Weekly Sedra

Yahrzeits

17      Morris Engle

18      Sarah Leah Lulky

          Minnie Nathan

19      Israel Katz

          Laura W. Muntz

20      Harry Freedman

          Sam Vogel

23      Mayer Lulky

Birthdays

22     Deanne Schiller

Anniversaries

20      Barry & Joel Jacobs

         

Shabbat Brunch sponsor for this weekend is The Weiner family in Loving Memory of Jane Pearl Suarez.  Thanks to the Weiner’s for their sponsorship and Debbie Markowitz for planning and preparing the Shabbat Brunch. 

"Events"

Sunday School will meet this Sunday, February 19^th at Temple Beth El at 10:00 a.m.

Adult Continuing Hebrew Education classes will be held Tuesday, February 21^st at 6:30 p.m.

 

SERVICE TIMES FOR NEXT WEEK:

Friday evening service 8:00 p.m. and Saturday morning service 9:00 a.m.

Torah Sparks

PARSHA MISHPATIM - SHABBAT SHEKALIM - MEVAREKHIM HAHODESH

February 18, 2012 – 25 Shevat 5772

 

Triennial: Exodus 22:4 – 23:19 (Etz Hayim p. 465)

Maftir: Exodus 30:11 – 16 (Etz Hayim p. 523)

Haftorah: II Kings 12:1 – 17 (Etz Hayim p. 1277)

 

Prepared by Rabbi Joseph Prouser

Parsha Mishpatim offers valuable insight into the development of Jewish law. It is the source of 53 of the 613 commandments, specifying 23 affirmative, prescriptive Mitzvot and 30 prohibitions.

More important to the evolution of Jewish law is the placement of Parsha Mishpatim immediately after the revelation at Sinai and the Ten Commandments. The Decalogue's general statements were insufficient for the regulation and sanctification of daily Israelite life. Parsha Mishpatim makes significant progress toward establishing a comprehensive and workable legal code for the newly founded “nation of priests.” Many of the specific prescriptions fall under the broader categories established by the Decalogue. The laws that give Parsha Mishpatim its name include how to treat Hebrew servants; the distinction between premeditated murder and other homicides; the treatment of parents; laws about kidnapping and about an injury inflicted on a pregnant woman that causes her to miscarry; the legal ramifications of personal injury and damages and of sexual morality; a stringent approach to witchcraft; the fundamental principle of our obligations to strangers, widows, and orphans; proper conduct in the matter of loans and securities; the prohibition against cursing or speaking ill of judges and political leaders; tithes; the sanctity of firstborn sons and animals; the prohibition against eating carrion; laws concerning witnesses and the judiciary; a warning not to support the majority in a perversion of justice; the commandments to restore lost property and assist in unburdening an animal in distress; injunctions about the sabbatical year and Shabbat; a prohibition against mentioning the names of foreign G-ds; observance of the pilgrimage festivals; regulations about the paschal offering and the first fruits; and the prohibition, given three times in the Torah, against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.

G-d reassures Israel of His providential care and his designation of angelic protection. Israel is to receive G-d’s manifold blessings in exchange for fealty to the covenant. Israel will conquer the land it has been promised, and its boundaries are detailed. Israel is warned not to enter into covenants either with the indigenous peoples of Canaan or with the G-ds they worship. The Israelite people unanimously ratify the covenant with the famous affirmation Na’aseh v’nishma – “All that the L--d has spoken we will faithfully do!” (or “We will do and obey”). The Parsha concludes with Moses and the leaders of Israel seeing G-d beautifully and graphically manifested on a pure, sapphire-like surface. Moses alone communes with G-d for forty days and nights, receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments.

Historic Note

Parsha Mishpatim, read on February 18, 2012, opens with ten laws about the treatment of slaves (More follow later in the Parsha). The volume and prominence of these laws shows the special sensitivity required of the Israelites – themselves recently emancipated slaves – toward those now in their service. On February 18, 1688, Quakers conducted North America’s first formal protest against the institution of slavery, in Germantown, Pennsylvania.

 

Halachah L’Maaseh

Among the 53 Mitzvot recorded in Parsha Mishpatim is the commandment to restore lost property – hashavat aveidah – based on Exodus 23:4. This religious and moral mandate was expanded by the Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a) to include an obligation to the duty to intervene in life-threatening situations. Rabbi J. David Bleich summarizes: “Every individual, insofar as he is able, is obligated to restore the health of a fellow man no less than he is obligated to return his property.” The Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has applied this principle to postmortem organ donation: “The preservation of human life is obligatory, not optional. Withholding consent for postmortem organ and tissue donation when needed for lifesaving transplant procedures is prohibited by Jewish law.”