[Aspaqlaria] [Asparlaria] Shemos: From Vigilante to Lawgiver

[micha at aishdas.org]

Aspaqlaria is experiencing some technical problems which is keeping me from
posting the following on the blog on time for this week's parashah. So, I am
mailing it to subscribers manually.

-micha

 

Shemos: From Vigilante to Lawgiver


A post on Facebook by Jeremy Phillips raised the question of why Hashem
chose a vigilante to be His lawgiver. He got me thinking.

 


Hashem even lauds Moshe's vigilantism in the Torah when he leaps to the
defense of the Jewish slave being beaten by the Egyptian, tries to break up
the fight between Jewish troublemakers, and helping Yisro's daughters when
they were taunted at the well.

We would naturally associate vigilantism with a raw morality that is
unbridled, lawless. A pursuit of fairness at the expense of law.

So why does this week's parashah, Shemos, spend so much space telling us
that Moshe Rabbeinu, the ultimate teacher of the law, was a vigilante?

In Widen (sec. 2.2) I touch on the relationship between Natural Morality and
Halakhah. We had already seen the relationship in one direction, in Hillel's
summary of the Torah to the prospective convert, "That which you loathe, do
not do to another. That is the whole Torah. Now go study!"

But I believe the relationship also exists in the other direction. In the
famous Achnai Oven story, Rabbi Eliezer believed the oven's pieces were not
attached sufficiently for it to quality as a utensil, and thus not subject
to the laws of tum'ah. The majority held it was. Rabbi Eliezer brought
proofs from miracles, even was confirmed by a Bas Qol, an Echo from Heaven.
Rabbi Yehoshua rebutted by quoting the verse, "lo bashamyim hi -- it [the
Torah] is not in heaven". (Bava Metzi'a 59b, quoting Devarim 30:11)

The halakhah must be decided by humans, not by angels. Why? For that I would
look to the end of the text Rabbi Yehoshua quoted. After listing distant
things to contrast the Torah in various ways, the Torah concludes (v. 14)
"ki qarov eilekha hadavar me'od, befikha uvilvavekah, la'asoso -- for the
matter is very close to you, in your mouth and heart, to perform it."

Why must the halakhah only be decided by people? Because it is an expression
of what is already in our mouths and hearts. Halakhah must come from the
natural morality of "that which you loathe, do not do to another" or else it
is not Torah.

Torah isn't some pristine set of rules, coming from heaven and detached from
human nature. Torah is a means of better living the moral calling planted in
the human soul during its creation. Teaching us how to refine ourselves to
be better at our calling. Correcting us when our perspective is overly
short-sighted.

And I think that message is also heard here, in this week's parashah. Moshe
was uniquely qualified to be the lawgiver, the first teacher of Torah,
because he was a vigilante. Because he was so driven by his natural moral
calling. A vigilante must submit to halakhah. (Although maybe I will have
more to say about this come parashas Pinechas.) In the laws of Shema and of
geirus, we call it "qabbalas ol mitzvos -- accepting the yoke of mitzvos". A
yoke takes an animal's existing energy and harnesses it for work.

A vigilante, as Moshe starts his career being, has the correct energy
flowing, the force that the Torah is there to further develop and harness.

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