Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parsha podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen and I hope you are well this week. I sound a little bit raspy and no, my voice didn't get worn out from doing too many podcasts, um, because if it did I would have to make a workman's comp claim, you know, with the Practical Parsha podcast recording studio. But unfortunately we don't have that. So I guess I will not be putting in a claim either way.
[00:00:35] Um, just a little bit raspy. I think it's the dry cold air of the Northeast, which is just drying out my throat.
[00:00:42] And I still want to do a, ah, podcast for this week even it'll be a little bit raspy. Won't be the usual, but it's always good to change things up once in a while.
[00:00:53] So before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, or just would like to reach out to say hello, feel free to send me an email@rabbi shlomokonkohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you.
[00:01:07] This week's Parsha is Parsha's mishpotim. Now last week the Parsha finished with the Ten Commandments. The Jewish people received the Torah and. And now in this week's Parasha, mishpatim is really the beginning of the Torah teaching the Jewish people a bulk of the laws of the Torah. And mishpatim actually has the second most commandments in one parasha.
[00:01:35] And the parasha really goes through civil law and different halachos of, um, bodily injury, the responsibility that a person has with his property and the obligations that we have if we damage someone else's property, someone who steals livestock, self defense, damages that are caused by some, by livestock, the laws of a watchman, the obligation to help the helpless and the abandoned, the commandment to extend free loans, the integrity of the judicial process. The Parsha talks about Shabbos, the land of Israel, the three pilgrimages. And the Parsha finishes with the promise of a swift and quick conquest of the land of Israel.
[00:02:28] With the end of the Parsha, the Jewish people saying Na' Asev and Ishma, we will do and we will accept.
[00:02:35] Now the first thing I wanted to talk about today, there's so many different areas to focus, but what I wanted to talk about today is really in the beginning of the Parsha, the Parsha begins with, and these are the ordinances that you shall place before them now. And the Parasha goes right into different parts of the Civil law. Now, the commentaries are very busy discussing the connection between the Ten Commandments, which is last week's parsha, and this week's parsha. The beginning of the parsha goes right into the civil law, you know, things that you would think are necessary for society to function properly.
[00:03:20] And one of the themes that are talked about when it comes to the juxtaposition between the two concepts between, you know, the Ten Commandments, you know, which are begin with I am Hashem, your God, and you know, and this week's parasha, which is civil law, you know, damages and being careful with the property of others, is that even though we think of civil law as something which is logical, the Torah teaches us that when we follow the civil law that is dictated by the Torah, we're also fulfilling the command of God. Meaning that religion doesn't end when we walk out of the synagogue, doesn't end there. It's an all encompassing experience.
[00:04:16] It's how we act when we work, it's how we act when we sleep, it's how we act when we have fun. It's all encompassing.
[00:04:25] And that's the, uh, connection here, that when it comes to something that's quote unquote, logical to have laws about monetary obligations and, you know, damages and so on and so forth, it's not necessarily logical.
[00:04:40] It's something, it's an extension of our service of God.
[00:04:45] Now, one of the things I want to talk about here is that the parsha tells us about damages.
[00:04:54] And one of the verses which talks about damages is that, That, uh, you know, when the Torah details for us the different scenarios where a person can be obligated to pay, it says, and if a man shall open a pit, or if a man shall dig a pit and not cover it and an ox or donkey will fall in it, the owner of the pit shall pay. Right? So seems pretty understandable, pretty easy for us to understand.
[00:05:30] Now it's very interesting because the Talmud relates to us that a person who wants to become a chassid, who wants to become a pious person, someone who is above and beyond, what should he do, in what area should he focus his energies so that he could become a person who is a chassid, right, who is above and beyond. And the Gemara goes through different options, but one of the answers that the Talmud gives for a person who wants to become a pious person, who wants to become somebody who's not just doing the minimum of the Torah's commandments, but he's going above and beyond. He's, he's doing more. It says he should focus on me.
[00:06:15] He should focus on matters of damages.
[00:06:18] And what that means is that he should be careful with. Or he should study the areas of the Torah, which focuses on the damages, um, of others.
[00:06:31] And what are the obligations that someone has in regards to someone else's money and making sure it doesn't get lost, it doesn't get destroyed. This week's Parasha, I really feel, can help us get an understanding of this. What is, you know, being careful with opening a pit or closing a pit, which is a matter of damages. How does that make a person a pious person? How does that make a person a chassid? When the Torah teaches us the laws of these damages, such as opening a pit, closing a pit, the way we're supposed to look at it is not just in terms of finance, of am I obligated? Am I not obligated? I mean, that is part of it, right? The Torah is telling us here, if a person opens a pit in a public area and someone gets damaged, the person who opened the pit or who didn't cover the pit is liable for the damage that comes out.
[00:07:27] So there is an aspect of obligation, of financial obligation.
[00:07:32] But when we learn about the laws of naziken of damages and we live by it, you know, we're not just learning it for the, you know, for the enjoyment, intellectual pursuit, but we're learning it in order to cultivate it and to, um, implant it into our lives.
[00:07:52] So then it's not just about money and dollars and cents.
[00:07:57] It's making us, uh, a more caring person, a more careful person. But it's really a way for us to train ourselves to be a more compassionate and caring person. The Chinuch tells us that the foundation of these mitzvos of monetary damages, or being careful about it, is not just about when are we obligated or when were we not obligated, but rather it all sources itself from the mitzvah, uh, to love our fellow man, love your fellow man as yourself, that if we truly care about other people, we're gonna learn these laws in a way not to know when we're obligated or when we're not obligated. That's not, you know, sure, that's part of it, but that's not the source of it. That doesn't get down to the bottom of it. The reason why we're learning it is because we wanna know, to make sure that we're not going to cause other people pain. We're not going to cause other people Aggravation. So we want to know what our responsibilities are of what we need to do in order to prevent that from happening.
[00:09:03] And, you know, this is something, you know, people say sometimes what does tractate Baba Kama, you know, this parsha. There's three tractates in the Talmud, Baba Kamari, Baba Matsiya, Baba Basra, that deal with civil law.
[00:09:20] Together, all three of them, it's really a three part series of one tractate. It's the biggest part of the Talmud, that area.
[00:09:31] And people say sometimes, like the cases that are involved is, you know, if your cow gores a donkey and you know, uh, if a person walked by a pit and didn't cover it. So you might say to yourself, you're learning these parts of the tractate of the Talmud. So obviously there's ramifications to modern day scenarios such as if somebody smashes someone else's car, who's responsible according to Jewish law? But aside from that, you might say, I don't have a cow, I don't have a donkey. What does it matter if my cow gore the donkey? I don't have these things. Why am I learning this? And the answer to that is that these areas of the Torah which deal with damages train us to be more compassionate people, to be more sensitive people, so that we're not just learning it in terms of money, but we're learning it in terms of applying it to ourselves in order to be better people, to be more caring people, to not cause other people's pains. And that's how, you know, that's why the Talmud tells us that somebody who wants to be pious, someone who wants to go above and beyond, studies the area of nizika, studies the area of damages.
[00:10:39] Because when a person studies it in the right way, this area of the Torah, they're going to become somebody who's always careful about someone else's money. Right? The way you think about someone else's money is that you think about it the same way as your money, meaning you're careful about your own dollars to make sure that they don't go to waste. So when you're working for your employer or you have someone else's money, if you think of it as if it's your own money, you're going to be much more careful with it. You're going to check before you do something. You're not going to just spend it, you're going to be careful, you're going to be exact. And that's what it means in the Talmud, that it leads to a person to being more pious, it leads to a person going above and beyond. Because when you approach it in the right way and you do it, uh, with the thought and the reasoning that it ties back into loving the. With a man as yourself, it's going to make you into this better person.
[00:11:37] The second idea I want to share with you today takes us to the Torah's commandment in this week's Parsha to be sensitive to the helpless and to the abandoned.
[00:11:50] The posse reads as Iman Ta' Ana Yisoy Kim Tsoyik, Yitzhak Elai Shema Eshma Tzaakosy.
[00:12:01] It says, if you surely afflict him, then if he surely cries out to me, I will surely hear his cry.
[00:12:09] The Torah is telling us that when it comes to a orphan, a widow, someone is a convert, if you oppress him or her, he will cry out, and Hashem himself will hear their cries. Very powerful.
[00:12:30] Now, it's interesting, the Rebbe of Kutz points out that the double lashon, the double wording in the Pasuk teaches us something very important when it comes to the sensitivity of others, that when it comes to specifically a widow or orphan, or for that matter, anybody who has no one to cry out to when we, God forbid, cause them pain, it doesn't just hurt them, but it hurts them doubly. That's what it says in the Pasek in the verse, If you surely will afflict him, then if he surely cries out to me, I will surely hear his cry. That it's double the wording there that the Torah is pointing out to us that when someone causes pain to a widow or orphan, that's the classic example of somebody who doesn't have anyone else to cry out to, the pain is double, because aside for them being hurt by the act that happened to them, it reminds them back to the earlier loss that they had already. So it's a double amount of pain because they have pain, and then they have no one to cry out to. It reminds them again of the situation that they that happened to them in the past.
[00:13:56] And then Hashem, uh, is going to listen to their cries. He listens to them directly to hear them, and he will mete out punishment, God forbid, to somebody who's deserving, who causes them pain.
[00:14:12] The way that this commandment applies to each and every one of us is that for sure, when it comes to widows and orphans, we have to be extra careful with the feelings to not insult them, to not cause their pain.
[00:14:28] But it's not just, you know, the way the people that The Torah says explicitly widow and orphan. It's anybody who has no one to call out to that, you know, an orphan and a widow are the classic examples of people that don't have anybody to defend them, to stand up for them to cry to.
[00:14:52] But it's not just those people.
[00:14:56] You know, we live in a world, complicated world, and there's so many people who have complicated situations.
[00:15:04] And we have to make sure to be sensitive to the people that don't have anyone to cry to. You know, it could be someone who is in a challenging family situation.
[00:15:17] Maybe he doesn't have anyone to speak to. It could be a person who is divorced. It could be, you know, there's a person who's in a challenging financial situation and has no one to turn to. I don't know. There's so many examples where we have to be careful to not insult, to not cause pain to people who are in challenging situations. Because when they cry out, Hashem, uh, listens to them. And if we cause them pain, you know, we're causing extra, extra aggravation to them. And Hashem directly hears their cry. Now, obviously, we're going to help them. We should try to help them.
[00:15:57] But the point is that to always have that extra love level of sensitivity and care when it comes to these types of people in general, to be extra sensitive and careful with them, to not cause them any aggravation.
[00:16:14] The last idea I want to share with you today takes us to the Parsha's, um, commandment about the three pilgrimages, that there's a mitzvah three times a year to go to Jerusalem for the three festivals to bring sacrifices.
[00:16:29] And that paragraph finishes off. Reishas bikurei, admosecha, tovi Beis, Hashem and lokeh loy sivashel gedi bechalevimo. The choicest first fruit of your land shall you bring to the house of Hashem, your God. You shall not cook a kid in the milk of its mother. Interesting. So when the Parsha finishes off with his commandment of going to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage, the three pilgrimages, it says, bring your best crops to Jerusalem and don't cook a kid in the milk of its mother.
[00:17:05] And we learn from this that we can't have milk and meat together. And actually, three times in the Torah it says, do not cook a kid.
[00:17:18] Do not cook a kid and its mother's milk. Right? A kid goat it's referring to. But from here we learn out the prohibition against meat and milk together, right? This is one of the most standard Things that we know Jews know is that we can't have meat and milk together.
[00:17:36] And the commentaries, the Talmud teaches us, each one of the three times teaches us a different part about it.
[00:17:45] One time teaches us that you can't eat meat and milk together.
[00:17:49] A second time teaches us that you can't have any pleasure, any enjoyment from meat and milk together. That if, for example, if someone has meat and milk that was mixed together, they can't sell it and they can't use the money from that. And the third time teaches us that you can't cook it together.
[00:18:04] Now, it's interesting. Rav Hirsch brings down a reason as to why the Torah gives us a prohibition of eating milk and meat together. Now, obviously, before I say this, we know this, that the reason why we do mitzvos ultimately comes down to a reason that we do it because Hashem tells us to do it, because G D told us to do it. But yet, at the same time, the sages, um, do have a license to try to have, to give us an appreciation of the mitzvos, of the commandments that we do, to have a reason behind it, an explanation. But ultimately, we have to know that we do the mitzvos not because of reasons, but because G D told us to do it. Now, obviously, we try to understand it helps us appreciate it. But like I've said many times before, if we make our service of G D dependent on reasons, so then if the reason doesn't apply, well, uh, we could, God forbid, say the mitzvah doesn't apply.
[00:19:07] So that's why we always have to know that the source of all mitzvah observance comes back to this point, that we're doing it because G D told us to do it. But either way, at the same time, we can still have an understanding to try to get, you know, to help us appreciate it even more. And that's why Rav Hirsch brings down a reason. He says that when it comes to meat and milk, meat, you know, sinew tissue represents, um, you know, the physicality of the animal.
[00:19:39] And the milk, which is the other part of the animal, right, represents the, uh, future, the life source of an animal.
[00:19:48] And when it comes to a cow, right?
[00:19:51] So for them, all they do is they eat and they live and then they reproduce.
[00:19:58] There's no thought or reasoning or logic behind their actions. This is their nature. This is what they do. So in essence, the two parts of them are just together, right? The meat and the milk. But when it comes to a human being, a person who's on a higher level than an animal.
[00:20:18] We can't take the meat, which is the physical, and the milk, which is this life force, represents the. This higher level of understanding and reason. And he has to be careful not to mix together the physical parts of life, the meat and the milk which represents this, you know, the life source.
[00:20:40] Us as human beings, we have a separation between the two. And our job is to differentiate and to separate and to take the godliness and to insert it into all parts of our lives. We have to learn how to compartmentalize and to, you know, there's the physical parts of us and there's the life parts of us, and at the same time take the godliness and put it into all the aspects of our life. And Rev Hirsh brings down that the reason why this commandment is next to the mitzvah, the commandment of the pilgrimages is teaching us that if a person, God forbid, gives in to his instincts and mixes the two together, mixes the meat and milk together, he's going to profane, you know, he's going to lose his senses of the seasons. And that's why it's next to the pilgrimages, which are each one is associated with a different season of the year, to teach us this point. If a person gives in to that instinct, he's risking putting himself in that situation where he's going to become numb to that spiritual side of the year.
[00:21:58] So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomo konkohnmail.com have a great day.
