Mishpatim 5772 - English

Rabbi Daniela Szuster
B´nei Israel Congregation,
Costa Rica

On Repairing the Damages we Commit

One of the themes that appear in this week’s Parashah is the well-known Lex Talionis:  “… eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot…” (Ex. 21:24).  This law defines the penalty for criminal injury as being the same injuries and damages inflicted upon the victims.  If in a fight between two people one sprains the other’s foot, a sprain should be inflicted as punishment on the assailant’s foot.

Besides being a violent and aggressive law, it is impossible to cause the offender exactly the same damage suffered by the victim.  An example from the Talmud:  if a man removes the sight from an eye of a person who sees with just that eye, the same damage will not be exactly the same if the offender sees with both eyes (Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Baba Kamma 83b).

The oral Torah, passed on from generation to generation, does not understand this law in a literal way, but rather from a very different perspective.  Tradition tells us that it does not refer to the amputation of some of the offender’s limbs, but to pecuniary compensation.  The word “for” in “an eye for an eye”, tachat in Hebrew, also means “in exchange”, “in replacement”.  According to our tradition, the responsible party has to pay a pecuniary compensation in the case of mutilation or physical damage.  To this purpose, the sages established a retribution scale according to five aspects:  nezek: value of the organs damaged; tzahar: physical pain induced; shevet: pecuniary loss (in the cases where the victim is not able to continue working); ripui: cost of medicines and treatments, and last, boshet: the stigma and embarrassment produced by the loss of a limb.  Without a doubt, these categories stimulate the deep grasp and understanding of the damage caused.

We could say that the literally understood text and the rabbinical interpretation offer two manners of considering the damage committed between human beings.

The first option is an extremely vindictive way, where the idea is to induce the same damage suffered by the victim, which leads us to become vengeful, cruel, and aggressive people.

The second option equally aims to punish the offender, but through a pecuniary compensation; it is meant to repair the harm in some way, taking responsibility for the damage caused, but not through violent and vindictive means.  Though repairing the damage is a must.

The concept of making amends is essentially linked to the world of Kabbalah.  Lurianic Kabbalah, one of the most famous schools of Jewish mysticism, which developed in Tzfat, Israel as of the 16th century, makes an in-depth revision of the history of the creation of the world and of human beings.  Rabbi Isaac Luria developed the idea of creation through the tsimtsum, that is, the contraction of God into Himself.   According to Luria, God “contracted” Himself away from the empty space into Himself, to make room for creation.  First, He abandoned part of the space, removing the primordial light which, prior to its contraction, left an “impression” or roshem, called reshimu.  Next, He filled the space with another light, the kav, which is the world we know, consisting of vessels that continuously fill themselves.  The higher the spheres of the world (sefirot), the more resistant and capable of receiving and holding enormous quantities of light.  But the lower spheres, being less resistant and incapable of receiving large quantities of light, broke apart.  That is the phenomenon Luria called shevirat ha-kelim, “the breaking of the divine vessels”.

According to this model of thought, our challenge and mission as human beings is to struggle to bring about, by means of our actions, the Tikkun Olam and mending of the destroyed vessels.  Reflecting on the idea of the Talion Law, and according to the rabbinical interpretation, we could say that every time we harm our fellow men, and I’m not just referring to physical damage, we have the duty to repair it somehow, thus trying to right the world and achieve the Tikkun Olam, the mending of the universe.  We must pay the damages, not with violence and aggression but with sensitivity, understanding what we did, and empathy with the person who has suffered.

Shabbat Shalom!