If you are looking for a sentence or two on the parsha (weekly Torah portion), you have come to the right place. After all, this week’s parsha is called Mishaptim which means sentences or judgements.

In our case, it is referring to judgements on how to act, otherwise known as laws.

However, they are called judgements and not laws for a reason. Perhaps I will explain that later. But first, the summary…

If you recall from the end of the last parsha , haShem (god) was telling Moshe (Moses) what to tell the people. Our parsha continues this with haShem telling Moshe that these are the judgements to put before the people.

The first set of mishpatim talk about how one deals with a Hebrew slave. Now our oral tradition tells us that a Hebrew slave is not a slave in the traditional sense. Rather, he/she has lots of debts and the only way to pay them off is to work for a person for a set period of time in exchange for them paying the debt.

After that, we get laws concerning a person who kills another perso,. This leads into the well-known dictum, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Next up are the consequences of an ox when it gores a person or another ox, or if it falls into a pit. Since we are on the subject of oxen, the Torah discusses the ramifications of stealing an ox or a sheep.

This leads nicely into the judgements concerning loss of produce due to livestock or fire. The next issue deals with someone guarding anothers property, which then gets stolen. This is followed by what happens when a borrowed animal dies.

A couple of quick rulings around seducing a virgin, and witches, and sacrifices to foreign gods, and how to treat foreign residents are next, followed by how to treat orphans and widows and the poor, and to not curse a judge or the leader of the people.

We are told to be prompt in our tithing for we are a kadosh (holy) people to haShem, and not to eat from an animal killed in the fields, and not to listen to false rumours or work with a bad person or be a false witness. We are not to follow the majority to do evil.

After this comes a judgement on helping the animals of your enemies or those you hate. Then a repeat of staying away from lies and not to take bribes and not to oppress a foreign resident. Then we get the law to let the land rest every seven years. This is followed by letting everyone/thing in your household rest on shabbat. After all this, we read that three times a year we are to come to haShem to celebrate, but not empty-handed. We then get a quick bit regarding sacrifices and not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk.

After all of this, god tells Moshe he is sending an angel to lead the people and a warning not to disobey the angel, and what will happen if the angel is obeyed.

Next is a warning not to take on any of the ways of the residents of the land they are going to. God explains how he will help defeat these other peoples and why these others cannot stay on the land with the people.

Moshe tells all this to the people who say, as a single voice, that they will do it.

Moshe writes down all of god’s words and the next morning builds an altar, and the youths make sacrifices and Moshe reads what he wrote to the people. The people again agree and Moshe seals the brit (covenant) with the people by sprinkling blood on them.

Moshe, Aharon, two of Aharon’s sons, and 70 elders then go up on the mount and see god and eat and drink. God tells Moshe to come up and get the stone tablets of Torah. Moshe tells the elders to wait for him until he returns and if they have a problem, to bring it up to Hur or Aharon. Moshe goes up the mountain and into the cloud that has enveloped the mountain and stays there for 40 days and 40 nights. And that is how the parsha ends, with an echo back to the days of Noah and his ark.

Now that we know what happened in the parsha, let’s see what we can learn from it. With so many rules, it is tempting to focus in on one or two of them. Instead, I would like to take a step back. Actually, I want to take two steps back.

The previous parsha seems to be nudging at us, as if it is somehow connected with this parsha . I hear it telling us that it is the big picture, and this parsha is the details.

Ok, I hear you, Yitro, and I am willing to look at this parsha through your lens.

There is something that is quite common in the Torah. The Torah will make a general rule, and then later give details. For example, in Yitro, we were given ten broad categories on how to live. We call them the Decalogue. Now, in our parsha, we start to get the details of how to do, and what happens when you don’t do something correctly.

But, I just took a step forward; let me step back again.

Last week, when I was talking about parsha Yitro , I explained that the Torah was trying to teach us that dealing with people takes precedent over the receiving of the Torah.

This week’s parsha takes this idea and expresses it in practical terms. It starts off with a bunch of judgements that have one thing in common: they are expressing how a person should deal with another person either directly or indirectly.

By calling these mishpatim, or judgements, in a sense, the Torah is telling us that these types of interactions form a judgement of the type of person doing the interacting. This in itself is of great value.

However, the parsha goes further by then telling us of the three major holy-days, the festivals of matzos, the first fruits, and the final harvest, and that we are not to come to haShem empty handed. Now on a surface level, the Torah is saying you must bring the first fruits of your labors.

The question is what are those fruits? These fruits are not olives and dates. These fruits are the person you have become based on how you have done the mishpatim. If you have followed them, if you have treated everyone you come in contact with correctly, as Moshe did with Yitro, you will have lots to bring to haShem. If you haven’t, well, haShem says do not bother coming before him empty-handed.

In other words, while the last parsha shows how important god feels it is to treat people with respect, this parsha goes one step further with god telling us that if we don’t treat people appropriately, to not even bother trying to connect to god – she won’t have anything to do with us.

I bless you to take this message to heart, and I look forward to seeing you all with full baskets of your “fruits” during the holy-days this year.

If you want to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.