Parashat Mishpatim: The Vulnerable

Looking through the laws of Parashat Mishpatim, what strikes me this year is how many of them have to do with protecting the vulnerable.

The whole orientation is in the direction of the vulnerable, which is why the collection starts with slaves and maidservants -- not the rights of the master regarding their use, but the rights of the slaves and maidservants to be freed at some point and to be well cared for and not mistreated. The orientation is decidedly toward the oppressed, the vulnerable, the less fortunate. Then, later, we are enjoined to be kind and not mistreat the foreigner or stranger in your land as well as the widow and orphan. God hears their cries. And you should not lend a poor person with interest and be careful about returning his collateral garment. Again, God listens to these hurts because He is fundamentally a compassionate, merciful God. That is His essence, the role model for our own kindness.

So I know these laws are aimed at building a certain type of society that cares deeply about those less fortunate, and I know that we have a lot of work to do concretely in that regard.

But I also want to apply it to our internal climates, the way we treat ourselves and the most vulnerable parts of our own psyches. I am talking about the parts of each of us that we are not proud of, that we often try to push down and away, that we consider petty and overly sensitive, the parts of us that are so easily hurt by something, by some trigger from an old wound, by a perceived snub or insult, the part that feels raw and wounded deep inside, that seems to us like a black hole of neediness -- the parts that are the most vulnerable pieces of us.

What do we do with them? We bury them or try to get rid of them, to fix them, to override them with good generous deeds that mask their neediness. The one thing we don’t tend to do is what God does in this parsha-- simply to listen to their cries with compassion. To actually hear them. To actually hear that they are in pain. To allow them to be vulnerable and treat them accordingly, with love and compassion and care, not judgment.

It feels to me like part of the revolution that Judaism offered the world and continues to offer the world is this orientation toward the vulnerable. It begins inside, and it feels clear that when it begins inside, there is so much compassion that pours outside, too. May we know how to hear and treat the vulnerable inside and outside of us.

Parashat Yitro: Getting Stronger

Vayehi kol hashofar holekh vehazek me’od. The sound of the shofar blast on Mount Sinai is described as getting stronger and stronger. Rashi points out that this is a sign of its divine origin; when a human being makes a sound, the sound gradually gets weaker and weaker; only God’s sound keeps increasing in strength.

We know about this gradual dying down of strength and energy, this weakening over time. We work hard, put our energy into things, and gradually, we become wiped out, exhausted. We peter out.

In the face of this human tendency toward exhaustion, it feels important to remember the indefatigable neverending divine energy, to feel its existence in the world, and perhaps sometimes the possibility of its existence inside of us.

Because the pasuk does not end by saying that God’s shofar got stronger and stronger. The next phrase speaks of a human being, Moshe. “Moshe would speak and God would answer him with the sound.” Rashi explains that when Moshe told the people commandments, God gave Moshe extra strength and capacity in order to be really heard.

In other words, when we align ourselves with God’s work in the world, when we make ourselves into vessels for His words and Presence, then that ever increasing source of divine energy flows through us. Our voices, too, instead of fading out from exhaustion are able to grow in strength and confidence.

We are mostly identified with our small human selves, those small selves that work in the world and experience continual limitations. These limitations, too, are important and have something to teach us about letting go and not doing it all and very much not being divine. But we also have a little bit of the divine inside us, a tiny littel pure point that sustains us and nourishes us and, like the Eternal Light, does not go out.

I think some of our exhaustion comes from not acknowledging this capacity, from not allowing ourselves to feel it and trust it and surrender to it, from constantly fighting to control everything with our limited human capacities and not leaving any room for the divine to enter. It is partly the fight to control that exhausts us. Moshe spoke and God answered him with the limitless voice of the divine. He allowed himself to become part of the flow.