Mishpatim, מִּשְׁפָּטִים "Specific Laws" Exodus 21:1 - 24:18

Song of Mishpatim

Poetic notes on Parashat 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.