Parashat Mishpatim: On Compassion and Justice

Concern for the disadvantaged in society is a strong current in the Torah. Commandments concerning the ger, the stranger in your midst, appear 36 times in the Torah, more times than the commandment to keep Shabbat! In this week’s parsha, Mishpatim, meaning “Laws,” there is a section dealing with these types of laws: One must not mistreat the stranger, the widow or the orphan, because you were once strangers and because God heeds their cries. You should lend money to the poor and if you take his garment as a pledge, you must return it at sunset so that he has something to lie with. Why? Again, because “If he cries out to Me, I will pay heed, for I am compassionate.”

These are laws that demand compassion of us, demand that we, like God, hear the cries of the mistreated in society. But the Torah does not stop there. Compassion alone does not a society make. In the same parsha, we are also enjoined that, when it comes to the court, one may not favor the poor. One must keep far from falsehood, strive toward truth and justice.

There is a need in society for both justice and mercy, for both judges and social workers. Children need parents who can offer them love and sympathy as well as firm boundaries.

God Himself is described as having both of these qualities, the Midat HaDin, the aspect of Justice, and the Midat HaRachamim, the aspect of mercy, sometimes understood as the masculine and feminine aspects of God. In the morning prayer of Barukh She’Amar, we say that God is both gozer umekayem, “Decrees and fulfills His decrees,” and merahem al habriyot, “Has compassion on all creatures.” One name for God, Shadday, has been interpreted as relating both to the word day, for “enough,” the God who set limits on the universe, and also shadayim, for “breasts,” the God who, like a mother, nourishes and protects His offspring.

We are meant to imitate God’s ways. Parashat Mishpatim teaches us that justice and mercy are not two separate things in the universe, but very much intertwined, in us who are little images of God, as in God Himself. We are enjoined to develop both sides of ourselves, to have the strength to be strict and just, to uphold truth and integrity, and to have the heart to listen and be compassionate, to cry with those who are crying and to lend an ear and a dime to those in need. May we find the wisdom to know when to employ each.