Parashat Mishpatim /Shabbat Shekalim

Mahar Hodesh

29 Shevat, 5773 /February 9, 2013
Triennial Cycle III: Exodus 23:20-24:18
Humash Etz Hayim, page 474
Maftir, Exodus 30:11-16, page 523
Haftarah: 2 Kings 11:17-12:17, page 1276
I Samuel 20:18 & 42, page 1216

(23:20-33) An epilogue exhorting the Israelites to follow God’s law, emphasizing the rewards they will receive if they do so.
(24:1-18) The covenant is ratified through a formal ceremony of acceptance. Moses and the elders eat a meal and see a vision of God. Moses alone ascends the mountain to receive the stone tablets, remaining there for forty days and nights.

DRASH

The Crown of Jewish Spirituality
Rabbi Philip Ohriner

Exodus 24:7 (NJPS with emendations)
Then he took the book of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will hear (na’aseh v’nishma)!”

Babylonian Talmud tractate Shabbat 88a
When the Israelites said, “We shall do,” before “We shall hear,” six hundred thousand angels came down and attached two crowns to each Israelite, one for the doing, the other for the hearing …When the Israelites said, “We shall do” before “We shall hear,” there came forth a heavenly voice: “Who revealed to My children this secret that the ministering angels use?—as it is written, ‘Bless God, His angels, who are mighty of strength, and do His word, to hear the voice of His word (Psalms 103:20)—first they do, then they hear.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, Likkutei Moharan, I, 22:9-10
Na’aseh—”We shall do”—refers to the revealed— that is, to the commandments that one can fulfill, on one’s own level. Nishma—“We shall hear” refers to the hidden—that is, to things that one cannot grasp. For around each commandment, there are other things, which belong to the class of the hidden. The commandment itself one can fulfill; but the spiritual work that surrounds the commandment is largely unknown, hidden.

Emmanuel Levinas, “The Temptation of Temptation” in Nine Talmudic Readings, p. 43
But is it certain that the crowns were rewards? Weren’t they the very splendor that “doing” and “hearing” take on when they follow each other in the inverse order to that of logic?

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, The Bedside Torah, parashat Mishpatim
The balance between deed and creed is the realm of mitzvah—where God’s will and human integrity meet in practice. Today’s Torah portion insists that our deepest convictions find articulation in deeds and cooperative behavior. By training ourselves to perform mitzvot, we school ourselves anew in the values and perspectives of Judaism. We transfer an aspect of the original peak experience, a spark of the original flame, into the remotest aspects of our daily lives.

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