From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

This week, we are reading Parshat Mishpatim. This Torah portion is all about rules and regs. After the revelation, God spells out in minute detail what the people should do and how they should behave. It’s not a conversation, not open to interpretation, the laws are given without explanation and the people simply accept them. They say, na’aseh v’nishmah—we will do what God says and then we will seek to understand what we are doing and why. So often, this is how we engage with our world. That is how law enforcement agents get into trouble. They get so hooked on forcing people to behave in a certain way, so focused on doing rather than thinking, that they lose track of what is appropriate force and end up causing harm rather than maintaining order. It happens in the classroom too. Recently, I was speaking with a family. Their child had come up with a creative way to solve a math equation. Their methodology wasn’t the same as what was being taught, but it worked. Every answer they wrote on their worksheet was ri