Shabbat Shalom

This Tuesday morning, during “Ten minutes of Torah” a weekly program at the Chabad Community Shul , an interesting question surfaced about the juxtaposition of last week’s Torah portion Yitro ,and this week’s Mishpatim.

First a little background. One of the more mystical principles of Judaism is with regard to the interpretations of Torah. It’s fairly common knowledge that the Torah has a built in elaborate system of Hermeneutical principles which were employed by the sages throughout the ages of the Mishnah and Talmud , to interpret, or unpack that which is implicit in the written Torah.

The essence of the development of all the halachik principles that form the backbone of Jewish life today, revolved/s around the meticulous adherence to those principals


So for example, a one liner in the Torah that states “You shall bind as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes” would be too cryptic as a stand alone statement, what are they made of? What’s in them? Who wears them? And when are they worn?

Enter the sages of the Mishna and the Talmud, which came in and worked their magic, through the careful application of these interpretive divine formulas, combined with the translucent Holiness of the sages, the Halachah of Teffillin was born, and eventually recorded in what is now known as the Shulchan Aruch, The code of Jewish Law.

This same procedure happened for all the Mitzvot of the Torah.

What is less common knowledge however is that in addition to the notion that every word, and syllable in the written torah is pregnant with meaning, and the sages in their mystical journeys, were like sacred archeologist’s; mining every letter for the hidden treasures buried within, was another,spiritually daring notion ,that even within the sequence of torah portions, are embedded deep G-dly truths, waiting to be lovingly extracted.

A prime example of this, is in the aforementioned sequence of the ending of Yitro and the beginning of Mishpatim.

The portion of Yitro, with its description of the Giving of the Ten Commandments at the foot of Sinai is arguably among the most sublime portions of the Torah, the interface of the divine and the human, the nexus of mankind and G-d.

Mishpatim is the polar opposite, a collection of ordinary laws pertaining to the seemingly mundane and dreary aspects of life.

The truth is that the proximity of these two extremes is intentional. The message here seems quite clear. The breakthrough of Sinai meant that the human realm and the sacred realms resolved their core incompatibility. This enabled the registering of the divine even in the most prosaic dimensions of life.
The achievement of nirvana then from a Jewish perspective lies not in the heights of the spiritual mountains we scale, rather in the sacred manner in which we conduct our daily life.

If we hear in the Mishpatim routine an echo of the thunderous holiness of Yitro, then in that moment we are indeed transported back to the foot of the mountain , and have found the secret to “Living a Meaningful life “

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yossi