Exodus - Cycle One - 2101-2418 - Mishpatim

Sometimes the clarity of one moment is mesmerizing. You feel raw but at peace, at home, as if an angel has placed a brick of sapphire into your chest.

This morning I had to drive to the Greyhound bus station. It was five am, the trees were crying, the rain scratching at my windows, the streetlights swinging like men long since hung. My daughter, age 13, sat next to me trying to look 14. She was about to ride the bus alone. She knew the rules. Don’t lose your ticket. If it feels rude to protect yourself, then be rude. Beware of your surroundings. Lilly listened eyes wide. She knew she was once a slave in the land of Egypt (or better, in the lap of her mother) and while this wasn’t her first glance at freedom it was one step. Therefore there had to be new rules added to the old ones (Rashi). So we trudged into the terminal with coats, books, bottle of water, suitcase and purses, waited in line and learned that all busses had been canceled, going north and south. Yes, we could go up to the terminal but if you wanted to approach the mountains bordering the valley, I thought, you had better be an eagle.

What’s more (the ticket agent announced) the station is shutting down until noon.
That’s when a man said…but my ride already left.

He was a ski bum type. Upbeat. Not complaining. Just making a an announcement. I glanced at him, maybe using a sense beyond the five. Was I having some kind of hallelluja experience? No. But I was hooking in, re‐ feeling an epiphany from the not so distant past. I could put words on it like chesed or gevurah but the sound would take longer than the flash.

Then I got practical, really stared.
Where are you going?
Ashland.
I can take you home.

I wasn’t exactly practicing what I preached. Or was I? The ticket agent shuffled to the office, returned with a 50% discount coupon, handed it to me. I used it to buy Lilly’s ticket. To make a long story short, the minimum age for riding a bus was 15. So, I gave a stranger a lift (to Ashland and back later) and got the discount, Lilly was not kicked off the bus because of her age, John (the stranger) was not stuck in Medford and the ticket agent felt good about helping us both. All because of one moment…a sapphire moment…when I went against my own rules. But what exactly are these moments? How do we approach them? How do we write them in our minds like fire on rock? How do we eat and drink their glory? I don’t have the answers. In Mishpatim however, we get a quick blip of how…a preview perhaps.

First, let’s look at the laws (21‐1 to 23‐32). Even if there are 30 negative and 23 positive… clearly, they aren’t conclusive. Every social conflict for eternity could not possibly be recorded. So why are some here, more in Leviticus and others just not? Obviously because the laws are about more than the laws. Rabbi Simeon Ben Yohai, to support this fact, says what if in the taking of an eye for an eye, the second man is already blind? Then what? So, why have laws then? First, it is said that all 613 mitzvot are in the ten utterances. This means we are witnessing the birthing of laws, the multiplying of vibrations of light. From the first mitzvah comes the ten, from the ten comes even more, and from them, even more. Next, the laws (and vibrations) are the action by which we push from our inner fire through the dark to the eternal. Each negative brings us to the next level. Each positive keeps us in place. The fact that most mitzvot are centered around the court emphasizes that we are doing this as a community, not separately.

So, as a community, we have the birthing of vibrations, the pushing out of darkness and the keeping of both in solid form. If this isn’t the beginning of a quick blip, I don’t know what is. Next, all of this must be passed on. But does Moses write or read Torah as a finished action? I don’t think so. My guess is we are beyond time and words, that we are looking at an imprint of consciousness rather than of ink. This imprint comes from God through the prophets to us. The passing of the imprint is just as important as it itself. And it takes all of us to take it on, every last man.

Finally, the Zohar says that our souls keep returning until we connect on Chesed, Gevorah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod and Yesod. As each level of darkness is pushed away, the colors and vibrations change within the larger sphere. Finally, at the seventh, the Shechinah, we go free. There, (they saw the) sapphire brick… they had a vision of the divine and they ate and drank. So, as Rabbi Akiba says, may we understand the purpose of the laws and teach it to our children. May we help each other as we witness the birthing of vibrations and push through darkness into light. May we embrace each sefirot as we approach the eternal radiance. May we love and rejoice in each sapphire moment as we drink in the divine…. May we know when we are to go up and when we are to approach. But wait. There’s an epilogue. “You never do that,” I said to Lilly over the phone, “not until you’re almost 50 like me.” Yes Mom, she said. But she had to get off the phone. She was busy with her camp friend…the reason for the trip… and on her way up to the Exploratorium in San Francisco.