mishpatim: remembering
sholem aleixem,
I hope you'll forgive me a slightly more personal newsletter this week. I promise we'll be back to wild gematric minutiae shortly. But Mishpatim has a really special place in my heart. A couple years ago, Mishpatim was read on the 22nd of February. We had a small minyan that Shabbos morning, davening a slow shacharis and reading the entire portion. That night, I hosted my trans havdalah minyan. This was supposed to be the first of a monthly minyan extravaganza. Of course, as you know, that never happened. Seven years ago, Mishpatim was read on the day I first drafted a coming-out letter to my parents, though, to my regret, I wasn't following the Torah cycle that year.
Every year, more and more layers are added to each Torah portion. The sweetness of that morning minyan in 2020 and the sorrow that followed. Each year we get to add a bit more of ourselves into the Torah, portion by portion, changing it as it changes us. Lately, this is one of the few things that keeps me going. I want to read Mishpatim again. I want another Beshalach, another Bereishis. I want to put more of my life into these scrolls.
I am sad, of course, that COVID stopped our little minyan from continuing. But I am grateful for the way this cycle allows me store these memories. I couldn't tell you what I was doing on any other day of February that year. I'm sure there were moments of great joy and sorrow. The only one I remember is the 22nd, because, for me, it is now an integral part of the story of Mishpatim. When the world around us fundamentally changes, what do we do? We're Jews -- we try to figure out the halaxa.
This Torah portion commands us regarding three festivals: of matzos, of harvest, and of ingathering. We are told that these three times each year, our זכורים, our males, will stand before the face of haShem. Grammatical concerns aside, I cannot help but read the word זכור differently, according to the root זכר, to remember. These three times each year our rememberers will appear before the face of haShem (or, for a pretentious bilingual pun, our re-memberers....) Three times each year, we will layer our memories over our sacred rituals. Every week, we will pour ourselves into the Torah.
A couple years ago I did the SVARA camp through Zoom diaspora, and we were studying a story from Masekhes Kiddushin. "Once upon a time," the story goes, "Rabbi Tarfon and the Elders were gathered in the attic of Nitza of Lod." Over the course of our study, we learned that this story in the Gemara comes from an earlier source, one that does not mention Nitza. Why the changes? Our teacher Benay Lappe suggested that it was because other important discussions happened in Nitza's attic. Over there, in Sanhedrin, the Rabbis gather in Nitza's attic to decide which sins are worth dying over. Here, in Kiddushin, the Rabbis in the attic are debating which of action or learning is greater. This place has great weight because we layer our stories there, one on top of the other.
We are layerers, we Jews. We layer ourselves over time and our discussions over place. We develop simplified guides to living rightly and then produce mountains of commentary on those guides. I think the authors and editors and commentators of Mishpatim got so many things wrong, and so many things right. Thank God we aren't done responding to revelation. Thank God there are more layers for each of us to add.
We are told over and over in Torah and our liturgy that haShem remembers us, and maybe this is why. We just can't help putting ourselves back into these holy moments, these holy texts.
Also, when you encounter your enemy's wandering ass, you must bring it back to him. Come on. Don't be a shmuck.
good shabbos,
ada