Podcast #2 Parashat Mishpatim

The podcast discusses the connection between the Torah and the issue of immigration. It emphasizes that the Jewish nation has a history of being immigrants and strangers in different lands. The Torah teaches the importance of treating strangers with kindness and empathy. Furthermore, it suggests that welcoming migrants can bring economic benefits and create a more diverse and enriched society. However, it acknowledges the complexities of immigration policies and the challenges of integrating different cultures. The podcast concludes by highlighting the need for a deep understanding of the Torah and its teachings to guide decisions on immigration and to maintain a sense of empathy and compassion towards migrants. Shalom, welcome back to our second podcast. We hope you enjoyed our previous podcast. I'm sitting here with Professor Shlomo Maital, I'm Elisha Wolfin from Kilat Vahavda, and we're discussing parashat Mishpatim this week. So Harav Elisha, I really enjoy our little weekly chats, and the parasha this week is Mishpatim. I want to open your drashah by noting that our forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, they were immigrants, and of course our foremothers as well, Saru, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. The Jewish nation, we're a nation of immigrants. You know, 3.4 million people emigrated to Israel, that's 40% of our current population. Why did our forefathers need to emigrate? That's a beautiful question. There's an incredible depth in this idea of our forefathers not, for example, growing up from the soil of the earth. That would have been a Native American idea of the human being, which is also in Bereshit, in Bereshit 2, that we were created from the dust of the earth. Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Saru, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah, they didn't come from the dust of the earth, of the land of Israel. They were born elsewhere, and each one of them became a migrant for different reasons. Avraham is the most famous, obviously, but the others too, which tells us something very important about our relationship to the land, the land of Israel, to the world in general. Who are we here? What is our role in this world, in this land? We'll talk more about it, but I think you're absolutely right. This is a key idea to understanding our relationship to our entire existence. So Elisha, the whole Torah is of great importance, obviously, but this Parsha, Mishpatim, it's especially important. As you note, it's the 18th Parsha in the Torah, it's the 6th in the Book of Exodus, and its special importance is because Jewish law bases itself largely on this Parsha, perhaps more than any others. How come? Yes. So here we have Parshat Mishpatim, first of all, it is indeed a beautiful Parsha. To be quite honest, I never quite noticed it was the 18th Parsha in the Torah, which is a beautiful observation, you know, 18 being Chai, so maybe it's a Parsha to live by, the idea of Chai. And it's also, it follows right after the Ten Commandments. And if you look really closely at Parshat Mishpatim, it basically has the Ten Commandments in it, it's an expansion on the Ten Commandments. So the Ten Commandments is a major compass, kind of thing, in Jewish morality, Jewish law, and then we have Parshat Mishpatim that's really solidifying our general direction. But that's not enough. We will need the sages, and we will need judges today. How badly we need good judges today, and that's very timely, of course. So you mentioned the word compass, Elisha, and that's a clue. So I have my smartphone on the table here in front of us, and smartphones all have a compass. So on my smartphone, I've pressed the button for the compass, and my phone is telling me that I'm now facing north, but not exactly north, 347 degrees north. So I know exactly what direction I'm facing, and unfortunately, smartphones don't provide a moral compass, that is, choosing the right path. So tell us, talk a bit about the Torah as a moral compass. Okay. It's actually a tough question. It's a tough question because there are things in the Torah that we love dearly, love thy fellow neighbor, et cetera, et cetera. Many of them are in this parasha, not v'hafe le'recha kamocha, but many, many others. But we also know that there are very difficult sentences, verses, and chapters in the Torah that we don't follow today, that even the sages themselves actually told us not to follow them as they're written. For example, ben soreh u'moreh, the stoning of a defiant child. It's not so big. And the sages themselves were courageous enough to say that it's in the Torah, but it's not to be followed. It's to be studied for a variety of reasons, it has great value, but certainly not to be followed. So how do we know when a verse, a law, is to be followed as a compass, and when is it not to be followed as a compass? And for that, we need a deep, deep relationship with the Torah. I think unlike some other religions, we're not going to name any, we don't regard the Torah as, the Torah is not our law. The Mishnah, the Gemara, the Poskim later on, they become Jewish law, not the Torah. The Torah is the basis of it all. The Torah is indeed the compass, and the compass shows a direction. But even as you said, you're looking at the compass in your smartphone, it's a direction to what? So what if it shows you north? What's north? What's there? Why go north? And maybe we'll talk more about that shortly. So Elisha, every Shabbat I'm astonished at how relevant the Torah is, even though the Torah was written at least 2,500 years ago, and how modern, how relevant it is. And I sometimes bother you when we have our study sessions, and I ask you, Harav Elisha, okay, interesting, what do I do with this in my own life? And actually the Torah has a lot of answers. For example, how we relate to strangers, to migrants. What does the Torah tell us about relating to strangers and migrants? Right, and that brings us back to the topic that you raised at the very, very beginning, of remembering it, even to remember that your ancestors were migrants, that you yourself were migrants, were strangers in the land of Egypt. And this memory, this remembering, seems to be a corner, a key concept here in parashat Mishpatim. And it begs the question, like, why? So we were migrants, and we were strangers, and we were slaves. Thank God that's over. Now we have our own land. Now we are the masters of this land, a fresh new start. Let's just forget that horrible past, that painful past, and rejoice in the new phase in our national life. And the Torah says absolutely not, you are not to forget that stage. Being migrants, being strangers, being enslaved, being ill-treated, is a key concept in our memory. And that is, it's almost as if this itself is the compass. Remember that you are a stranger in this land, not in the past, not in history. Now you are a stranger. And being a stranger and feeling like a stranger is not a comfortable feeling. And we all wish for, you know, to find a place to rest and feel totally secure and safe. And yet the Torah tells us, the compass tells us, maintain that sense of strangeness, of a migrant, of an alien, to emphasize over and over again, we are going to be here for, God willing, 120 years. And then we will not be here anymore. This land is not ours. The earth is not ours. The land of Israel is not ours. Our own homes are not ours. And Israel is really beautiful because most of the land is not even owned by private owners. It's owned by the Jewish people. And that's a deep, deep concept, especially now when we're dealing with issues of ecology and the way we're treating the earth. What does it mean to fully accept our status as strangers in God's world? By the way, that was a brilliant idea that we adopted, unlike almost any other country, not to allow private ownership of the land, but to rent the land for 50 years. And the reason for that, Alicia, was that we wanted to have modern agriculture and we wanted to have control. So the fact that the land is only rented means that we can tell farmers exactly how modern and how to farm. And Israel has among the best, most modern agriculture in the world, partly for that reason, that we have control and regulation. That's very interesting. I'll tell you a little anecdote. My wife and I adopted our son quite a few years ago and we went to Russia. There's like an adoption trial and the judge proceeding over this adoption case, she couldn't grasp the idea that we don't own our own land and home. And she kept on going back and forth. We had to actually, the trial was stopped. We had to have special documents from Israel explaining to her this weird notion that one does not own the land. That's cool. So, Alicia, the Torah is a moral compass and we are in a strange new situation now in Israel. We are in our own land and we are accepting or not accepting migrants rather than having to immigrate to other countries. According to the Population Authority of Israel, there are at least 40,000 African migrants in Israel. They came here because Israel is the only land bridge between Africa and the rest of the world. They came through Sinai, often with great, great hardship. Many came from Eritrea and Sudan where they were horribly persecuted. And I'm troubled by this because as Jews being refugees ourselves, my mother and father were refugees from Bessarabia, now Moldova, I don't think we've treated these African migrants as the Torah indicates. Does this distress you as it does me? Very much so. Very much so. And it distresses me because I have to be very honest. I don't quite have a clear answer vis-a-vis policy. Thank God I'm not asked to make the decisions here in Israel. I can only refer back to the Torah as a compass and our history as a compass too. I don't know what the solution is to migrant workers. It's a tough one. If Israel does indeed absorb any person who's seeking a better life, and I wish we could, I wish we could, we will not be able to maintain a Jewish state or a state at all. And nevertheless, those who are here, those who made it here, those who crossed from Egypt to the Sinai desert and arrived in Israel, they're now living among us. And the Torah here is very clear on how we are to treat them. And the Torah doesn't deal with easy issues. We don't need the Torah to deal with easy issues. The Torah doesn't tell us, breathe. We'll breathe. Better or worse, we will breathe. The Torah kind of tells us exactly, teaches us on the tough issues in life. And what do you do when 40,000 African migrant workers are living among us? And they're here and we have a responsibility towards them. It'll be so easy to turn them away, to send them away, and maintain our Jewish hegemony. But nevertheless, the Torah is telling us, no, remember, you were strangers in a strange land. You are migrants. Exactly. And let me put this in context, Eliezer. I'm an economist, unfortunately. I'm going to explain in a hundred words why in 2023 the world needs to read Barshat Mishpatim again and pay attention. After all, Jews, Christians believe in the Bible, use the Bible. It's our moral compass. The Bible influenced Muslims. Much of the world uses the Bible directly or indirectly as a moral compass. And Eliezer, frankly, we're not reading it. Let me explain why. After World War II, an amazing thing happens. The United States and the Allies get together in a place called Redwoods in New Hampshire. They decide to have a global world economy. Open the borders, allow free trade, free flow of money, free flow of ideas, flow of technology. And this works incredibly well. Asia becomes wealthy. China, India. It's remarkable. Huge wealth is created. The world production, the total world production rose by 15 times. It was $8 trillion in 1940 for the war. It was $120 trillion in 2023. So the world became wealthy from this openness, which included openness of people migrating with ideas. Last year, 300 million people emigrated in the world. 300 million. Why? Because some countries became wealthy and many countries fell behind because they had corrupt, incompetent governments, especially in Latin America and Africa. And the poor people there suffering from corruption and violence and poverty and desperation feed their family. They pick up and leave, often risking their lives with small children in small boats crossing the Mediterranean. Some of them came to Israel. So the world has done well in creating this wealth machine, but we haven't done well in solving the problem of inequality. Some are poor. Many, many are poor, and a few are rich. And those who are migrating, we're building walls rather than trying to deal with this, trying to help them, trying to welcome them or help them in their own countries. What do we do about this burning issue in the world, which has destabilized politics and in general caused a great deal of trouble, and we're not dealing with it? First of all, thank you. Thank you. I didn't know all of that, and that was an eye-opener for me. So thank you very much. And as you were talking, as you were explaining and bringing all the data, a thought came to mind. And when Abraham is told, go forth, the first Hebrew migration, and because there's migration before that as well, and in Parashat Noach, he doesn't migrate to the wealthiest country in the area. In fact, he leaves a very wealthy region, and he goes to this mountainous, arid, mostly desert ridden land called the land of Canaan, which has significant geopolitical significance, but it is a country where it's ridden with droughts, and he needs to leave this country every once in a while because of drought. So actually, the migration, the holy migration, we can divide it up into a holy migration and to an economical migration. The economical migration is when Abraham goes down to Egypt because of drought, and then Jacob does the same thing many years later. But the real migration here is a journey within. It's a journey, it's an inner journey and not an outer journey. The Torah will not solve, the Torah is not here to solve economical problems. It's not here to solve the problem of 300 million migrants in the world today. The Torah, I think, is here teaching us something about where is it that we're migrating to and what's the purpose of our migration. And Lech Lecha is a good example. Lech Lecha is not like go forth and find wealth or find a better life for yourself. That was never the reason for the Lech Lecha of Abraham to the land of Canaan, the land of Israel. The Lech Lecha here is go and grow, go and evolve, go and become a blessing. And maybe that connects to your point about equality. You said, I'm an economist, unfortunately, you know, thank God you're an economist. But economy concerns itself with wealth and also equality vis-a-vis wealth. I think the Torah discusses equality, not from a socialist perspective, and I have strong socialist roots being a kibbutznik, but a radical equality, meaning that we're equal. Our equality is not based on what we have and don't have. Our equality is not based on anything material. Our equality is in our inner being, our inner world. And perhaps the migration, that's where the compass is. The migration is to become a blessing in the world, to become more who you are meant to be, to become more of a full human being, a mensch. Exactly. So let me challenge you on this one. The Torah is a moral compass. It teaches us what's right and wrong, and it teaches us strongly that it's right to welcome migrants. Let me make the case also that it's good, economically good to welcome migrants. My mother and father were immigrants. They came to Canada. My father became a small contractor. He built houses, low price, low cost houses for ordinary working people. He created value for the country to which he migrated to. And the children of migrants are high aspiration. My parents demanded a lot from me in terms of schooling and aspiration. Migrants have children who have high aspirations. So I can make a strong case. Not only is it right to welcome strangers, as the Torah says, it's smart economically to do so. Because they bring ambition, ideas, and they do great things. Look at Canada, built on migration. Israel, look at what Israel has built based on the people who came here. So I think the world is getting it wrong. We're not listening to the Torah, not just morally, but also on practical terms. Very interesting. I see your point. I have to say that as you're speaking, I was thinking about, is that always indeed the case? Are migrants who arrive, is the second generation always motivated and reaches success? Is that indeed the case? Now, my wife and I spent some time in Holland. Holland has a large number of Moroccan migrants. The Dutch are somewhat of a closed society. They didn't really welcome these immigrants. They retained their language. They weren't integrated. They weren't educated. They'd become a problem. But why? Because we didn't follow the Torah. We didn't integrate them into society and welcome them. So yes, they are a blessing, provided that they are welcomed and integrated and not segregated. Yeah. So the condition for turning into a success story is if they're well absorbed and well integrated. I hear what you're saying. I can see that. And I'm going to leave it to the policymakers to try and translate that into a real policy and look at countries who have succeeded. It's one thing absorbing immigrants who come from similar cultural backgrounds. And when you immigrate from Europe to North America, then you're an immigrant. But you come with the same, basically, cultural code, more or less. And when you come from a very different kind of cultural code, it's very, very, very challenging, both sides. But I think here we're basically addressing the fact that in this equation, we're addressing those who are absorbing, not those who are immigrating, because we in Israel here are doing pretty well for ourselves. And the question is, what is the mandate of us? So one thing you're saying is be open to absorbing immigrants, especially those who've made it here and they're already here. Absorb them and fairly treat them well, and they will enrich your culture and your society. And I would like to just add the little spice that I would like to add to that, which I think that Torah is adding here, is the motivation for it all, whatever the policy ends up being, whatever it is. The question is always, where are we coming from when we are making our decisions? Whatever policy is decided upon, what are the moral grounds that it comes from? And I would suggest that it's coming from this basic idea of every one of us, ourselves being not in the past, but in the present moment, being a stranger, an alien on this land. We're all guests here. And if we're all guests here, from that perspective, we're going to make different decisions and different policies from the perspective, if we come from the perspective of we are the masters here, we're the land owners here. Only God is the owner of this land. Yes, this is somewhat troubling, because one of the far-right political parties in Israel did very well in the last election, on November 1st, by announcing that we were going to become the Balei B'ait. We are the Balei B'ait. We are the Barabutim, Barabust of Israel. And as you say, this is a wrong first principle. If you use that as your first principle, your moral compass is going to lead you in totally wrong directions. We need to change that. Yeah, very much so. And what's really sad about it, that it's the party that you're talking about, it's a religious party. It's a Torah-based party. They're reading the same parashat as you and I are reading this week about the moral compass, about the Jewish people, the Hebrew, the Jewish people, carrying this consciousness of being migrants, being strangers in the land, and being commanded to remember that. And how could that have been corrupted so tragically is beyond me. And it could be argued that we, as Jews, when we take upon ourselves independence and become a sovereign state, we're going to face psychic hurdles, so to speak, where we're going to get very confused. We're suddenly going to think that we are the owners of this land. Yishai Aulewicz, Alava Shalom, spoke extensively about that, reminding us this is not our land. And in the D'rashar, quote, Rashi, suggesting that the whole book of Bereshit was actually not necessary. We could have started from Shemot, from the story of the Exodus. We really could have started from there. They said the only reason we started from Bereshit is to remind the entire world who this earth belongs to. And yes, let's be reminded of who this earth belongs to. And that will color our decision making and our policy making. Yishai, I want to mention something about my place of work. I work at a think tank at the Technion, and we have a group of people, older people my age, who are troubled by Israel and what's going on now. This week has been chaotic. Major demonstrations against the so-called judicial reform. And our question was, what unites us? Is there anything, any glue that holds us together as a people? Because this week, especially, it looked like there was a chasm between left and right. And we found an answer. The answer is in the Megilat HaTzmaut, the founding document of Israel. That was supposed to lead to a constitution. Israel is only one of six countries in the world that don't have a written constitution. So, we're like playing soccer without any rules of the game. But there are the things that unite us in the Megilat HaTzmaut, democracy, freedom, human rights, civil rights, and so on. It's all written down there. It's all written down there. If only we could use the Torah. Maybe the Torah is our constitution. Maybe if we use the Torah properly as a moral compass, as Mishpatim says, perhaps the Torah can be our constitution. Well, first of all, I share your angst and we're all beside ourselves with what's going on in Israel right now. That practically speaking, the Torah cannot serve as a constitution, I think, and maybe even should not serve as a constitution because the Torah in Jewish law, it's a foundation, it's a compass. It's not a constitution. So, for example, we cannot base a constitution on the basic premise, for example, that the death penalty is mentioned throughout the Torah. Slavery is acceptable here. And today for us, slavery is not acceptable. Even though this parasha starts with a slave, a Hebrew slave should be freed after six years, today we wouldn't even agree to taking slaves from the ghetto. So the Torah cannot serve as a constitution. It would be way too dangerous if it serves as a constitution. But yes, we're destined to fight over this, to quarrel over this. And if we put this whole situation right now in a positive, give it a positive spin, we are trying to figure out in this country right now, and all of us, we're all trying to figure out what does it mean to be a sovereign Jew in the land of Israel? What does that mean? What does it mean to have a Jewish state? It was relatively easy until now because we were constantly under attack and we had to build a nation. Now that we're relatively secure, we're now turning to deeper questions. What does it mean to have your own state and yet be a stranger on this land? What does it mean to be a Jew and living among non-Jews and the Jewish majority? What does that mean? And we don't have answers for that because we never, you know, for 2000 years we had no independence. The sages don't give us answers to how to live a Jewish life in modern times in our own Jewish state. And we're figuring this out right now. And it looks like we know it's tough. It might even get tougher. But God willing, if we won't self-destruct, maybe through this friction, through this process that's happening right now, we will come to a better place and some answers on living as Jews in our own Jewish homeland without being the landlord of this land. Precisely. So as we come to the end of our conversation, when I teach my students at the end of the class, I always tell them or ask them, so students, what's the take-home? What can you use? Can you use anything from this that I've taught you? And I have an important take-home from your take on the droshah. And that is based on Mishpatim. We are strangers in a strange land. That's a book by Robert Heinlein, a science fiction book. But it's a perfect phrase. We are not the ribbon. We are not the sovereigns. We are here as guests. And we are sharing this land with other people. And if that's our first principle, you get a different approach to the way we live here and the way we act. You get a different kind of moral compass. And this relates to the theme of Mishpatim, which is be kind to strangers. Because not only were you a stranger, you are a stranger. You are a guest in this country. And if we could all accept that as first principle, maybe we could behave a little differently. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. One little take-home that I'm taking from what you just said right now is it all boils down to humility. We don't know what the right policy should be. We don't know what needs to happen. How will a constitution be brought about? We don't have answers to that. That's a huge question. But we do know, and Moshe symbolizes that, that whatever it is, we need to come from a place of deep, profound and radical humility. Thank you, Elisha. Thank you. Shlomo, thank you very much. And Shabbat Shalom to everyone. Shalom.