OU TORAH In the Details By Rabbi Sacks

On the opening phrase of Mishpatim - "And these are the laws you are to set before them" - Rashi comments: "And these are the laws" – Wherever uses the word "these" it signals a discontinuity with what has been stated previously. Wherever it uses the term "and these" it signals a continuity. Just as the former commands were given at Sinai, so these were given at Sinai. Why then are the civil laws placed in juxtaposition to the laws concerning the altar ? To tell you to place the Sanhedrin near to the Temple. "Which you shall set before them" - G-d said to Moses: You should not think, I will teach them a section or law two or three times until they know the words verbatim but I will not take the trouble to make them understand the reason and its significance. Therefore the Torah states "which you shall set before them" like a fully laid table with everything ready for eating. (Rashi on Shemot 23:1) Three remarkable propositions are being set out here, which have shaped the contours of Judaism ever since. The first is that just as the general principles of Judaism (aseret hadibrot means not "ten commandments" but "ten utterances" or overarching principles) are Divine, so are the details. In the 1960s the Danish architect Arne Jacobson designed a new college campus in Oxford. Not content with designing the building, he went on to design the cutlery and crockery to be used in the dining hall, and supervised the planting of every shrub in the college garden. When asked why, he replied in the words of another architect, Mies van der Rohe: "G-d is in the details".