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Parshat Mishpatim

By: SFW Students & Alumna
Chavie Barr

Perhaps you will see the donkey of someone you hate lying under its burden. Will you refrain from helping it? You shall surely help along with him”. Sefer HaChinuch explains that this mitzvah comes to teach us the trait of compassion. From this mitzvah we are to learn to have pity on a man that suffers from bodily pain. Included in this religious obligation of compassion is to pity one who suffers a monetary loss. Hashem will not have compassion on those who lack this trait.

Another reason could be that we are commanded to specifically help our enemy in order to overcome our yetzer hara and to no longer hate a fellow Jew. The Chasam Sofer asks why the pasuk tells us to help our enemy, when earlier we are forbidden to have feelings of hatred towards other Jews. He explains that this “enemy,” to whom the Torah refers, must be a fellow Jew that has committed aveiros, whom the Torah does allow us to harbor feelings of hatred towards. However, the Chasam Sofer goes on to ask if it would not be better to inform his rebbi, who will rebuke him and help him to do teshuva. The Gemara explains that one may only inform someone of another Jew’s bad ways if there are two witnesses to the matter. Being that Torah law only holds the testimony of two witnesses to be true, by only one person informing the rebbi, he is in truth only doing a disservice by giving the sinner a bad reputation.

Tosafos is bothered by this explanation. If the hatred is permissible, then what yetzer hara is this mitzvah coming to help us overcome? Chasam Sofer explains this using the three different reasons that are brought down as to why the Beis HaMikdosh was destroyed: Rav Yochanan explains that the destruction was brought about because of sinas chinam (reaseon#1) and because Bnai Yisrael were too scrupulous in terms of

din(reason #2). The third opinion of Rav Yochanan, that it was the situation of  Kamtza and Bar Kamtza that brought about the destruction, comes to settle the conflict between these two opinions. If there had not been baseless hatred between the two, then the situation would have not come about. At the same time, had they not been so nit-picky about the din and put Bar Kamtza to death in order to silence him, then it would have been possible to have avoided Roman interference and the destruction of the Beis HaMikdosh and all of Yerushalayim.

A message we could learn from all of this is that we should be looking at the bigger picture of events, rather than the little details of events taking place. Bar Kamtza should have been put to death, despite not being chayav misa, because in the big picture he was causing much harm to the Jewish people. In the pasuk, we are told to not look upon this man as an enemy, but rather as a fellow Jew with potential to return from his ways. Even the pasuk hints to this, as we are first told that he is an enemy, but in the end we are told “you shall surely help along with him”, to work together with him and look upon him as part of the Jewish nation. It is also possible to say that from this mitzvah we are to learn a lesson about compassion and teshuva. But, it is also possible to take it one step further and say that maybe the initial step of teshuva needs to be with a feeling of compassion towards other fellow Jews. It could be that with this first step of simply being more compassionate and sensitive people, we will come to overcome the yetzer hara in other realms as well, and see the rebuilding of the Beis HaMikdosh and Yerushalayim.