New Rules/Two Pockets (Shabbat Mishpatim 22.02.2025)
You can listen to Rabbi Eleanor's sermon here or read it below.
Back in the early thirteenth century, the infamously bad King John was having trouble with rebellious barons who disapproved of, among many things, his total executive power. Eventually he was forced to make peace with them by agreeing to a charter of rights, which every British schoolchild learns was sealed at Runnymede in June 1215. That charter would become a cornerstone of British common law, still referenced today (though only three of its original 63 clauses remain on the statute [freedom of English church, ‘ancient liberties’ of City of London, and right to due legal process/habeas corpus]), because it asserted the rule of law and the idea that not even the king is above the law.
Yet although its 800th birthday was widely celebrated ten years ago, the original charter flopped: the pope annulled it, the king ignored it, and even the barons soon gave up on it. There were several attempts to revive it, but it was only after a revised version was reissued by King John’s son Henry III in February 1225 that what we know as Magna Carta really stuck: Henry III confirmed with the royal seal a version explicitly issued of the king’s “spontaneous and free will” – not under pressure from his nobles. So this year might actually be the more important 800th anniversary; you’ll certainly see extra celebrations planned anywhere that holds a thirteenth-century original copy.
Parashat Mishpatim has only 53 mitzvot, compared to the original 63 clauses of Magna Carta, but that still makes this a portion brim-full of rules, fundamental to Jewish law. There are 30 negative mitzvot here – commandments about things that you mustn’t do – and 23 positive mitzvot. The portion interrupts the narrative flow of Exodus, with its opening verse: “וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם - These are the rules that you shall set before them” (Exodus 21:1). It isn’t immediately obvious how many of these rules are brand new or how many are just codifying existing practice, but the ancient rabbis comment on the verse with a general principle based on the very first letter of the whole parashah.
They say that every time that וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ introduces a rule, it adds to the previous matter, and every time it begins with אֵ֙לֶּה֙ (no vav), it rejects the previous matter (Exodus Rabbah 30:3). Laws can cut off or replace what came before them, or add to or develop the earlier laws: while there may be consistent principles or goals guiding us, the specific rules for pursuing them may change, overriding or developing previous rules. Here, the rabbis note that this list of laws begins with וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙: so based on this principle, the laws in Mishpatim build on the contents of the Ten Commandments, which came just before them.
Even before that, the rabbis note, there was Yitro teaching Moses that elected officials should “judge the people at all times” (Exodus 18:22). This creates a legal sandwich with the Ten Commandments in the middle, which the rabbis compare to a noblewoman who was walking around with one guard on one side of her and another guard on the other side. So too, the Ten Commandments given at Sinai go in the middle: on either side are rules about tangible/practical matters between one human and another (Sforno); guidance for building a society, helping people to live together.
The Italian commentator known as Sforno (early 16th Century) notices something else about the nature of the rules in Mishpatim. The rules here, says Sforno, do not apply to every Jew at all times: “they are applicable only if the occasion arises. These matters need to be adjudicated only if and when such situations occur in someone’s life” (Sforno on Exodus 21:1). You’ll only need the rules here about how to treat slaves if you keep slaves; if no-one is ever kidnapped, you won’t need the rule about punishment for kidnappers. Even if we agree with Magna Carta’s principle that no-one is above the law, there are times when a rule doesn’t apply simply because we don’t find ourselves in that situation; yet those rules stay on the books, and are worth studying, ready for when we do need them.
In our time, a number of rules in this category fall under the domain of the Beit Din, with its rules and procedures: not just for issues around conversion, but also around when you have a Jewish father but not a Jewish mother, or when divorce happens… If you’ve ever had any of these in your family, you may find it interesting to sign up for the talk, with Q&A, that Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain will give here on 27 March about the Reform movement’s Beit Din.
Yet our time also brings new circumstances where we may need some very specific guidance; some of them circumstances that we would have preferred never to encounter. Considering how we prepare ourselves to face the release of hostages who were murdered while in captivity, the therapist and poet Rabbi Hanna Yerushalmi suggests, “With stones from Jerusalem / in our pockets, anchoring us…” She captures the way that in this moment, some of us may feel adrift in a world that doesn’t share the same preoccupations, and suggests a new procedure to help anchor us, which also carries echoes of the tradition of leaving a stone on the grave after we have visited it. A stone in our pocket: a material anchor and a symbol of remembrance.
Yet the same rabbi-poet also brings us another rule which we may need only if the situation arises – and it’s a quite a different situation. Hanna Yerushalmi writes:
“An 8-year-old
has something else
in his pocket.
Confetti.
Why?
It’s his emergency confetti,
he says,
during these raw days
he carries it with him
everywhere
just in case
there is good news.”
“Emergency confetti… just in case there is good news” – because we should always hold out hope that there may be good news.
This may sometimes feel more difficult than carrying around a memorial pebble, but this is the attitude that our tradition encourages: being prepared for the good, as well as for the bad (and everything in between). Next Shabbat we will enter the month of Adar, which the Rabbis of the Talmud taught is a time of increasing joy. Not a time of constant joy; rather, Adar is a month when we are challenged to resist despair by audaciously remaining open to the possibility of good and being prepared to celebrate it when it comes. To remember that most clothing has two pockets, not just one.
There are times – too many times, communally and personally – when we need to reach into our pockets for a stone, to ground us and to give expression to the grief and sadness that these days bring. Yet I’m going to ask all of us to try what may feel almost impossible: to keep some confetti in that other pocket and to keep believing that there will be occasions when it will be needed. I’m asking us to dare to hope. A stone in one pocket; confetti in the other.
