I Sought The Law
This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, extends the revelation of the 10 Commandments to incorporate a broad blueprint for the envisioned society to be forged in the Promised Land. This expansion sets the tone for the development of a much more comprehensive structure of Jewish law known as halacha.
The notion of law as liberating rather than constraining is rooted in the first acts of creation, as God brings divine order to primordial chaos. In many ways, the revelation, acceptance, and expansion upon Torah enables social law to bring order out of potential cultural chaos. The “law of the jungle” and concern only for self and kin is superseded by the social contract that enables us to live in a society of competing claims and demands. The enlightenment philosophers and the founders who created our political system were inspired by a similar need.
Thus, recent attempts to undermine our constitutional system of laws, checks, and balances are both an attack on the system that has enabled our national polity to thrive and a refutation of a divine mandate for order and structure that is the very foundation of a viable world.