The newly-married couple is eating their Shabbat meal together. The husband asks his wife, “Nu Sarah, when are going to start making Challah like your mother?”
The quick-witted wife responds, “When you start making dough like your father!”
Pashat Mishpatim, which immediately follows the giving of the Ten Commandments, deals principally with torts and simple civil-type laws. Talk about a let-down! We walk off the ethereal precipice of Mt. Sinai, the singularly most elevated Jewish experience, into the seeming lowly abyss of litigation, liability, criminality and negligence – among other very ordinary laws. Aside for those lawyer types, this seems sort of…ordinary.
In fact, consider this: The Parsha open with the words, “ And these are the statues… "ואלה המשפטים. Apparently, with the Hebrew letter ‘Vav’ which means ‘and’, the Torah views our reading as a direct continuation of the last week’s Parsha and the Ten Commandments? How is that possible?
Rashi answers, “Just as those [the Ten Commandments] are from Sinai, so too these [the laws of this portion] are from Sinai.”
The Chassidic masters explain that there is a profound message here. Every aspect of our lives, even the day-to-day business and social interactions, should be totally suffused with divine purpose. It is not enough us to be “religious” by observing rituals, while leaving the rest to subjective and easily obfuscated human morality. Be ‘religious’ about paying employees and refraining from gossiping too.
Let us make our dough into Challah. Let us live our business and personal lives with an integrity borne of a divine sense of purpose. Enjoy the Challah!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yisroel Hecht