2022/5782
Parashat Mishpatim talks about so many different things. When one takes a glance at the many things brought up, he tends to overlook the deeper meanings. The Midrash in Shemot Rabbah emphasizes this, saying that in many of these “Mishpatim,” “laws,” there is a hidden deeper meaning which one can find.
“Anochi Hashem Elokecha Asher Hotzeiticha Mei'Eretz Mitzrayim,” “I am Hashem your God that took you out of Mitzrayim” (Shemot 20:2). In light of this, the Midrash asks what the meaning of Shemot 21:2, a Pasuk describing the Eved Ivri and how he works for six years and is set free in the seventh. It is important to note, however, that the Midrash only quotes “Ki Tikneh Eved Ivri” when one acquires an Eved Ivri which is only part of the Pasuk. The Midrash goes on to say Hashem, by limiting the working period of the Eved Ivri to six years, said that just how I created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, so shall you do when it comes to an Eved Ivri. The Midrash then expounds on the connection between slavery and the Aseret HaDibrot.
The Midrash goes on to ask what is it that is written in proximity to this Pasuk? The Midrash then quotes a Pasuk regarding the Eved Ivri saying that if he entered his service unmarried, he leaves unmarried, and that if he entered with a wife, he leaves with his wife. The Pasuk then says that if the Eved Ivri’s master gives him a wife with whom he has children, then he goes free on his own. The Midrash says that the people of Bnei Yisrael would not enter such a low state unless they have transgressed the Torah’s commandments.
The Shem MiShmuel is bothered by this Midrash. He asks, “if we are connecting the Eved Ivri to the first of the Aseret HaDibrot, why did the Midrash only quote the first half of the Pasuk in context of the Ivri. If we are connecting it to “Anochi Hashem Elokecha Asher Hotzeiticha Mei'Eretz Mitzrayim MiBeit Avadim,” why didn’t the Midrash mention the second half of the Pasuk in which the Eved Ivri goes free after six years? Furthermore, what is the basis of the Midrash connecting the Eved Ivri’s six years of service to the six days of creation? Moreover, what does the Midrash mean when it says that Bnei Yisrael does not enter into such a state unless they have transgressed the commandments? Do we not already know the punishment is as a result of sin? We certainly do know, as he is sold for stealing! Why does the Midrash have to repeat this point?
Shem MiShmuel answers these questions with a wide ranging explanation from which we cull portions. He quotes his father, the Avnei Neizer, who explains why the Eved Ivri goes free after six years of service as follows: the “six” involved here represents the six dimensions of physicality (front, back, right, left, up, and down). “Seven” is different. “Seven” represents the inner core of spirituality. There are only six dimensions of a Jew’s material nature that can be enslaved. This seventh aspect should by nature be beyond the realm of enslavement. The six years of slavery serve to cleanse the impurities of the six dimensions of physicality. Once the cleansing is over, the inner core is free to dominate once more, which produces freedom and then “on the seventh he shall go free.”
By nature, Bnei Yisrael are inner directed. Their focus is on the inner core of true reality, not on externalities. This is why they’re assumed to keep secrets as the Gemara (Chullin 133b) says, but also why Moshe Rabbeinu was able to find gossipers among them. As mentioned above, the Pasuk here is dealing with a Ganav, who, as opposed to a Gazlan, is secretive as the Midrash Tanchuma says. Therefore, a Jewish thief takes his spiritual inner nature and perverts it to the service of the outer physical dimensions. As he has enslaved his inner core to sin, his master has the right to pair him with a Canaanite maidservant, whose children from him will have the status of Canaanite slaves. This is because children are the product of one’s inner core and the slave’s inner core has become locked in the chains of sin.
In truth though, the sin should not touch his inner core. How then, did the thief approach this state where the sin attacked his inner essence? This is only because “Aveirah Goreret Aveirah,” “Sin leads to sin” (Pirkei Avot 4:2). There is a downward spiral of sin. At first, one’s sins only come to affect their outer shell. As they continue on this path, however, the sin becomes impressed into the service of sin. That is how the thief came to misuse his inner core to encourage his sinful ways.
The inner core however, has only become “subservient” to sin. The core’s reality remains unchanged. Thus, once the six years of service are complete and the cleansing has taken place, then the inner core is freed from its enslavement and the inner light, which was once so bright, can shine yet again.
We can similarly understand our shortened time in MItzrayim. Originally, we were supposed to be there for four hundred years in order to become purified. whereas we went free after two hundred ten years (Megillah 9a). What happened to the remaining one hundred ninety years of cleansing? The answer is that Bnei Yisrael’s inner core was never affected. It was only the outer core that needed to be purified. The inner core was lifted beyond reach when Hashem placed his name upon Bnei Yisrael and gave them the Torah. This relates to the Gemara (Yevamot 46a) which says that sanctification releases one from restraint making the additional purification of the externalities unnecessary. When Bnei Yisrael sins, however, the still contaminated externalities surround this inner core and we become subject to “Shi’abud Malchut,” “subjugation of the nations”, an expression of the one hundred ninety years in Mitzrayim that were never completed.
A similar concept underlies the relationship between the six days of creation and Shabbos. The six days of creation were a progressive movement of spiritual essence to physical expression with the attendant ascendency of the outer physical dimension of the universe. Shabbos, however, marks the return to the inner core of reality and its dominance, and with it a release from the shackles of spirituality.
We can now resolve that which bothered the Shem MiShmuel. The Midrash is saying that the first commandment serves to explain what it says regarding the Eved Ivri. The Midrash comes to answer why the Torah speaks in terms of acquiring an “Eved Ivri, a “Hebrew slave”. Why at the time of the purchase is the Hebrew not yet a slave? Shouldn’t the Pasuk have said “if you acquire a Hebrew to be a slave?” To this the Midrash answers that the many laws of our passage derive from the first commandment. The entire nation should by rights have still been slaves, were it not for Hashem placing his name on them, making their Kedushah lift them beyond slavery’s shackles. Our thief though, who through sin blemished his inner core and placed it once more in the shackles of externalities, has fallen from that exalted level to that initial level of slavery wich he and his nation were never cleansed from. Thus, at the time of his purchase he is indeed already a Hebrew slave.
The Midrash then draws a parallel between Hashem creating the world in six days and the Eved Ivri going free after six years, for just as the world returned to its inner core of spirituality after the six days of physicality, so too does the Eved Ivri return to his inner essence after six years of work as we have explained.
When the Midrash says that Bnei Yisrael has not reached that state unless they have “transgressed the commandments,” it means to explain how the Hebrew slave reached this state of his inner core mindless state of externalities. One does not stoop that low just from transgressing one commandment. It is only because he “transgressed the commandments” time and time again until he impressed his inner core into the service of sin.
We all have our ups and downs. Sometimes we transgress commandments, but we bounce back. We need to realize that there is this seventh day that is coming for us. All we have to do is be careful because one Aveirah leads to another. How do we do that though?
What many do not realize, however, is that when it comes to Mitzvot, the same applies. Sometimes all we have to do is remember and apply the full Mishnah which also says that “Mitzvah Goreret Mitzvah,” “one mitzvah leads to another”.