By Talia Rodwin

Much of this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, is about punishment. What should happen if you kill a man? If you fight with a man? What should happen if you kill your slave? What should happen if you beat your slave but he does not die? In the middle of reading the parsha summary, I was both excited and surprised to stumble upon this pretty famous quotation, “But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exodus 21:23-25).

An eye for an eye. Seems pretty violent. Seems pretty misguided. Seems like the kind of “ancient world” baggage that is sprinkled all across the Torah that we now have to re-interpret and make sense of. This quotation most strongly brings to mind retributive justice, a view of justice based on getting the punishment you “deserve.”

Through reading some articles, however, I found that although the Torah said to take “an eye for an eye,” it didn’t always mean that literally. In Daniel Greenwood’s article “Restorative Justice and the Jewish Question,” he comments that although criminal law and code were clearly laid out in the Torah, criminal procedure wasn’t always. Many things were freely interpreted later. For example, many crimes were hard to prosecute, keeping the accused from suffering such punishment as “an eye for an eye.” The Talmud has a long description of who can be an eyewitness to certain crimes and how to interpret their testimony. This means, it would be hard to prove that certain crimes occurred. Additionally, other biblical texts such as Josephus provide evidence that often “an eye for an eye” was interpreted as a call for monetary compensation, as opposed to physical punishment.

The Torah says “an eye for an eye” but makes it pretty damn hard to punish someone that way. It seems, from looking at Talmudic

commentary, that we shouldn’t take this quotation at face value.

Phew. Sigh of relief. We don’t have a religion based on retributive justice after all! #yay!

But if we shouldn’t take everything in the Torah at face value, why is all of that upsetting stuff in there? That’s a question that I always feel that I’m grappling with and instead of answering it, I’m going to leave that question with y’all. Sit with it.