Edited and adapted from Ari’s Grill & Torah series, February 24, 2017.
What Does It Mean to Be Religious?
We’re going to start talking about this week’s parsha, which really gives a strong insight into what it means to be religious, and specifically Jewish. What does it mean to believe in God, especially in the Jewish sense of the word?
The funny thing is that I think many people have the wrong idea. I don’t know if I have the right idea either, but I think this week’s parsha gives us insight into what we should be doing, what we should be aiming for, and what the secret is to becoming—or behaving—in a religious way, at least in terms of Judaism.
One Week After Har Sinai
This week’s parsha is very interesting. We are one week after Har Sinai, one week after the national revelation, where God revealed Himself to the entire nation of Israel. At this point, there is no doubt among Bnei Yisrael about God’s existence. There are no real questions. This was a spiritual experience that had never happened before and will never happen again until Mashiach. No other nation has a story like this. Every other religion begins with an individual prophet who comes and says, “God told me,” and the people are expected to believe him. Judaism is the only religion that says an entire nation heard God.
So the question is obvious: the week after something like that happens, what do we expect the Torah to talk about?
What We Expect After Revelation — And What the Torah Actually Gives Us
You would expect Shabbat. You would expect Yom Kippur. You would expect sacrifices, prophecy, the holiest things, matters between God and man. Instead, the Torah opens Parshat Mishpatim by saying, “These are the laws that you shall place before them. If you buy a Hebrew servant, an Eved Ivri, he shall work for six years, and in the seventh year he goes free.”
That is the first law after Mount Sinai. That is what God chooses to tell us.
Eved Ivri and the Problem of Our Assumptions
Now, when we hear the word “slave,” we immediately get the wrong impression. This is not chattel slavery as we understand it today. In Jewish law, if you hit a servant, he goes free immediately. You are not allowed to injure him. The reason someone becomes an Eved Ivri is because he stole and cannot repay what he owes, so he works to pay back his debt. It’s much closer to a house helper or worker than anything else.
And this brings us to the real issue, which is our impressions.
Everyone Thinks They’re Good
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: all people want to be good people. No one wakes up and says, “I want to be evil.” Even the most evil people in history did not see themselves as evil. Hitler did not say, “I want to murder and gas people.” He said, “I want to save the world.” He convinced himself and others that Jews were a cancer. That’s the danger. Anyone can justify anything if there is no objective baseline.
Why Civil Law Comes Right After Mount Sinai
So after Mount Sinai, instead of lofty spirituality, we are given laws about workers, families, damages, courts, injuries, animals, pits, and neighbors. Two people fight and someone gets injured—there are laws. An ox damages property—there are laws. You dig a pit and someone falls in—you are responsible. These sound obvious. This sounds like basic civil law. So why is this placed immediately after Har Sinai?
I think the message is very clear.
Spiritual Highs vs. the Daily Grind
A lot of people think that God is about spiritual highs—hands in the air, screaming, sparks of spirituality, intense prayer experiences. Those things are nice, and they are important, but that is not what Judaism is about. Judaism is not about the dramatic moments. Judaism is about the daily grind.
The Rock and the Pebbles: What Teshuva Really Looks Like
There is a famous story about two people who came to a rabbi. One says, “Rabbi, I did something terrible. I don’t know how to do teshuva.” The rabbi tells him to go into his garden, pick up the biggest rock he can find, and bring it into the living room. He does, and his back is killing him.
The second guy says, “I’m not such a bad guy. Just little things here and there.” The rabbi tells him to pick up a thousand tiny pebbles and bring them inside. He does it easily. Then the rabbi tells both of them to put the stones back exactly where they took them from. The big rock is easy—there’s a hole, you know where it goes. The pebbles are impossible.
The rabbi explains that when you feel the weight of what you did wrong, you can fix it. When you justify “little things,” you don’t even know where to begin.
That is exactly Parshat Mishpatim.
Bein Adam LeChaveiro Comes First
Between God and man is important, but without between man and man, you don’t have between God and man. My grandfather used to say that you have to be a mensch before you can be a Yid (a Jew). Not instead of Torah, but together with Torah. Kindness comes first.
The First Bracha of Shemoneh Esrei: Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov
(The D’var Torah My Father Taught Me)
There is something very important in the Shemoneh Esrei prayer that my father taught me. In the first bracha, we say “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” but we end the bracha with Magen Avraham. The obvious question is: why does it only end with Abraham? Why not Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
My father explained that the first three names represent three traits that we are supposed to live by. Abraham represents chesed, kindness. Isaac represents gevurah, inner strength—self-control, the ability to overcome one’s own desires, as we see by the Akeidat Yitzchak. Jacob represents emet, truth. All three traits are essential. But Abraham is the period at the end of the sentence. Kindness does not depend on anything else. The other traits cannot stand without it. That is why the bracha ends with Magen Avraham alone.
That is Parshat Mishpatim.
Where Judaism Actually Lives: Business, Speech, and Daily Life
The first five aliyot deal with civil law, daily life, neighbors, business, and family. Yom Kippur is once a year, but life is every day. It’s how you do business, how you talk to people, how you treat a worker—that’s where God is found. People can get stuck in bein adam laMakom, between man and God, and be on a spiritual high, but if they can’t relate to people properly, that’s not where it is.
The Question I Asked My Students
And I’ll say one more thing on this that I’ve said to my students. I once asked my students: if God gave you two choices—which He doesn’t—but if He did, and He said you can either have a child who is extremely machmir (stingent) on everything, keeps Shabbat, keeps kosher, all kinds of chumras (stringencies), covers his eyes in the street, he’s stringent about absolutely everything, but he’s missing basic human decency—no “please,” no “thank you,” not holding the door, not acting like a decent person; or, alternatively, you could have a child who is very, very nice, a real mensch, but he doesn’t keep Shabbat, doesn’t keep Yom Kippur, doesn’t keep kosher—what would you choose?
A lot of people said they would choose the child who is stringent on everything. And I said I disagree.
Teaching Shabbat vs. Teaching Basic Decency
If God gave me that choice—which He doesn’t, because we can do both—I would choose the one who is nice, because if someone is not keeping Shabbat, not keeping Yom Kippur, not keeping the holidays, not keeping kosher, it can be from lack of understanding. You can teach that. You can bring someone for Shabbat, you can show them Shabbat in a happy way, and they can actually want it.
But if the person is missing basic human decency, there’s nothing to talk about. Something is missing on a basic level. I can teach someone how to keep Shabbat. But “please” and “thank you”? That’s basic.
Shemitah, Eretz Yisrael, and Moral Boundaries
At the end of the parsha, there’s something that I want to mention. It talks about coming into Eretz Yisrael, and there’s a pasuk I like reading. God says, “I will not drive the enemies out all at once,” because the land needs to be settled gradually. Then it speaks about borders and control, and warns not to make treaties with immoral nations who will become a mokesh, a trap, a minefield.
This does not mean removing all non-Jews. It refers to those who reject the seven mitzvot of Noach—basic human morality.
Peace, Truth, and the Danger of False Shalom
Peace is central to Judaism. We pray for it constantly. But peace without truth is not peace. “Shalom, shalom, v’ain shalom.” You cannot encourage murder and call it peace.
Mount Sinai as the Source of Objective Morality
Mount Sinai gives us an objective moral baseline. Without it, society decides—and society flips. What was once considered murder becomes acceptable, and dissent becomes immoral. That is dangerous.
Judaism, Western Values, and Moral Foundations
Western society is built on Judeo values. Much of the world is not. The question is not who thinks they are right, but who has an objective base.
Kavod Habriot: Parents, People, and Human Dignity
I tell my students: if you contradict your parents, you didn’t learn anything from me. You cannot insult people. Public humiliation in Judaism is comparable to murder. We all have to be careful—myself included.
Closing: Where God Is Found
The Torah does not begin in heaven. It begins in the home. With workers, neighbors, kindness. That is where God lives.
I wish everyone a wonderful weekend. Shabbat Shalom. Even if you’re not Jewish, shut off the electronics. Disconnect. Six days we work; on the seventh, live as if everything is you had to do this week was completed.