Mishpatim / Song of Mishpatim
Song of Mishpatim
I love my enslaved wife and children
How can I go free without them?
So long as my slave-family belongs to another
how are they children of G-d?
God gave His children favour
The Jews turned the pockets of Egypt inside out
The sinner Adam's firstborn were now cut off
In each generation
they would have inherited the wealth of the world
Now the wealth of the world would be redeemed
only through the firstborn of Israel
The children of Israel had been slaves
Now they were the heirs and masters of the world
Should the heir of the world keep slaves?
Obedience by Israel to the commandment
to liberate their slaves
liberates the whole creation
In the seventh year
God liberated the poorest Jewish soul
the one He laid claim to
on the covenant day of Passover
Should the one whose liberty
frees creation itself from bondage
choose to remain instead in bondage?
On the first Shavuot the Torah heart
of the Jubilee world to come
began to beat
When the Torah heart begins to race
all slavery will be forever forgotten
Only then will the last Hebrew slave
be reunited in truth with his Hebrew wife
and his enslaved family will be freed
Just as if Adam
had escorted the Holy Shechinah of liberty
into the Sabbath Day
There is a Jubilee year hidden in a scroll
in which Israel is given to the Torah
That scroll will be opened
That Jubilee will come
We wait with the greatest difficulty for that year
When Adam was sentenced to death and poverty
the human child became an indentured servant
There was an ear that heard
and then did not hear all the judgment of G-d
That ear was pierced as if by a wild golden ox
Hearing the loving whispers of Mishpatim
that ear began to heal
There is love in this world
And there is love in the world to come
The love in this world
cannot free its offspring
The love in the world to come
was born in the ear that heard ten whispers
and multiplied them into 248 notes of song
with 365 silent pauses of praise
So shall it be heard
on the day of the last Shavuot Jubilee
when the hole that had been bored in the ear
is fully healed
*Being a meditation on a Torah class on parashah Mishpatim, delivered by Rabbi Baitelman of ChaBaD Richmond, B.C., based on the series, Torah Studies, by Rohr Jewish Learning Institute. Neither Rabbi Baitelman nor the JLI have reviewed or approved of the content of this post.