Mishpatim/Shekalim

In the middle of our Parshah we have a series of verses dealing with the administration of justice. We are not to utter a false report, follow the multitude for evil or bear false witness by following the majority to pervert justice. These injunctions seem similar and the Rabbis have given them various legal interpretations, mostly to do with courtroom procedure and the proper administration of justice. Yet the plain sense of these verses is clear. One should not blindly follow the majority in perverting justice, simply because everyone else agrees. The order of the verses is also significant. They begin with the prohibition of uttering a false report and them continue to the perversion of justice. This teaches us an important lesson. Miscarriages of justice often have their origin in false information which is then taken up by the masses and becomes established fact. It then becomes difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at the truth. So the innocent suffer. We are of course all too familiar with this phenomena in our day, especially with regards to Israel. Just as in 2002, the story of the ‘massacre of Jenin’ turned out to be totally false, yet is still widely circulated; so many of the atrocity stories concerning Gaza have turned out, after further investigation, to be fabricated or distorted. Yet we must be careful not to fall into the same trap ourselves. Anti-Semitism is a serious problem today and has increased dramatically in the last months. Yet in combating it, we need to use as our weapon trustworthy evidence, not unsubstantiated rumours and internet scare mongering. That merely undermines our case with the general public and especially policy makers. We have had an unfortunate example of this recently. A Rabbi, who should have known better, took a certain fact he had heard of and, apparently without checking, came to the conclusion that a department store was seeking to boycott Israel. He then published his findings in a Jewish newspaper with recommendations for appropriate action. It turned out of course that the story was false and there was no intention at all to boycott Israel or anyone else. But the damage had been done, mostly to Jewish credibility. In an atmosphere where people do want to harm us we need to be doubly sure of our facts and think before we speak or publish.

ALIYAH BY ALIYAH SYNOPSIS

Sidra Statisics

Parshat Mishpatim

·         has 118 verses ;

·         is the 6th in Exodus, 18th in the Torah

·         5th longest in Exodus, 21st longest in the Torah

·         has 23 pos + 30 neg = 53 mitzvot.