Dvar Torah- A Vortl on Mishpatim"- Rabbi Leonard Cohen & Sapira Cahana- February 12, 2021

This week's Dvar Torah is courtesy of my daughter Hannah's best friend Sapira Cahana, daughter of my rabbi and mentor Rabbi Ronnie Cahana. The Cahana family shares passion and insight about Judaism, and like her father, Sapira is adept at finding meaning that lies hidden within the wording of Torah.

This week's parsha, Mishpatim, contains a continuation of the laws granted to the Jewish people at Sinai. Following the great revelation at Mount Sinai, and the delivery of the Aseret Hadibrot (the 10 Pronouncements), Hashem proceeds to lay out a wide variety of mitzvot that lay the foundations for a civil society. Among these laws are the restrictions pertaining to the Eved Ivri - a Jewish slave owned by a fellow Jew. The Torah seems to acknowledge the oppression of slavery, such as that of the Jewish experience in Egypt; the tolerance of slaveholding may have been an accommodation to a society and world where slavery was the norm.

According to Torah, a master must grant a Jewish slave freedom upon the arrival of the seventh year. However, there is provision for a slave who wishes to remain with his owner. When a slave refuses to go free, the owner is instructed to bring the slave to a doorpost, and pierce his ear with an awl to mark him as a committed slave. Only upon the arrival of the jubilee fiftieth year is such a slave then freed.

Why would a person refuse to go free and rather wish to remain enslaved? What do we learn from this mitzvah in a time when we no longer engage in the cruel practice of slavery?

Sapira remarks upon the Hebrew word מרצע (martze'a) for the tool used for the piercing. She points out that the word is an anagram of מצער (mi-tza'ar) which literally means, "from a place of despair". One can imagine that there are people who fear freedom beyond the confines of the world with which they are familiar. The distress of autonomy might compel such a person to retreat to servitude.

Also significant is the gematria of the word מרצע which is equivalent to 400 -- the number of years the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt. A Jew who refuses their own freedom is literally marked to signify the irony of their choice, given the foundational, tragic Jewish experience of slavery.
As well, the ear is the very organ with which the Jewish people heard Hashem's voice at Sinai, the voice impelling them to freedom with all its risks, to serve G-d and no other. The slave who denies themselves liberty is marked in their ear, to signify the cleft between their choice and the Divine ideals of liberty sounded by Hashem.

Sapira points attention to the location where the piercing is conducted -- the doorpost. A doorway represents a liminal space, the literal threshold of transition from one place to another. Any transition where we stand between one important place in our lives and another, can prove fearsome. This liminal space is the point where a decision needs to be made.
We stand at times at important thresholds in life. As noted author Bill Bridges points out in his book Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, the transitional/liminal space can be unsettling and even frightening. When we wish to make a change in life, we may hear the message from others, "Don't change! Stay back!" In the course of transition, one may experience trauma and difficulty. After a time, when a person succeeds in changing, they can look back with new insight and learning about what they have undergone.

​To some, the threat of change, even to an improved situation, can prove overwhelming. The Eved Ivri at the end of seven years stands at a potential transition to autonomy. The refusal to go forward, the retreat into familiarity and safety, may represent a lost opportunity that cannot be regained. Such a person who refuses to go forward remains forever marked by his unreadiness to take ownership of his situation.
Hashem does not wish for the Jewish people to retreat back to slavery, as they threatened to do at the incident of the Hebrew Spies in the book of Bemidbar. Rather, G-d wishes for us -- both individually and collectively -- to proceed forth boldly into the world, to face our unsettling challenges with emunah (faith) and bitachon (surety) that Hashem accompanies us in our journeys. We cannot attain success unless we risk failure.
May we be inspired by Sapira's learning, to acknowledge the great demands of transition in our lives, and to find faith in Hashem to see us through to new pathways.