Page 2 - Announcements Mon. Jan. 24

26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck, NY 11023 (516) 487-6100 Shabbat Announcements Mishpatim 5782
result.” (Ex. 21:20) A slave is not mere property. They each In general, law and narrative are two distinct literary
have a right to life. Similarly, the law of Shabbat that genres that have very little overlap. Most books of law do
states: “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not contain narratives, and most narratives do not contain
not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and law. Besides which, as Cover himself notes, even if people
so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner in Britain or America today know the history behind a given
living among you may be refreshed.” (Ex. 23:12) One day law, there is no canonical text that brings the two together.
in seven slaves were to breathe the air of freedom. All three In any case in most societies there are many different
laws prepared the way for the abolition of slavery, even ways of telling the story. Besides which, most laws are
though it would take more than three thousand years. enacted without a statement of why they came to be, what
they were intended to achieve, and what historical
There are two laws that have to do with the Israelites’ experience led to their enactment.
experience of being an oppressed minority: “Do not
mistreat or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in So, the Torah is a unique combination of nomos and
Egypt.” (Ex. 22:21) and “Do not oppress a stranger; you narrative, history and law, the formative experiences of a
yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you nation and the way that nation sought to live its collective
were foreigners in Egypt. (Ex. 23:9) And there are laws that life so as never to forget the lessons it learned along the
evoke other aspects of the people’s experience in Egypt, way. It brings together vision and detail in a way that has
such as, “Do not take advantage of the widow or the never been surpassed.
fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly
hear their cry” (Ex. 22:21-22). This recalls the episode at That is how we must lead if we want people to come with
the beginning of the Exodus, “The Israelites groaned in us, giving of their best. There must be a vision to inspire
their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of us, telling us why we should do what we are asked to do.
their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning, and There must be a narrative: this is what happened, this is
He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and who we are, and this is why the vision is so important to
with Jacob. So, God looked on the Israelites and was us. Then there must be the law, the code, the fastidious
concerned about them.” (Ex. 2:23-25) attention to detail, that allow us to translate vision into
reality and turn the pain of the past into the blessings of
In a famous article written in the 1980s, Yale law professor the future. That extraordinary combination, to be found in
Robert Cover wrote about “Nomos and Narrative.” By this almost no other law code, is what gives Torah its enduring
he meant that beneath the laws of any given society is a power. It is a model for all who seek to lead people to
nomos, that is, a vision of an ideal social order that the law greatness.
is intended to create. And behind every nomos is a
narrative, that is, a story about why the shapers and
visionaries of that society or group came to have that
specific vision of the ideal order they sought to build.
Cover’s examples are largely taken from the Torah, and the
truth is that his analysis sounds less like a description of
law as such than a description of that unique phenomenon
we know as Torah. The word “Torah” is untranslatable
because it means several different things that only appear
together in the book that bears that name. Torah means
“law.” But it also means “teaching, instruction, guidance,”
or more generally, “direction”. It is also the generic name
for the five books, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, that
comprise both narrative and law.

Great Neck Synagogue
26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck , NY 11023
516-487-6100

Rabbi Dale Polakoff, Rabbi
Rabbi Ian Lichter, Assistant Rabbi
Rabbi Yehoshua Lefkowitz, Intern Rabbi
Dr. Ephraim Wolf, z”l, Rabbi Emeritus
Yitzy Spinner, Cantor
Eleazer Schulman, z”l, Cantor Emeritus
Rabbi Dr. Michael & Zehava Atlas, Youth Rabbi & Youth Director
Mark Twersky, Executive Director
Dr. James Frisch, Assistant Director
Jordan Wolf, President
Dov Sassoon, Chairman of the Board