וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם׃

כִּ֤י תִקְנֶה֙ עֶ֣בֶד עִבְרִ֔י שֵׁ֥שׁ שָׁנִ֖ים יַעֲבֹ֑ד וּבַ֨שְּׁבִעִ֔ת יֵצֵ֥א לַֽחפְשִׁ֖י חִנָּֽם׃

And these are the rules you should set before them
When you acquire a Hebrew slave, that person shall serve six years—and shall go free in the seventh year, without payment.
(Shemot 21:1-2)

For centuries, if not millennia, Jewish law has been arranged and organized in order to make it accessible and user-friendly. The Mishneh, with its six orders, is the first effort to codify Jewish law based on categories, seasons and festivals. In the 12^th Century Rambam/Maimonides completed his magnum opus Mishneh Torah which breaks down and codifies  Jewish law in fourteen volumes. Subsequently, in the 16th Century, Rabbi Yosef Karo completed the Shulkhan Arukh his masterpiece of legal codification which remains the reference benchmark to this day.

One would expect that a Parsha like Mishpatim would set the example in terms of categorizing and sequencing the laws of the Torah.

Indeed the opening verse of Mishpatim is:

וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם

And these are the laws you should place before them

The preeminent Torah commentator Rashi explains תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְניהם אשר  as

אשר תשים לפניהם כשלחן העריך ומוכן לאכל לפני האדם

Which you should place before them as a table (feast) which is prepared and ready for people’s consumption

In this, the 11^th Century Rashi may have anticipated, even inspired Yosef Karo’s Shulhan Arukh by some 500 years. But he was certainly not describing what we find in Parshat Mishpatim itself.

Indeed, of all the laws one might imagine as the Torah’s kick-off statute, the very last would be

כִּ֤י תִקְנֶה֙ עֶ֣בֶד עִבְרִ֔י שֵׁ֥שׁ שָׁנִ֖ים יַעֲבֹ֑ד וּבַ֨שְּׁבִעִ֔ת יֵצֵ֥א לַֽחפְשִׁ֖י חִנָּֽם

When you acquire a Hebrew slave, that person shall serve six years—and shall go free in the seventh year, without payment.

And it doesn’t become more coherent after that. In fact, Parshat Mishpatim is a jumble of laws tossed together arbitrarily like a salad with no rational order.

Of the confusion of laws that comprise Parshat Mishpatim some are simply stated, some are explained, some are embedded in a context of similar rulings, others come as complete non sequiturs. There is certainly no apparent hierarchy of any sort in terms of importance, frequency, severity etc.

The overall mishmash is perhaps best illustrated by verses 21:15-16-17 in Chapter 21.

וּמַכֵּ֥ה אָבִ֛יו וְאִמּ֖וֹ מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת

וְגֹנֵ֨ב אִ֧ישׁ וּמְכָר֛וֹ וְנִמְצָ֥א בְיָד֖וֹ מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת

וּמְקַלֵּ֥ל אָבִ֛יו וְאִמּ֖וֹ מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת

Who strikes his father and mother shall be put to death.

Who kidnaps a person and sells him or he is found in his possession
shall be put to death.

And who curses his father and mother shall be put to death.

One would assume verse 17 would follow verse 15 as both describe penalties for crimes committed against a parent. The interjection of verse 16 is entirely out of context here, making its placement unintelligible.

One might think that the hodge-podge nature of Mishpatim is yet again an example, as was Parshat YItro, of the אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה — that the sequence of the Torah’s narative is not necessarily the sequence in which things actually occurred. However while this is likely true for Yitro which is indeed narrative, I would suggest the very opposite for Mishpatim which is legal.

Last week I dealt with the a widely held belief that the two halves of Parshat Yitro are in reverse order. First came the revelation at Sinai, and only after that the arrival of the rebuking Yitro – Moshe’s father in law – with Moshe’s wife and kids in tow; the abandoned spouse and sons who, according to this sequence, were not even present at Matan Torah.

As we recall, Yitro is critical of Moshe’s attempt to single-handedly manage all the lawsuits and legal questions of the contentious Israelites. He suggests a rational judicial system that is structured to cope with the enormous volume of litigation.

That Yitro knew what to do is perhaps rooted in his being a keeper of the Noahide laws, one of which mandates the establishment of courts – something about which Moshe may have known nothing, having had only passing exposure to a Noahide society. Adyet, it is rather puzzling that Moshe would have been ignorant o f the Noahide laws which are universal.

Understandably, an avalanche of legal queries and lawsuits must have occurred immediately following the Revelation at Sinai. The Israelites had been waiting – no doubt impatiently – for the Torah to be given before filing their cases and posing their questions. Yitro appears in medias res, just as Moshe is drowning in a bottomless pit of cases.

By rescuing Moshe, and instituting a functional legal system, Yitro is the מקה בפטיש the one who puts the finishing touch on Revelation. Hence our naming of the Parsha of the Revelation “Yitro” rather than “Moshe” or “Sinai”.

Now comes Parshat Mishpatim whose sequence of laws seems inchoate, unless we consider the very real possibility that these laws are in fact  the adjudication of actual cases presented to the new, Yitro-established legal system.

Court cases, after all, are not filed in the order of their importance, but merely in the arbitrary sequence in which they are brought. If a case concerning Hebrew indentured servants happened to come first, it was dealt with and recorded first. If a case of kidnapping happened to come between one of striking one’s parents and another of cursing one’s parents, then this is how it was recorded.

And so we learn another lesson from Mishpatim: there are no big cases and small cases (nor is there a hierarchy of laws). Each one deserves attention, and each one should be dealt with in chronological sequence. Indeed big business gets no priority over small claims.

* * *

Bribing the Righteous?

ושחד לא תקח כי השחד יעור פקחים ויסלף דברי צדיקים

And you shall take no bribe, for the bribe blinds the wise and perverts the words of the righteous (Shemot 23:8)

Strange words. After all, how is it even conceivable that the righteous take bribes in the first place? Would this not automatically disqualify one from being classified as a ‘tzaddik’?

I would like to offer two suggestions:

1. The tzaddik referred to here is not he bribe-taking judge. Rather, it is the honest witness or litigant giving his testimony. Judges have enormous leeway in how they choose to understand testimony, and can easily distort the meaning and intent of what is stated on the witness stand in a manner that can impact his verdict.  Hence when the verse says ויסלף דברי צדיקים “and perverts the words of the righteous” it is the judge, who has accepted a bribe, who then proceeds to manipulate the meaning of the righteous person’s testimony so that it serves the purpose of the party who paid him off.  After all, testimony is testimony.  How can any judge rule against what is clearly posited by objective witnesses? The answer is he can, and often does, especially when his bias is all purchased and paid for.
2. We tend to think of bribery in simplistic terms, ie. An attempt to fix a trial.  But, in fact, bribery is a far broader bailiwick than merely attempting to rig the outcome of a particular court proceeding.  Any payoff that can garner unmerited benefits for the ’donor’ is, and should be, considered bribery.  Indeed when a wealthy individual makes a sizable contribution to a tzaddik’s yeshiva is this not bribery? Can it not – as it often (always?) does – lead to preferential treatment, ranging from accepting the donor’s otherwise lacklustre son to the yeshiva – at the expense of a more qualified but impecunious applicant – to a fast-track conversion for the oligarch’s new bride? Not to mention the fact that tzaddikim have no problem granting instant access to those who grease their way in with cash, and to treat such individuals with a deference they reserve only for men with money?

Who has not seen famous roshei yeshiva sitting in the lobby of the King David Hotel shmeicheling and groveling before some boorish donor who has written, or will hopefully write, a handsome check?

Isn’t bribery what modern philanthropy is often about?   Visit any large synagogue or institution and what one is greeted by is a plethora of signs and plaques trumpeting the names of donors whose largesse made the bricks and mortar possible.  Is this not bribery? The very existence of the signage is already a payoff behind which one can be sure lays סילוף דברי צדיקים, a perversion of the righteous  man’s words.