Exodus 21:1-24:18 – Jeremiah 34:8-22; 33:25-26 – Luke 7:36-50

This week's edition of The Set Table contains:

Questions and Commentary on Mishpatim
Chayyei Yeshua - A Devotional Commentary on the Besora Reading
In Summary
Looking Ahead

Questions & Commentary on Parashat Mishpatim

1. How should we translate the classic declaration of the children of Israel na‘aseh venishma (Exodus 24:7)? What does it have to do with the concept of Torah lishma?

Nick Amic

At the end of this week's parasha, we have the famous declaration of na‘aseh venishma (Exodus 24:7). This statement is typically translated "we will do and we will obey." We can also translate it as "we will always be doing and we will always be listening." Both are correct. However, in order to unpack the second translation, we will begin with a rather puzzling story from the Talmud:

"And they stood under the mount" (Exodus 19:17), Rabbi Abdimi bar Hama bar Hasa said: ‘This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be he, overturned the mountain upon them like an [inverted] cask, and said to them, "If you accept the Torah, it will go well with you; if not, there shall be your burial."'

b. Shabbat 88a

The two aspects of these statements are glaring: 1) how could the children of Israel really "accept" the Torah willingly if there was a mountain above their head? (i.e. they were being coerced by God); 2) Why does it say "there will be your grave" and not "here"?

Above we posed the argument that the correct translation for na‘aseh venishma has two components: doing and listening. Rabbi Yosef Dov Soleveitchik writes in the Beit HaLevi:

Na‘aseh has to do with good deeds and venishma has to do with the words of God. Na‘aseh means to say that we have accepted to do the commandments, and venishma means to say we have accepted to learn Torah. 

Soleveitchik equates the nishma that the children of Israel will being doing with learning Torah. Part of our tradition is to recite a blessing before learning Torah that ends, "let us study your Torah lishma (for its own sake)." When studying Torah we must be listening to the commandments to understand how we truly are to live, by asking the question: "what is it that God wants me to do in this particular situation?" The level of studying Torah lishma involves us being so intimately involved with the mitzvot of the Torah that we are then able to extrapolate its principles to our everyday situations. In fact isn't this what is meant by Yeshua's statement that he came not to "destroy [the Torah], but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17) - i.e. make fuller, show its true meaning, extrapolate it for us? Isn't that what his whole life demonstrated? Yeshua was the Torah in human flesh (John 1:14), and every recorded interaction is meant to show how to take the Torah's principles and work them out in everyday life - i.e. true Torah lishma!

Returning to our enigmatic Talmudic story, we are prepared to answer our earlier questions. First, what does it mean that to have a mountain hanging over one's head can be likened to Israel's situation throughout the whole of Tanakh where there were prophets constantly admonishing the same dilemma. If you return to God it will go well with you, but if you don't it'll mean your destruction like a mountain coming down on you. This brings us to the usage of the word "there" and not "here will be your grave." What the analogy is trying to teach us is that as soon as we do not feel the sense of a mountain hanging over us - i.e. when there were no prophets admonishing Israel, or when everything is going well in our lives - and we stop listening to what the Torah has to teach us (i.e. nishma), there will be our graves. Once we stop studying Torah in order to listen to it teach us how to live, we and our Torah study are dead. Let us make that declaration na‘aseh venishma - that we will always do that which God desires of us and what Yeshua demonstrated for us; and that we will always listen by ever engrossing ourselves in Torah lishma to truly discover how we are to live

2. Parashat Mishpatim includes laws that cover a wide spectrum of issues in daily life. One of the most famous of these is the commandment not to "boil a kid in its mother's milk" (Exodus 23:19)? What is the reason for this odd restriction? What general principles can we learn from it regarding our approach to eating?

Rabbi Jonathan Kaplan

In Exodus 23:19, we encounter the odd, almost proverbial (as Propp has suggested) commandment - lo'-tevashel gedi bachalev 'immo "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk." This commandment appears two other times in the Torah (Exodus 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21) which is pretty significant given that the command to observe Shabbat is only given about twice that many times. Rashi, following the commentary in Mekhilta' DeRabbi Ishamel, Maseket Kaspa, suggests that this repetition is significant. It teaches us that the commandment was given "once to prohibit eating it, once to prohibit deriving any benefit from it and once to prohibit cooking it."

This may be true, but Rashi's interpretation does not give us the reason behind this restriction. Rashbam (Rashi's grandson) offers one option. He writes,

It is extremely gluttonous to eat the milk of the mother with the children. . . The text is teaching you the civilized path.

For Rashbam the cooking and consumption of a kid in its mother's milk is an expression of gluttony or over-indulgence that often characterizes the behavior of the uncivilized. 

Ibn Ezra takes a slightly different approach. He argues that this proverbial commandment is given to restrict an unethical approach to life and to eating. He suggests,

We do not need to ask the reason for its prohibition for it is hidden [even] from the eyes of the discerning. Perhaps it was given because it exhibits cruelty to cook the kid with the milk of the mother. The commandments "Do not slaughter an animal from the herd or flock with its offspring" (Leviticus 22:28) and "Do not take the mother with the offspring" (Deuteronomy 22:6) are similar. Just as it is clear that the verse from Leviticus means you cannot eat them, so too you cannot eat the kid in its mother's milk even if it were not "boiled."

Following earlier sages Ibn Ezra goes on to extrapolate further restrictions against eating milk and meat together because of the impossibility of truly knowing whether you are cooking with the milk of the mother of the animal. Whereas Rashbam merely sees the practice as uncivilized and gluttonous, Ibn Ezra proposes an interpretation that regards the eating of milk and meat together as a moral question, because it exhibits cruelty.

Ibn Ezra's interpretation challenges us to reflect on the moral dimension of eating. For eating is not merely for our sustenance or our joy but also gives expression to greater moral values.