learn and respect that. We are not the center of, and therefore we are not the owners of, all we see around us.

This explains our question as to why the Torah skips from its elaboration of Commandments one and two to number ten. The “it’s mine” response to the world around us is so infantile, so damaging to our ability to become successful, reasonable, and productive adults, that the Torah needs to deal with it at the start of its explanation of its laws. As Tzur is rapidly learning, there are other people in the world, with needs like ours, and these must be respected – most basically by not taking them away from them, and, on a higher level, by, with various forms of charity,  supplying them when they are lacking.  Perhaps paradoxically, the ability to share, which is a Torah value (just reference the many, many laws of charity), comes not from a blurring of notions of ownership, but from a clarity about the mature acceptance of a me and a you, each of whom has a separate, autonomous right to their things. 

The Ramban quotes a Midrash which elaborates on, and expresses beautifully, why these particular property laws need to be placed front and center: The entire Torah depends on justice, which is why God placed these civil laws right after the Ten Commandments. It is not simply that a civil society is the necessary foundation for any community. It is that we need to populate our community, and the world, with adults, and not infants, with people who are weaned away, by the laws of ownership and property, from thinking that everything bright and shiny that they see belongs to them.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix