Mishpatim
Rabbi Schapiro on the Parshah: Mishpatim
Mishpatim are the one category of mitzvah a person could have figured out alone — yet the Torah singles them out for a command to teach them thoroughly, and to keep their judgment inside the Jewish courts. A look at why the most "logical" laws are actually the ones most at risk of being kept for the wrong reason.
Parshas Mishpatim
Reads meshakelah v'akarah as more than a blessing for children in the plain sense — in Chassidus, children represent the middos of ahavah and yirah that are born from a person's own understanding. Shows why serving Hashem merely because it feels right (mi'ratzon) leaves those middos unstable, and how remembering that every day is a mattanah with its own mission is the antidote, along with Hashem's promise to fill in for years already felt lost.
Parshas Mishpatim
Walks through meshakelah v'akarah and its pairing with es mispar yamecha amalei, reading children as a stand-in for the middos of ahavah v'yirah that grow out of a person's own seichel. Makes the case that middos built only on ratzon — on serving Hashem because it feels good — don't last, and that treating each day as a numbered mission from Hashem is what keeps them standing, with a closing promise that lost time can still be filled in.
Parshas Mishpatim
Reads the din that a modeh b'miktzat must swear an oath as a mashal for what happens after a Yid does an aveirah: the neshamah's essence, and even its outer kochos, are never fully bound up in the sin, since even a poshea Yisroel stays malei mitzvos k'rimon. Reframes the shevuah itself as being filled with koach to resist the yetzer hara and do teshuvah, closing with a story of the Rebbe turning that same Gemara into an even more positive read.
Parshas Mishpatim
Traces the halachos of an eved ivri who, after six years, says he loves his master too much to leave — and reads the six years as the six workdays a person spends bound up in gashmius to earn a living. Shows why getting his ear bored is a reminder that Shabbos, the seventh day, is meant to be different, a day fully devoted to Hashem, and closes with the remez to the six thousand years of the world and the day that will be entirely Shabbos.
Parshas Mishpatim
Unpacks why a modeh b'miktzat is chayav a shevuah as a mashal for the neshamah's relationship to sin: no koach of a Yid, not even the ones used in an aveirah, is ever fully consumed by it, since even a poshea Yisroel remains malei mitzvos k'rimon. Reads the shevuah itself, from the lashon of sova, as Hashem filling a Yid with the strength to resist the yetzer hara's prosecution and return through teshuvah, ending with the Rebbe's own retelling of that same Gemara to a chossid.
Parshas Mishpatim
Starts from the Baal HaTurim's observation that the Torah places the issur of avodah zarah next to the mitzvah of matzah because both are asur b'hana'ah and asur b'chol shehu. Goes a step further with the Ran's question of why chametz alone is machmir enough to forbid even owning it — because a person is so used to it all year — and applies the same logic to avodah zarah, where familiarity with other apparent powers in the world makes it easy to forget that only Hashem truly acts.
Parshas Mishpatim
Takes Rashi's oft-repeated klal of dibur hakasuv b'hoveh — that the Torah's cases are just common examples, not exclusive ones — and reads it also as a statement about hashgachah pratis. Argues that unusual events feel obviously from Hashem, while routine, natural ones get chalked up to teva, and ties that back to asarah maamaros and Hashem's constant renewal of creation, fitting for a parashah built entirely around everyday dinim bein adam l'chaveiro.
Parshas Mishpatim
Asks why, immediately after the revelation at Sinai, the Torah's first case is a Yid who stole and is sold as an eved. Reads it as addressing the moment the intense giluy Elokus of Matan Torah fades and a person can start to feel, like a ganav, that Hashem isn't really watching him anymore — the same rush of stupidity behind every aveirah. Closes with the eitzah built into that very halachah: becoming an eved of Hashem through teshuvah is the tikkun for that feeling.