Mishpatim

Exodus 21:1−24:18

D'var Torah By: Rabbi Peter S. Knobel; Reprinted from ReformJudaism.org

Halachah and Aggadah: The Interplay between Law and Narrative to Determine God’s Will for Us

In Parashat Yitro, we are overwhelmed by the power of the encounter of God and the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. The people respond to God's Presence saying, "All that the Eternal has spoken we will do!" (Exodus 19:8). The thunder, lightning, smoke, and horn blasts that accompany the giving of Aseret HaDib'rot, the Ten Commandments, are the most perceptible aspects of that moment. It is likely that few people who were there remembered anything but the smoking mountain and the Divine Presence. This week's parashah, Mishpatim (meaning "rules"), translates the experience into concrete legislation. In The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut divides this portion into three parts: laws on worship, serfdom, and injuries (21:1-36); laws on property and moral behavior (21:37-23:9); and cultic ordinances and affirmation of the covenant (23:10-24:18).1

This law (halachah) is embedded in the story (aggadah) that the Israelites experienced. As the modern Jewish literary figure Haim Nahman Bialik wrote in his famous essay Halachah and Aggadah, "Halachah is the crystallization the ultimate and inevitable quintessence of Aggadah; Aggadah is the content of Halachah."2 Robert Cover, a twentieth century Yale Law School professor, furthered this idea in his groundbreaking essay "Nomos and Narrative," where he wrote, "No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning."3

Jewish law and legal institutions are embedded in the stories of the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai. The Exodus establishes an ethical method for evaluating particular legislation and the Sinai experience roots this method in Divine intention. In other words, God intends the law to create a just society with special emphasis on treatment of the weak and disenfranchised, categorized by concern for the widow, orphan (Exodus 22:21), and stranger (22:20), which is followed by a reminder our having been strangers in Egypt.

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