I was in our family business for 18 years before going to rabbinical school. It is this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, that opened my eyes in a totally different way to the relevance of our Torah to life, in particular to business. I never thought that anything I was doing was even remotely related to actually living the Torah. That insight came while studying in rabbinical school.
The parashahcontains a huge number of mitzvoth(laws). They cover a very diverse group of life’s details, morality, justice, commerce, eating, the treatment of strangers, and the treatment of enemies. Some express high ideals e.g. Exodus 22:24 that commands not to take interest when lending money to the poor. Others seem silly and irrelevant e.g. Exodus 22:28 which tells us to give our fist born sons to God. If we look at each law individually, they seem like a nitty-gritty detail. But taken as a corpus, parashat mishpatim is teaching us that it is impossible to separate our religious lives from our secular lives.
These laws teach us that in the every day transactions of conducting business, as well as in the business of conducting our every day lives, these tiny details represent an opportunity for us to live the Torah. If that seems a little strange, consider that in the latter part of this Torah portion we are commanded to observe the 3 harvest festivals, Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. The commercial lives of the Israelites were based in successful agriculture. The cycle of their agricultural seasons were tied to religious observances. The laws of the details that establish the measure of trust needed in every day transactions were the building blocks needed to reach each milestone in the commercial and the religious year. Our Israelite ancestors were, and to a large extent we still are, dependent on what bounty God shares with us.
In the daily Amidahwe pray the bircat hashanim, which technically seems to be asking God for a year of bountiful crops. But the real centerpiece of that prayer is the words sabeinu metuvecha, may we be satisfied with God’s goodness. In other words, any level of success we achieve. We should be satisfied with what has been morally acquired and not try to achieve ill gotten gain.
When I first studied all of this, I remembered a comment my father had said when referring to some people he knew who made a lot of money, “He has walked over dead bodies to succeed.” My dad was never able to bring himself to walk over any dead bodies to succeed. He believed in 2 key ideals in conducting business.
- Give quality and value. He was trained in his youth as a cabinet maker while living in Germany. He would always try to build more value in his produce, even if he could not always charge more for the product. He wanted it to be beautiful and solid.
- Become friends with your customers. Establish a relationship built on trust. A relationship where each party enjoys doing business with the other has its own kind of holiness.
Our factory had many years of a good profit. It took my studying in rabbinical school to see my father’s ideals as a way of trying to live the Torah while doing business, basically while participating in a major aspect of every day life.
Most people could care less about what Jewish philosophers have to say about various theological issues. Most people could care less about the details of the entire Torah, both written and oral. Most people would not know or care about he difference between Mishnah or Mishneh. Most of what I learned in classes during rabbinical school, while so fascinating to me as a student, would mean very little to the vast majority of folks in any congregation. Life is about tachlis, details. The power of parashat Mishpatimis in seeing a method for infusing holiness into the most mundane actions of our everyday lives. Our acts of business, our interactions with other people, our dedication to basic morality and justice is in truth encountering God. We must make a choice. Do we see the world as an obstacle to overcome? Or, do we see every detail as a potential gateway to God?
After the long list of commandments are stated, through about 3 chapters of the Torah, the Israelites respond with these words in Exodus 24:7, “na’aseh v’nishma,” “We will do and we will hear (comprehend).” We must do the commandments that promote the details of our lives in a divine way. We might not understand all the details, so we might not comprehend them right away. Jewish tradition stresses we should not wait to follow the commandments until we feel emotionally attached to and understand them. Rather, we should make the basic commandments part of our lives, as that is the only way to really appreciate them. If we have faith in taking the right moral actions, we can build a life of holiness.
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The Jewish Observer 
Can Boring Life Be Inspiring?
Posted in Torah commentary, tagged Following commandments, Mishpatim on February 17, 2020| 2 Comments »
I was in our family business for 18 years before going to rabbinical school. It is this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, that opened my eyes in a totally different way to the relevance of our Torah to life, in particular to business. I never thought that anything I was doing was even remotely related to actually living the Torah. That insight came while studying in rabbinical school.
The parashahcontains a huge number of mitzvoth(laws). They cover a very diverse group of life’s details, morality, justice, commerce, eating, the treatment of strangers, and the treatment of enemies. Some express high ideals e.g. Exodus 22:24 that commands not to take interest when lending money to the poor. Others seem silly and irrelevant e.g. Exodus 22:28 which tells us to give our fist born sons to God. If we look at each law individually, they seem like a nitty-gritty detail. But taken as a corpus, parashat mishpatim is teaching us that it is impossible to separate our religious lives from our secular lives.
These laws teach us that in the every day transactions of conducting business, as well as in the business of conducting our every day lives, these tiny details represent an opportunity for us to live the Torah. If that seems a little strange, consider that in the latter part of this Torah portion we are commanded to observe the 3 harvest festivals, Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. The commercial lives of the Israelites were based in successful agriculture. The cycle of their agricultural seasons were tied to religious observances. The laws of the details that establish the measure of trust needed in every day transactions were the building blocks needed to reach each milestone in the commercial and the religious year. Our Israelite ancestors were, and to a large extent we still are, dependent on what bounty God shares with us.
In the daily Amidahwe pray the bircat hashanim, which technically seems to be asking God for a year of bountiful crops. But the real centerpiece of that prayer is the words sabeinu metuvecha, may we be satisfied with God’s goodness. In other words, any level of success we achieve. We should be satisfied with what has been morally acquired and not try to achieve ill gotten gain.
When I first studied all of this, I remembered a comment my father had said when referring to some people he knew who made a lot of money, “He has walked over dead bodies to succeed.” My dad was never able to bring himself to walk over any dead bodies to succeed. He believed in 2 key ideals in conducting business.
Our factory had many years of a good profit. It took my studying in rabbinical school to see my father’s ideals as a way of trying to live the Torah while doing business, basically while participating in a major aspect of every day life.
Most people could care less about what Jewish philosophers have to say about various theological issues. Most people could care less about the details of the entire Torah, both written and oral. Most people would not know or care about he difference between Mishnah or Mishneh. Most of what I learned in classes during rabbinical school, while so fascinating to me as a student, would mean very little to the vast majority of folks in any congregation. Life is about tachlis, details. The power of parashat Mishpatimis in seeing a method for infusing holiness into the most mundane actions of our everyday lives. Our acts of business, our interactions with other people, our dedication to basic morality and justice is in truth encountering God. We must make a choice. Do we see the world as an obstacle to overcome? Or, do we see every detail as a potential gateway to God?
After the long list of commandments are stated, through about 3 chapters of the Torah, the Israelites respond with these words in Exodus 24:7, “na’aseh v’nishma,” “We will do and we will hear (comprehend).” We must do the commandments that promote the details of our lives in a divine way. We might not understand all the details, so we might not comprehend them right away. Jewish tradition stresses we should not wait to follow the commandments until we feel emotionally attached to and understand them. Rather, we should make the basic commandments part of our lives, as that is the only way to really appreciate them. If we have faith in taking the right moral actions, we can build a life of holiness.
Read Full Post »