Mishpatim
2014
The recent
New York Lottery commercials are worthy of attention. They portray lottery winners who have leisure
time to think about questions, nothing important, just musings on the world
whose answers will not make much difference for anyone. In one scene, a man driving a car on the
highway thinks of the question, then shrugs, shakes it off and continues his
pleasant drive. The answer does not
matter because the question never really mattered in the first place.
Now a
different question, one that comes from real-life, not the imaginary world of the
lottery winner. I visited someone in a
hospital, at the time she was 78, and having a hard time of it. She described how she struggled with health
issues when at the same time her older sister, did not have any significant
health issues at all, smooth sailing in comparison. This woman was, is, a good person, caring,
loving, a good friend.
And so in
this situation we feel compelled to ask, as we have many times before, why do
bad things happen to a good person?
But that’s
not the question that came to mind in that moment. In that moment there was a new question, one
that I’d never given much though, if any, at all: Why do
good things happen to good people?
Bad things happening to bad people, no moral problem there, that’s
justice, measure for measure. Good
things happening to bad people, that’s a lament, does not make sense to
us. Bad things happening to good people,
a more serious and despairing lament.
Good things happening to good people.
That’s the way things should
be, right?
Or, to be
more precise, it’s the way we hope things should be, the way that makes the
most sense to us. But then we get into
choppy waters. What is good for one
person could be evil for another. Does
the level of reward have to match the level of good? What if one person gets a better reward for
the same good? And if we go back to the
lottery example, assuming the winner is a good person and does good things,
what happens when the reward creates more problems than it could have
solved. There are many stories of
lottery winners whose lives become more difficult rather than less.
Another issue,
what about the neutral? Many days are
neither good nor bad, not better or worse than any other day.
The premise
of our parsha, mishpatim, the continuing revelation of laws and teachings from
God about how to infuse the world with justice, that evil and wrongdoing should
be punished, that we should strive to maintain the integrity of society, of the
family, by ensuring that those who suffer the death, pain, insult of others
should have a way to achieve justice, recompense, and support. It says very little about a person’s
character, focusing more on our behavior.
Other passages in the Torah explain the rewards that come to those who
do good in God’s eyes, but not this one.
This passage is about responsibility, about holding people accountable
for their behavior.
If we are
accountable, then we have some reassurance of a level playing field, some
reassurance that making our best effort to do what is good will make all the
consequences in our parsha meaningful only as matters to reference for
background knowledge. If we are
accountable to God, and to ourselves, then we can live in the hope that the
world we create through every action will radiate with holiness, that each of
us will be a living ner tamid, a living eternal flame, full of an animated
spirit that is strong enough to recognize that we cannot avoid living in a
world of good and evil, pleasure and pain, and a spirit sensitive enough to
glory in the good that we experience and to never leave anyone alone in his or
her suffering.
The irony in
the New York lottery commercials then, is this, if the winners are free to
think about and work on anything, then why not put energy into what is
meaningful, what is important, and what can make a difference.
Think of it
this way, the way someone once explained to us while our kids were playing at
the Duck pond playground. She said that,
for her, good health, the ability to live out life fully was more than enough,
she did not need lottery winnings at all, she already had won. We are here together this Shabbat, to sing,
to celebrate, to listen, to learn, to rest, to grow. What a privilege, what a blessing, what a
gift. What good during the week to come
can we take from this moment?
Shabbat
Shalom
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