Summary: Our parasha this week repeats laws we have previously read regulating the lives and sacrifices of the priests. Then we turn to the set times of the Jewish calendar: Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the Pilgrimage Festivals of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. God then once again commands the Israelites to bring clear olive oil for lighting the sanctuary menorah. The ingredients and placement of the displayed loaves of sanctuary bread are also explained. Finally, we read about laws dealing with profanity, murder, and the maiming of others.
Lesson: The rabbis of our tradition often felt the need to reinterpret laws that are found in the Torah. From this we learn that Jewish law changes and grows over the centuries.
In our Torah portion this week we find a formula for responding to the case of physical harm inflicted by one person upon another. Three times in the Torah, and again in our portion this week, we learn that “If a person kills any human being, he should be put to death…life for life…fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The injury he inflicted on another shall be inflicted on him.”
Interpreters over the generations have sought to explain what the Torah meant by these laws. Some see the punishment as the “law of the desert” practiced even after our people settled in the Promised Land. For some traditional commentators “life for life” can be seen as an absolute form of blood revenge.
However, most commentators disagree with this understanding of the law. A simple reading of the text understands that the “law of retaliation” is based upon the principle that “the punishment must fit the crime”. Our commentators introduce a new principle as they read these verses: the principle of “a law of equivalence.” This theory allows the injured party to be paid for damages instead of inflicting revenge. If one loses an eye, one is paid the worth of the eye; if one is injured and loses a tooth, one is then paid the equivalent value of the tooth.
How did this adaptation of the original law come to be? Our commentators ask the question, “What if a person only loses part of his sight, or partial use of a limb? How would it be possible to enforce the law, to punish with exactly the same injury?” Thus, the commentators understand the original text from our portion this week to refer to money compensation rather than inflicting physical harm. This interpretation of the original Torah text becomes the common understanding by the time of the Talmud. Ibn Ezra and Maimonides both agree with this interpretation of the text.
Nehama Leibowitz, a modern commentator, goes even further when she suggests that we do not treat the body as we would parts of a machine, something to be used and discarded. She reminds us that the body is a sacred gift from God, and that we cannot dispose of limbs, since our entire body is under God’s authority. Thus, no person has the right to inflict harm on another person’s body. When justice demands compensation for damages to another’s body, financial compensation is the only proper path. She writes that “honoring the body is honoring God.”
Maimonides adds one other important piece to the puzzle when he warns that “no compensation is complete, no wrong is forgiven until the person who has inflicted the injury requests the victim’s forgiveness and has been forgiven.” He goes even further and says, “It is forbidden for the injured party to be cruel and unforgiving. As soon as the guilty party has sought forgiveness…then he must be forgiven.”
Our commentators over the generations were brave. They were willing to take the original text of the Torah and understand it in new and often revolutionary ways. This ability to interpret and change the understanding of ancient texts is one of the paths that has allowed Judaism to remain a thriving belief system and an ongoing way of life.Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Donald Goor