Mishpatim 5766
February 25, 2006
By Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
Congregation B’nai Israel
Toledo, Ohio
This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, commands us “If you meet your enemy’s
ox or his ass going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again. If
you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its burden, you shall
refrain from leaving it with him, you shall help him to lift it up.”
Does this mean that if you see some Muslim looking guy on the side of the
road with a flat tire you have to stop and change it for him?
It can sometimes take a bit of work to figure out how we apply a commandment
contextualized for one time, and understand what it is telling us in another
time. But there are principles in these two verses that have important
lessons for us today, even if there is a rather slim chance we’ll encounter
Osama bin Laden and his donkey walking around Toledo.
To answer our question about flat tires, we have to understand why does the
Torah bring this verse? It clearly seems to be talking about a need to have
compassion. But is the Torah concerned with compassion toward animals, or
about compassion toward our enemies?
The Talmud in tractate Bava Metzia addresses this particular issue. The
verse says if you see your enemy’s donkey lying under its burden—meaning you
have to help unload the donkey of its burden. But since it also says “help
him lift it up” it means you have to help load the stuff back on the donkey.
Now if it was only about caring about the animal, why should have to help
load the stuff back on? Once you’ve unloaded it, you’ve taken care of the
suffering of the animal.
The Talmud does record an opinion that differentiates a little between these
two phrases. Since the suffering of an animal is involved with the
unloading, you are Biblically obligated to help unload the animal, even
without compensation. But since there is no animal suffering involved in the
loading, that’s only done for the benefit of helping the person, it is
reasonable that the other person—your enemy—should compensate you for that
effort. Donkey loaders apparently didn’t work for free.
Ramban, Nachmanides, tells us that the first verse, if you see your enemy’s
animal going astray, might make you think you only have to herd the animal
back onto the path—something that is a minimal effort. You might think if it
were to involve more effort, you don’t have to do anything. So the second
verse says “help him lift it up,” even if it takes some exertion on your
part.
So these two little verses actually are telling us a lot about
compassion—they inform us we should be compassionate both toward animals,
and toward other people, even ones we might label as our enemies!
We can learn a lot about compassion from looking at the example of Moses.
Moses is the greatest prophet and leader in the Jewish tradition.
Why did God choose Moses for this great honor? Was it because Moses was a
powerful warrior? Was it because Moses was an eloquent speaker who could
motivate the masses? Was it because Moses had the nerve to confront Pharaoh?
The tradition tells us it was none of those reasons. There is a Midrash told
about why God chose Moses. Moses, a Jewish child raised in Pharaoh’s house,
had to flee Egypt after an unfortunate episode with an Egyptian slave
master. He fled to the land of Midian, where he worked as a shepherd,
tending to the flocks of father-in-law, Jethro.
Jethro was an important man, and he had a large flock with hundreds of
sheep. In the spring, the sheep gave birth, and there were dozens of baby
sheep running around with the flock.
Moses and the flock arrived at a river where the flock could take some
water. Moses noticed one of the baby sheep was missing. Now in a very large
flock, some sheep will occasionally go astray; some will get picked off by
wolves. But Moses was concerned for every sheep in his flock. He went back
looking for the missing sheep, and after long search, he found it. He tried
encouraging the sheep to walk to join the others, but it wouldn’t, it just
sat there, bleeting piteously. So Moses picked the sheep up and carried it
several miles to the river where it could rest and be refreshed with the
rest of the flock.
God saw this concern, this great compassion, that Moses had for each and
every member of his flock, and said “That’s my man!”—the man to lead God’s
flock, the Jewish people, out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land. He
wanted someone who would be concerned about each and every member of HIS
flock.
It showed that Moses was a man who tried to follow in God’s path. We are
commanded to walk in God’s ways, to emulate God. God is compassionate, so we
are commanded to be compassionate.
Not only is God compassionate, but compassion is one of his names. When we
ask God for blessings for ourselves or others, we address Him as
“Harachaman,” the compassionate one.
God’s compassion extends to all of his creatures, not just one group or
another, or even just one species or another. The Talmud tells a story of a
rabbi who was punished with several years of bad luck because he wasn’t
compassionate toward the plight of calves that are destined for slaughter.
That story right there might tell us that the commandment in this week’s
parsha, to help unload the donkey of one who hates you, might be there
because God wants us to be compassionate even to animals.
But there are also teachings that make clear that compassion should extend
to all people. In the Talmud we are told that we visit the sick Gentile just
as we visit the sick among the Jews, we bury the dead among the Gentiles
just as we bury the dead among the Jews, and we feed the poor of the
Gentiles along with poor Jews, mipnei darchei shalom, for these are the ways
of peace. The Talmud acknowledges that you might have a tendency to favor
your own group first, but we are commanded not to overlook the needy from
other groups—for we are all created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.
Jews today continue to follow this teaching, as they gave generously to help
victims of Hurricane Katrina, the vast majority of whom were not Jewish.
But God’s compassion goes even further. God even has compassion for His
enemies—as we are commanded to do in this week’s parsha. The Midrash tells
us that when God led the Jewish people across the Red Sea and the pursuing
Egyptians were drowned when the waters came crashing down on them, the
angels wanted to sing a song of praise to God. God silenced them, saying
“how can you sing, when my children are drowning in the sea?” God was the
one drowning them—yet He still felt compassion and was saddened by that
necessity. German has a word, Schadenfreude, for rejoicing at your enemy’s
downfall. This is an attitude contrary to the Jewish tradition.
We also work to fulfill this teaching today. When there was a devastating
earthquake in Iran a few years ago, there was a healthy debate among my
colleagues about whether it was appropriate for Jewish groups to send money
to help the survivors. You may recall I sent an email to the congregation
encouraging people to donate. I lived in Iran for almost a year; I know that
not all Iranians hate Jews, not all Iranians call for the destruction of
Israel, and we should not turn our eyes from suffering because of a corrupt
and wicked government.
This issue of having compassion even for our enemies is of course very alive
today in Israel. I am on the board of directors of an organization called
Rabbis for Human Rights, which recently won the Niwano Peace Foundation’s
annual peace prize. Rabbis for Human Rights is concerned about the human
rights of all people. In Israel, RHR works to stop the discriminatory
demolition of Palestinian homes that were built without building permits,
when the government looks the other way at homes Jewish settlers built
without permits. Today, in Israel, it is a sad necessity that Israel has to
build a security barrier to keep out terrorists who are intent on murdering
innocent civilians. Rabbis for Human Rights works with other groups to
petition the Israeli government to be sensitive to avoid causing undue
hardship on Palestinians with the routing of the fence. We believe that
while the security fence is an unfortunate necessity, we have to be
compassionate, and do what we can to minimize hardship for Palestinians, to
avoid cutting people off from their fields or neighbors. There are those in
Israel who accuse RHR of being disloyal, but nothing could be further from
the truth. We also condemn the Palestinians when they violate human rights
with things like terrorist attacks or summary executions of suspected
collaborators. We believe human rights transcends politics, and that the
Jewish tradition commands us to be sensitive to the suffering of all people.
Here in America, RHR is active in the campaign to get the US government to
stop using torture to extract information from detainees—a campaign led in
Congress by a Republican senator, John McCain.
Compassion is so important the Talmud says it is one of the ten things
through which the world was created. A connection between compassion and
creation is found in the Hebrew term for compassion itself. Rachamim,
compassion, is from the same basic root as the word rechem, which means
womb. Not only is a mother’s unconditional love for a child symbolic of the
greatest possible compassion, but the womb is a very unique place. As my
friend Dr. Alan Morinis points out, the womb is a place where there is a
sort of “two made one.” The child in the womb is at the same time separate
and a part of the mother—as close an identification as you can possibly
have.
Which is how another teaching in our tradition relates to compassion. In
Pirket Avot, the Teachings of our Fathers, we are told, “Do not judge your
fellow man until you have stood in his place.” In other words, don’t judge
someone until you’ve a mile in his shoes.
The rabbinical commentator Rashi explains this, saying ‘When you see a man
succumbing to temptation do not condemn him, until, faced by a similar
temptation, you have overcome it.’
The Talmud tells us to dan l’chaf zchut, to judge people favorably, with
compassion. How do we do that? By uniting ourselves with the accused--to try
and understand what it would be like to literally be the other person--just
as in the womb the two are one person, yet separate.
In a way, every time we say the Shema, we are proclaiming that we are united
with others, when we proclaim “God is One.” This was well illustrated for me
on Thursday night, when I had the opportunity to speak at the Multi Faith
Council of Northwest Ohio’s annual banquet. One of the other speakers was
Mrs. Sharada Kumar, a Hindu leader. Some people think of Hinduism as some
kind of idol worship, but the truth is Hindus also believe in one God. The
different “gods” we often associate with Hinduism might more accurately be
akin to our angels than Gods. One of the “gods” of Hinduism is called
Shakti—the female aspect, which would correspond to what we call the
Shechinah.
The ultimate level of God for the Hindus is Brahman. Brahman is all
encompassing, including everything in the universe, manifest and
non-manifest—more or less exactly the same thing Jews view as the ultimate
reality of God, which we call Ein Sof, the Infinite. Mrs. Kumar pointed out
that if God is truly Omnipresent—if God is really, truly, everywhere—then
God is also present in your enemy. Not only is God present, but like it or
not, you are joined and connected to your enemy. She pointed out that if
your little toe is causing you pain, you don’t disassociate from it, and
say, well, that’s happening way down there is some other part of my body,
“I” have nothing to do with it. If you accidentally bite your tongue, you
don’t grab a hammer and start knocking those nasty teeth out that had the
temerity to bite your tongue. In essence, if you really truly believe what
we say in the Shema – that God is One – compassion becomes a sort of
imperative. In a sense it becomes impossible NOT to be compassionate.
That is a very powerful teaching. But if we extend the metaphor of the body
a little bit further, we can see that in a way it can also point to some
limits or boundaries on compassion as well. If you have a foot that is
getting gangrenous, you have to cut it off, lest it poison your body and
kill you. You certainly won’t rejoice at cutting the foot off, and you will
recognize that you are damaged by the necessity to cut the foot off, but it
would be false compassion to allow the gangrenous part to destroy the rest.
The verse in this week’s parsha also points in a way to a limit on
compassion. It says “If you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its
burden, you shall refrain from leaving it with him, you shall help him to
lift it up.” You shall help him—not you shall do it for him.
You have to HELP the other person—they have to also be willing to put aside
their differences with you momentarily, they have to be willing to do
something themselves. It’s an indication that perhaps at least in a time of
trouble we can have a momentary reconciliation. So coming around to the
question we started with, yes, you do have to help change the tire—but you
don’t have to do it for him. If he’s not willing to work with you, you don’t
have to help him.
And trying to make that momentary reconciliation permanent is what Rabbi
Bachya ben Asher, a 13th century commentator, says is one of the messages we
can draw from this passage. Rabbi Bachya picks up on the fact that here in
this week’s parsha, the Torah tells us we must return our enemy’s ox; yet in
Deuteronomy we are instructed that we must return our fellow’s ox. The
difference in wording is there to tell us that returning an animal to an
enemy could go a long way toward eliminating hatred. We have an opportunity
to turn an enemy into a friend. That opportunity comes from having
compassion, from recognizing the ways in which we are joined, and from
following Pirkei Avot’s instruction to “stand in the other fellow’s place.”
May God Harachaman, the Compassionate One, bless all of us with the ability
to stand in another’s place, to see beyond ourselves. God loves all Her
children—may we also learn to be able to show love for all of God’s
children.
