Reb Shlomo's Commentary on this Week's Torah Parsha Parshat Mishpatim

Parshat Mishpatim Dear friends, we hope you enjoy this week's preview of the soon-to-be published commentary of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach on Sefer Shmot. Please share this with all those who you think would appreciate it. Before and Not After “And these are the ordinances that you shall place before them” (Sh'mos 21:1) I want to share something very important with you. The laws of this world and the laws of the Torah are completely different laws. When the Torah says not to steal, it is not given in order to explain what happens when someone steals. When you learn the Torah laws of stealing, they are so holy, that when you learn them – you simply can’t steal anymore. But in the world’s society, the laws of stealing only come once someone stole. By the Torah it’s the other way around – they come before it happened. This is what it means when the Torah says, “Asher tasim lifneihem” 'place the laws before them,' not after they might have fallen. When you learn the laws of stealing, you don’t steal anymore. When you learn about what happens to you when you kill someone, it’s not that G-d forbid you already killed somebody and then you learn the laws. In the Torah it says that when someone, G-d forbid, killed somebody – they should be killed. In the time of the Holy Temple – as long as we Jews were the way we should be – there was never any killing going on. How come? Because our laws begin before, “lifneihem.” Because when G-d says, “Thou shalt not kill” – it is so holy that we simply couldn’t kill anymore. I always think that the way we teach our children the laws of the Torah is “achareihem,” after they already fell. A lot of people know all the laws, but they know it like it’s in the back of their head. It’s got to be “lifneihem,” before me. The Pshischer says, “lifneihem,” it’s got to be before their eyes all the time, it has to be in front of me, not behind me.