mishpatim

The parsha starts out saying ואלה המשפטים: these are the laws. The first one it discusses are the laws of עבד עברי, the Jewish slave. One who  בית דין sells so he can pay back what he stole. The question is, why would the Torah want to start the section of laws off dealing with a thief? Wouldn't it be better to start off with laws of those who do good  like lending without interest or a free watchman; people who do kindness & good deeds? Why start out with a lowly criminal? When it's time for this slave to go free, if he doesn't want to, and would rather remain a slave, then the law is that the owner has to take him to the door & bore a hole in his ear. Rashi brings the מכילתא that says, why does the ear get pierced over any other body part? רבן יוחנן בן זכאי said, the ear that heard don't steal on הר סיני, & then he went & stole, should be bored. And if he sold himself as a slave, it's the ear that heard on הר סיני the בני ישראל  are slaves to me , and then he went and took a different master for himself, should be bored. Asks רב אליהו מאיר בלוך, why did chazal need to give us two separate reasons to differentiate between one who sold himself as a slave and one who stole? Now, six years later, no matter why he was there to begin with, he's getting bored because he doesn't want to be free and would rather remain a slave. To answer why we started by discussing slaves, the סבא מקלם answers that had the Torah been man made it would have started with honorable laws of kindness & benevolence and not with a lowly thief. However, 'ה gave us the Torah and we are all his children. When one has a troubled son all his thoughts are on him & how he can help him turn his life around. The good son doesn't need all that attention. That's why he started with the thief, to find ways to rehabilitate him such as having him move in with a good family to learn to mend his ways.    Now says  רב אליהו מאיר בלוך, if we want to help someone to mend their ways, we can't look at the surface & what they're doing wrong. In order to try to fix it we have to get to the root of the problem. We need to figure out why they're there to begin with. That's why the Torah tells us there's a different reason why each one gets bored. If he didn't get the message yet, we have to get to the root of the problem to see how we can help him. We can take a great lesson from this. Each time there's a tragedy or economic upheaval, everyone is quick to pin the blame on whatever issue they feel is paramount, be it tznius, internet, texting, loshon hara etc. In reality, we need to get to the root of the problem to see why these issues are so predominant. Why are people so lax nowadays? All the speeches & articles won't & can't help if we don't get to the root of the problem. We need to figure out the cause & only then can we fix it. Maybe the lesson we could take from the slave is that instead of throwing the thief in jail & distancing ourselves from him, we bring him into our home to be part of the family, hoping he will learn & grow into an upstanding member of society. So too if we see someone doing something we feel is improper. Instead of getting angry or distancing ourselves, we have to embrace them, befriend them and draw them closer with love. Only then can there can be hope for change!