TORAH SPARKS
Parshat Mishpatim Parshat Shkalim
February 18, 2023 | 27 Shvat 5783
Torah: Exodus 21:1-24:18 Triennial: Exodus 21:1-22:3
Maftir: 30:11-16 Haftarah: II Kings 12:1-17
Spilling and Striking
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah
In Parashat Noah, we read about God giving humans the power to judge other humans and put them to death. In the wake of the Flood, after God had judged humans and decided to kill them all, God relinquishes this power, turning it over to humanity with the chillingly rhythmic words shofekh dam ha adam ba adam damo yishafekh, one who spills the blood of man, by man will his blood be spilled. The rest of the Torah explains the how of this statement. How can humans step in to judge their fellow humans? Who can judge? How do humans have the right to put someone to death?
The rest of Genesis flirts with murder but there is very little actual killing. Abraham nearly kills Isaac. Esau wants to kill Jacob. Joseph s brothers conspire to kill him. None of these murders actually take place. We do not witness how murderers are held accountable, how humans choose to apply the death penalty, because we do not have any actual murderers. Perhaps it is those chilling words keeping these people at bay. Reuben convinces the brothers not to kill Joseph by rephrasing those very words: let us not spill his blood.
But the Egyptians seem not to have heard these words. As Exodus opens, we enter a bloodbath. The Egyptians are killing us, killing all our baby boys. We zero in on one incident, in which an Egyptian man is striking a Hebrew man, perhaps to death. Moses sees this, and that verse from Genesis rises up again – the Egyptian man s blood must be spilled. Moses strikes him. According to what we know from Genesis, Moses acts correctly. But it is not good enough for his fellow Hebrews. They question why he has the right to act in this capacity, on what authority he can judge and administer punishment.
God also recognizes that we do not yet have a system that allows us to judge our fellow humans, to put them to death. After this incident, God takes killing back into God s hands. God will be the one who sheds the blood of the Egyptians in retribution for them having spilled our blood. God does this through the plagues and then by drowning the Egyptians in the sea. God steps into the human realm once again, bringing death to those who deserve it.
This will not last. After killing by means of the flood in Genesis, God took God s self out of human affairs, giving humans the right to kill murderers. Now, after killing by means of the sea in Exodus, God will once again step down as punisher-in-chief, attempting again to give humans the right to kill murders. This time, however, the rules become much more nuanced. We get a whole Torah explaining how to administer justice fairly.
In last week s parashah, it seemed simple. We read, You shall not murder. However, this week, we acknowledge that some humans will always murder. We read another chillingly rhythmic verse, makkeh ish vamet mot yumat, one who strikes a man, and he dies, shall be put to death. This verse fleshes out the verse from Genesis. We now know it is only causing death that requires one to die. Moreover, this verse exonerates Moses. He put to death one who struck a man. The passage continues, explaining that the killing has to be intentional and what else is considered a capital offense. The questions of who exactly a murderer is and how that murderer is judged are addressed in each subsequent book of the Torah. We learn more about intent and cities of refuge. We learn that there must be two witnesses to the murder. We build increasingly big fences around the idea that a human should kill a murderer.
Meanwhile, God continues occasionally to kill large groups of humans as punishment for their behavior. God continues to be comfortable with the righteousness of God s decisions in a way that we will never be with ours. We see this longing for God to be the decider, God to sanction our killing in the verse from Genesis and our verse from the parashah. In Genesis, the verse continues, because in the image of God, God created man. This could be explaining that a killer of a human deserves to die because killing a human is like killing God. But it could also be explaining that the reason humans are able to act as the arbitrators of the death penalty is because they are like God, they have divine reason. Likewise, the verse from our parashah concludes, he shall surely die. It does not specify who judges or who kills. We leave the door open for God to be judge. And we build a system of laws to allow us to judge in God s image.
Jehoash s Temple Economics Devotion or Politics?
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah
On Shabbat Shekalim we read the regular parashah with an additional short Torah reading to remind people to give their yearly half a shekel to the Temple. However, the haftarah is entirely dedicated to the concept of collecting silver for maintaining the Temple, focusing on the events in the time of King Jehoash who decided to renovate the Temple.
Jehoash had an unusual beginning in life. He was merely a year old when his family, especially anyone who may have a claim to the throne, was murdered as part of a coup. He survived accidentally and was saved by his married sister Jehosheva, who happens to be married to Jehoiada the Kohen (high priest). Baby Jehoash was hidden away in the Temple compound until he was placed on the throne at the age of seven by Jehoiada, as part of a revolt to restore the kingship in Judah to the Davidic dynasty.
At the age of seven, one is king by name only. Some responsible adult must have been in control. Considering the story, we can assume that person to be Jehoiada the Kohen. (This is clear from II Chronicles 24 and II Kings 12:3.) The narrator does not tell us at what point the idea of restoring the Temple was proposed. It might not have been when Jehoash was a fresh seven year old king, but rather a while into his reign. However, it seems that the renovation was not moving along. The reason is quite simple: the kohanim were helping themselves to too much of the silver. This might be regular human behavior resulting from lack of supervision of public funds, but it might have been accelerated because of the status of the kohanim at this time. With the high priest being the parental figure for the king, the status and power of the kohanim had grown. Jehoiada might have been a good national-religious leader but less apt at management of those under his direct jurisdiction.
In his 23rd year as king, Jehoash was turning thirty. Perhaps at this point he wanted to be king independent of the bear hug of his uncle. He does not cut the kohanim out, but he sets up a system by which certain silver goes to the Mikdash, and other funds go to the kohanim. They will get, but less.
The haftarah ends at this point on a relatively satisfactory note, but the story devolves from here and the Tanakhic narrator does not hide the failures. Jerusalem experienced an Aramean invasion that ended with a heavy tribute from the Temple and palace treasures. Chronicles adds that following the death of Jehoiada the high priest Jehoash came under other influences and turned to idol worship. A rebuke from Jehoiada s son causes Jehoash to have him killed, later Jehoash himself is assassinated, possibly as revenge. The story of Jehoash highlights the intertwined nature of politics and religion in the ancient world (and not only then.) What behavior was due to political considerations and what actions resulted from deep religious feelings is up to us to sort out.
Brown s Chicken
Joshua Kulp
The Halakhah in the Parashah
I grew up in Margate, New Jersey, right outside of Atlantic City. As a child my family would frequently visit my mother s closest friend in Chicago, Shoshana Axler. So, as tends to happen in such situations, there are some strange memories that pop up into my adult mind when I recall those days. One of those memories is that my mother s friend s children, Neeli and Meira, used to sing the following short jingle: Brown s Chicken, it s not kosher, it s treif! Brown s Chicken was, and evidently still is, a popular chain of chicken restaurants in Chicago. They had many billboards advertising their food all over the city. To teach her children that they could not eat Brown s Chicken, Shoshana taught them this little song, which ended most emphatically with the word treif.
Food comes in binaries for Jews it’s either kosher or its treif. Treif has come to broadly mean any non-kosher food. But that is not the original meaning of the word. The word is first found in our parashah. Exodus 22:30 reads, You shall be holy people to Me: you must not eat flesh torn by beasts (tereifah) in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs. The word tereifah did not originally refer to all non-kosher food but rather to animals that were killed by other animals and not by human hands. There is another word used by the rabbis to refer to meat that was not slaughtered properly and that is nevelah. Leviticus 17:15 reads, Any person, whether citizen or stranger, who eats what has died (nevelah) or has been torn by beasts (tereifah) shall wash those clothes, bathe in water, remain impure until evening and shall then be pure. Nevelah and terefah are two forms of meat that Jews may not eat. While the Torah did tell us what a terefah is, it does not tell us what a nevelah is. The presence of both of these words in one verse (this also occurs in Leviticus 7:24 and 22:8) clearly means that they are two different types of meat.
The rabbis interpret tereifah to refer to any animal that has some sort of physical flaw that will cause it to die within a year. The prohibition is not limited to animals wounded seriously by other animals. After all, why would the Torah care if the animal was torn by a beast or had another sort of flaw that would cause it to die within a relatively short amount of time? The point is that this animal will not live much longer. These rules eventually were systematized in the third chapter of Mishnah Hullin, and expanded upon throughout the centuries. The well-known term glatt, which refers to an animal with smooth lungs and is considered a stringency, is an eventual descendant of the verse in our chapter.
The Torah, as is often true, does not give any reason why Jews should refrain from eating meat that has such a physical flaw. We might surmise that eating meat found out in the field torn apart by wild animals would be unhealthy. But reading the Torah as a guide to good health does not do justice to these prohibitions, nor does it help explain their trajectory throughout history. Rather, the clue to the meaning of this mitzvah is most likely found in the beginning of the verse, You shall be holy people. One way of achieving holiness is through symbolic acts, in this case acting according to the maxim that You are what you eat. Eating an animal with a flaw that will lead to its eventual death spiritually brings these flaws into the person consuming the animal. While the Torah does tolerate consumption of meat, the Torah insists through an intricate system of dietary laws that such consumption be used to elevate humanity above the level of animals.
The second of these words, nevelah is understood by the rabbis as referring to an animal not slaughtered properly, through a process known as shechitah. The Torah itself does not outline how an animal is supposed to be slaughtered. The origins of shechitah, the Jewish way of slaughtering animals, lie in the use of blood on the altar and the prohibition of consuming blood. In the Temple, there was a need to get out as much blood from the animal as possible in order to offer the blood on the altar. Slaughtering by slicing the neck is the best way to remove as much blood as possible. Conversely, kosher slaughter also removes the blood which cannot be consumed (see throughout Leviticus 17). Nevelah is an animal that has not gone through this process it was not slaughtered by a clean slice on the neck, and thus the blood is still in it and it is prohibited.
The meat served at Brown s was almost certainly nevelah meat not slaughtered properly, and not tereifah, an animal torn apart by other animals or with a fatal physical flaw. Neeli and Meira should really have sung, Brown s Chicken, it s not kosher, it s nevelah. But through some odd twist of linguistic history, the word treif stuck. And you have to admit, it is a catchy little tune.