February 12, 2021
Fifty Fifty
Mishpatim, 5781
One Erev Pesach at two in the morning a man knocked on the door of Reb Aryeh Levine. The man, who owned the local market, was frantic. He told the rabbi that there was a thief going through his market and stealing his supplies. He asked the holy rabbi for advice.
Reb Aryeh immediately put on his jacket and ran through the streets of Jerusalem with the owner of the market to see what was happening. When he arrived there he saw the thief filling his sacks with goods from the store.
Reb Aryeh approached the thief softly. He gently put his hand on him and said: “My son, you must have forgotten that the Torah says, ‘Thou shall not steal.’”
The embarrassed thief looked at the rabbi and then immediately turned his red face to the ground. He had never expected such warm words to be addressed to him. Immediately, the burglar put down his sacks, said, “Shalom, chag sameach,” and hurried away. (Reb Aryeh, by Tzirah Karlenstein, 82).
Mishpatim begins with the words: “Ki tikneh eved ivri, when you acquire a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; in the seventh year he shall go free, without payment” (21:2).
Rashi explains: “This refers to one who acquires the servant from a court because the man was a thief who stole.”
The rabbis understand this verse to mean that if a man steals and cannot pay back what he has stolen he is sold into servitude until such time as he can pay back the debt (according to tradition only a male thief can be sold into servitude by the court).
Although this sounds harsh to modern ears—“selling someone into servitude!”—in the rabbinic depiction it actually represents a form of redemption for the thief.
In the modern legal system a person who steals is often punished with a sentence of time in jail where the thief is locked in a cage and immersed in a very dangerous community. The prisoner is often treated with fewer legal rights even after emerging from prison. This form of punishment has no basis in biblical or Talmudic law. It is a completely foreign concept to our tradition.
In contrast the biblical thief is not sold as a punishment or as a way to embarrass him, but only as a way to allow him to pay his debt. During this time the thief is not treated as a prisoner or as a lesser human, but as a neshama worthy of our spiritual efforts.
The Torah’s way is to transform the thief through showing how much we love him and how much we believe in him.
The Talmud teaches:
The Sages taught: The verse states concerning a Hebrew servant: “Because he fares well with you (Devarim 15:16),” which teaches that the servant should be with you, i.e., treated as your equal, in food, meaning that his food must be of the same quality as yours, and with you in drink. This means that there shall not be a situation in which you eat fine bread and he eats inferior bread, bread from coarse flour mixed with bran, which is low quality. There shall not be a situation in which you drink aged wine and he drinks inferior new wine. There shall not be a situation in which you sleep comfortably on bedding made from soft sheets and he sleeps on straw. From here the Sages stated: Anyone who acquires a Hebrew slave is considered like one who acquires a master for himself, because he must be careful that the slave’s living conditions are equal to his own (Kiddushin, 22a).
The Talmud stresses that we must treat the thief as we would want to be treated in order to help redeem the thief from his sinful ways. It is for this reason that we treat the thief as an equal.
However, the Chassidic masters go one step further. The Chassidic masters remind us that it is not the thief –the other—who we need to help transform, but we ourselves who are the ones in need of a transformational redemption. We are the ones who can achieve redemption if only we change our ways by becoming more sensitive to the needs of those around us.
A wealthy man once visited the Maggid of Koznitz.
The Maggid asked the man what he was used to eating.
The wealthy man told the Maggid, “I barely eat anything. Usually just bread, salt, and water.”
The Maggid was very upset to hear this. He refused to let the wealthy man leave his presence until he promised him that he would eat delicious and expensive food every day in the manner of other rich people.
The man didn’t want to agree to this, but the Maggid was unrelenting in his insistence.
Finally, the man agreed and the Maggid let him leave.
When the man left, the chassidim looked at the rebbe and asked him to explain his strange request.
The Maggid explained: “Until he eats more luxurious food, he will never realize what the poor people need to eat. As long he is only eating bread and salt, he will tell poor people that they should simply live on stones.” (From Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, 292).
The Chassidic masters stress that we must treat ourselves differently in order to sensitize us to the idea that others needed to be treated with even greater dignity.
Of course each of us has a different path to take to becoming more sensitive. For some, it is to eat different food, while for others it might mean something totally different. The idea is that we must transform our own behavior – our own status --in order to feel the plight of and in order to help redeem someone who is in a more vulnerable position.
We saw this teaching in our daf yomi studies this week (Pesachim, 78-80).
The Talmud teaches that if a person is ritually impure from contact with a dead body (tamei) then one is not permitted to bring the Paschal lamb offering. However, ironically, if the majority of the community is tamei then a dispensation kicks in and the community is permitted to bring the offering in a such a state.
The Talmud discusses what would be the case if exactly half of the Jewish people are tamei and the other half are ritually pure (tahor). Should the community bring the Paschal offering in this circumstance?
There are two opinions about the matter in the Talmud.
Rav says that in this situation we should intentionally make one more person tamei by a lesser form of tumah called tumas sheretz. This is where a person becomes tamei as a result of contact with the carcass of one of 8 animals in the Torah. Basically by intentionally making this person tamei in this manner there are now a majority of people who are tamei and therefore in accordance with the law the Paschal lamb can be offered.
Ulla offers a second interpretation. Ulla does not agree that tumas sheretz is a sufficient form of tumah to allow it to be counted towards the total number of people who are tamei. Therefore, even if we make one more person tamei, we still have a fifty/fifty split. For this reason Ulla suggests an alternative solution: that we send one person from the tahor group far away (derech rechokah). According to the Torah if a person is at a far away distance then such a person is not included in the count.
When Ulla’s answer was told to Rav Nachman, he challenged that solution. Rav Nachman turned to his students and said: “Go and say to Ulla that his solution is not practical. Who will listen to uproot his pegs and tent and run to a distant place?” (Presachim, 80a).
Rav Nachman did not think that a person who had possibly traveled to Jerusalem with family in order to celebrate Pesach would then willingly lift up the stakes of their tent and leave the city so others could properly observe Pesach. But that is precisely what Ulla is suggesting.
Ulla and the Maggid of Koznitz are really taking a similar approach to a person’s spiritual responsibilities. In the story of the Maggid of Koznitz the wealthy man wants to eat the bare minimum in order to attain a higher spiritual level. But the Maggid tells him he must eat more luxuriously in order to better connect with the needs of poor people. So too, in Ulla’s opinion a single volunteer must willingly distance himself from the community in order for the community to properly celebrate Pesach. In both cases a person is sacrificing their own spiritual needs for the sake of others.
Although I am very, very far from being able to opine on a dispute between two great Talmudic sages, I do admit that when I was studying this page of the Talmud I couldn’t help but sympathizing with Ulla’s suggestion and verbalizing a response to Rav Nachman. When Rav Nachman asked--“Who would pull up the pegs from their tent and travel from Jerusalem?”-- I immediately responded, “Why for the sake of benei yisrael we all would!”
Imagine if there was one thing we could do to impact the entire community for good…. If we only knew what that was, we would all jump at the opportunity to do that!
This Shabbat parashat Mishpatim coincides with Rosh Chodesh and Shekalim. Since it is the first day of the month of Adar, we read the portion of Shekalim. The portion of Shekalim reminds us of the requirement to give an annual tax of a half shekel to the Beit Hamikdash in order to fund communal offerings. As Maimonides writes: “On the first of Adar an announcement is made concerning the payment of shekel dues, so that each individual may prepare his half-shekel and be ready to pay it” (Laws of Shekalim, 1:9).
Maimonides explains that this obligation is a requirement on all:
“The Torah commands each member of Israel to contribute half a shekel each year. Even a poor man who lives on charity is required to give; he borrows or sells the garment off his back and contributes a silver half-shekel, as it is written: "The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel" (Exodus 30:15). One must not pay the half-shekel in several installments, a little today and a little tomorrow, but has to contribute it all at once in a single payment” (Laws of Shekalim, 1:1).
The idea of each member of the Jewish people giving a half shekel is consistent with the teaching of Ulla and the Maggid of Koznitz. In order for us to achieve a proper communal spirituality there needs to be a willingness for all to give. For some it means giving a half shekel, for others it means eating more food (like the Maggid), and for others it means temporarily going to a far away distance (like Ulla).
In Temple times there were millions of people who participated in the Korban Pesach (Pesachim, 64b). Why does the Talmud spend its time on this far-fetched scenario where exactly half the people are tamei and the other half are tahor?
It is to remind us that we should view the world as though potentially everything rests upon our actions and our decisions. Every day we should wake up and view the world as though we can be the ones to transform the world from a state of impurity into a redemptive state. We can do this by giving to our community and by treating the vulnerable people with love and warmth. Even though there are billions of people in the world our tradition teaches us that each of us can change the whole world through our actions. Through the way we treat other people and the way we treat ourselves we can be the ones that bring about a redeemed world.
Shmuel Herzfeld
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You can now watch a Youtube recording of Rabbi Herzfeld’s D'var Torah:
https://youtu.be/-HJzz6gPnKg
