This week’s parsha, Mishpatim lays the foundation of the biblical justice system. It presents a wide range of civil laws—from personal injury to property damage—designed to create a society that protects its members, particularly those who are vulnerable or wronged. Strikingly, many of these laws are directed not to victims, but to those who hold power. The regulations governing Hebrew slaves define the responsibilities of slave owners; laws of theft and damage hold property owners accountable for harm caused by their possessions. The underlying assumption appears to be that a just society is built by appealing directly to those with power and demanding that they limit it.
This is only one possible strategy. A system concerned with justice might instead appeal to universal values, grounding obligation in the claim that all human beings are created in the image of God, or in the command to be holy. Another approach would be to center moral authority in the powerless: cultivating an ethic that valorizes poverty or meekness and calls on the disempowered to embody true values—“blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” coupled with the injunction to turn the other cheek.
Parshat Mishpatim takes neither of these routes. Instead, it consistently addresses people with economic and social power—landowners, heads of households, slave owners, and property holders. Its aim is not to deny the existence of power, nor to romanticize powerlessness, but to confront power directly and to limit its corrupting force by placing moral and legal constraints on those who possess it.
Yet appealing to the powerful is deeply challenging. Power resists restraint, and attempts to limit it can provoke backlash, repression, or violence. It is also exhausting: those who benefit from power are rarely eager to relinquish it. So the question remains—why persist in appealing to the powerful at all? And even if we do, can such an appeal truly succeed?
This challenge, and a possible solution, are dealt with in a midrash on Mishpatim that opens the Tanhuma for this week’s parsha. The midrash begins by quoting a verse from Tehillim that we say every week during Kabbalat Shabbat: “Mighty king, justice loves; it was You who established equity; justice and righteousness in Jacob You have done.” (Psalm 99:4)
At first glance, the verse appears to be straightforward—the mighty king, that is, of course, God, lover of justice establishes equity and righteousness among the people of Israel.
However, the midrash reads the beginning of the verse slightly differently: the mightiness of the king is (davka) that God loves justice. “All of the strength and praise and greatness and might of the King of Kings is that God loves justice.”
This fact about the divine is set in contrast to the way power and justice usually work: “It is the way of the world that whoever has a strong arm does not want to conduct business with justice; rather, they ignore justice, cheat, and steal, and violate the will of their Creator. They are biased toward their friends and those close to them and do what is not right with their enemies. But the Holy One Blessed Be, King of Kings loves justice and does His will only with justice; that is, ‘the mightiness of the king is God’s love for justice.’”
When it comes to people, the strong tendency is for the most powerful to be the least just. They have all the reasons in the world to bend justice to maintain their own power, wealth, and control. This is also an acknowledgment of a basic conflict that exists, blocking people from doing the right thing. Doing what is right might require us to cede our power, and maintaining power might very well involve manipulating justice and not doing the right thing.
However, according to the midrash, this is not the case when it comes to God. For God, there is no conflict between power, strength, and justice. Even further, God’s power is manifest in God’s love for justice. For God, the strong and powerful, justice is not a liability; it is an expression of power.
What does this mean for how we think about the dynamics between human power and justice and the barriers that stand in our way in creating a world of righteousness?
On one hand, this midrash acknowledges that it is very hard for people with power, even ourselves, to act justly; it is not the natural state of powerful people to be champions of equality. It is very important to give space to this challenge—it allows us to look sensitively and critically at the times when our own fears about losing power and influence can hold us back from really doing what is right. We can see it in others, but it is also worth looking at this quality in ourselves as well.
After that, this midrash gives us several insights into this persistent conflict between justice and strength. As I said, first is acknowledging the difficulty, which explains why, for instance, bumper stickers stating “We are all created in the image of God” fail to actually initiate social change—it’s hard! Second, it maintains that harmony between justice and power does exist with God in the divine realm. This emphasizes the importance of an idea of God that transcends the human world and human conflicts—it allows us to maintain a moral ideal even in the face of major challenges. We might not always be able to achieve it, but it is the ideal, and it is how God operates. So, if we take seriously the injunction of imitatio dei, “walking in God’s ways,” we too should be able to get there eventually.
This midrash goes on, starting with the end of the verse, “You established pathways,” to show how the laws in Mishpatim are meant to guide humans on a pathway toward justice while acknowledging its difficulties. It tells a story based entirely on the law of helping an enemy in Exodus:
“What is ‘It is You who established equity’? Rabbi Alexandrei said: Two donkey drivers were going along the road; they hated each other. One of their donkeys collapsed, and his fellow passed by and saw that the donkey had collapsed under its burden. He said to himself, ‘Does it not say in the Torah, “When you see the donkey of your fellow whom you hate collapse under its burden, you should not ignore him?”’ (Ex. 23:5). What did he do? He went back and started reloading [the donkey]. He began talking to him [his fellow], ‘Leave that stick there, place this one there, pick this one up...’ As he was packing the donkey with him, they were making peace between them. His fellow said, ‘I thought he hated me; now I see how he had mercy on me when he saw me and my donkey in trouble.’ As a result of this, they went to an inn together, ate and drank together, and loved each other. That is “It was You who established equity.””
The focus on your enemy is not incidental; it is the key to the very type of conflict articulated in the previous section. How do we move from being the type of powerful people who are unable to do justice to those who can? Help someone you hate, even if you are doing it just because the Torah says so. Once you do, very slowly, the fundamental dynamic between you will change. You will start to communicate; they will feel cared for, and the conflict between you will gradually shift. You will see each other not as enemies competing for power and resources, but as friends—equals, equally responsible for the wellbeing of the other.
The path from corrupting power to supportive, life-giving justice is not an easy one; there are many obstacles along the way. But, says Parshat Mishpatim, it’s possible. Start by acknowledging the challenges, then reimagine beyond them, and take baby steps. Do what the Torah says, even if your motives are impure, and eventually, you will change the world.
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Rabbi Shoshana Cohen is a senior faculty member and research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, where she serves as program rabbi and mentor for Israeli and American gap year/mechina students. She has served as as scholar in residence in communities around the US as part of Hartman’s Courageous Communities project. Shoshana is educational advisor to a several programs at the Institute, including the UJIA-UK partnership and leads programming for Rabbinical students spending the year in Israel. She is a scholar of rabbinic literature with a focus on midrash and gender studies and an eye towards social justice and received Orthodox semicha by Rabbi Daniel Landes in Jerusalem, where she has lived for over twenty years.Shoshana is a graduate of Matan, Midreshet Lindenbaum, and Hebrew University. Before coming to Hartman. she taught Talmud, midrash and feminism at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem for over a decade.
This is only one possible strategy. A system concerned with justice might instead appeal to universal values, grounding obligation in the claim that all human beings are created in the image of God, or in the command to be holy. Another approach would be to center moral authority in the powerless: cultivating an ethic that valorizes poverty or meekness and calls on the disempowered to embody true values—“blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” coupled with the injunction to turn the other cheek.
Parshat Mishpatim takes neither of these routes. Instead, it consistently addresses people with economic and social power—landowners, heads of households, slave owners, and property holders. Its aim is not to deny the existence of power, nor to romanticize powerlessness, but to confront power directly and to limit its corrupting force by placing moral and legal constraints on those who possess it.
Yet appealing to the powerful is deeply challenging. Power resists restraint, and attempts to limit it can provoke backlash, repression, or violence. It is also exhausting: those who benefit from power are rarely eager to relinquish it. So the question remains—why persist in appealing to the powerful at all? And even if we do, can such an appeal truly succeed?
This challenge, and a possible solution, are dealt with in a midrash on Mishpatim that opens the Tanhuma for this week’s parsha. The midrash begins by quoting a verse from Tehillim that we say every week during Kabbalat Shabbat: “Mighty king, justice loves; it was You who established equity; justice and righteousness in Jacob You have done.” (Psalm 99:4)
At first glance, the verse appears to be straightforward—the mighty king, that is, of course, God, lover of justice establishes equity and righteousness among the people of Israel.
However, the midrash reads the beginning of the verse slightly differently: the mightiness of the king is (davka) that God loves justice. “All of the strength and praise and greatness and might of the King of Kings is that God loves justice.”
This fact about the divine is set in contrast to the way power and justice usually work: “It is the way of the world that whoever has a strong arm does not want to conduct business with justice; rather, they ignore justice, cheat, and steal, and violate the will of their Creator. They are biased toward their friends and those close to them and do what is not right with their enemies. But the Holy One Blessed Be, King of Kings loves justice and does His will only with justice; that is, ‘the mightiness of the king is God’s love for justice.’”
When it comes to people, the strong tendency is for the most powerful to be the least just. They have all the reasons in the world to bend justice to maintain their own power, wealth, and control. This is also an acknowledgment of a basic conflict that exists, blocking people from doing the right thing. Doing what is right might require us to cede our power, and maintaining power might very well involve manipulating justice and not doing the right thing.
However, according to the midrash, this is not the case when it comes to God. For God, there is no conflict between power, strength, and justice. Even further, God’s power is manifest in God’s love for justice. For God, the strong and powerful, justice is not a liability; it is an expression of power.
What does this mean for how we think about the dynamics between human power and justice and the barriers that stand in our way in creating a world of righteousness?
On one hand, this midrash acknowledges that it is very hard for people with power, even ourselves, to act justly; it is not the natural state of powerful people to be champions of equality. It is very important to give space to this challenge—it allows us to look sensitively and critically at the times when our own fears about losing power and influence can hold us back from really doing what is right. We can see it in others, but it is also worth looking at this quality in ourselves as well.
After that, this midrash gives us several insights into this persistent conflict between justice and strength. As I said, first is acknowledging the difficulty, which explains why, for instance, bumper stickers stating “We are all created in the image of God” fail to actually initiate social change—it’s hard! Second, it maintains that harmony between justice and power does exist with God in the divine realm. This emphasizes the importance of an idea of God that transcends the human world and human conflicts—it allows us to maintain a moral ideal even in the face of major challenges. We might not always be able to achieve it, but it is the ideal, and it is how God operates. So, if we take seriously the injunction of imitatio dei, “walking in God’s ways,” we too should be able to get there eventually.
This midrash goes on, starting with the end of the verse, “You established pathways,” to show how the laws in Mishpatim are meant to guide humans on a pathway toward justice while acknowledging its difficulties. It tells a story based entirely on the law of helping an enemy in Exodus:
“What is ‘It is You who established equity’? Rabbi Alexandrei said: Two donkey drivers were going along the road; they hated each other. One of their donkeys collapsed, and his fellow passed by and saw that the donkey had collapsed under its burden. He said to himself, ‘Does it not say in the Torah, “When you see the donkey of your fellow whom you hate collapse under its burden, you should not ignore him?”’ (Ex. 23:5). What did he do? He went back and started reloading [the donkey]. He began talking to him [his fellow], ‘Leave that stick there, place this one there, pick this one up...’ As he was packing the donkey with him, they were making peace between them. His fellow said, ‘I thought he hated me; now I see how he had mercy on me when he saw me and my donkey in trouble.’ As a result of this, they went to an inn together, ate and drank together, and loved each other. That is “It was You who established equity.””
The focus on your enemy is not incidental; it is the key to the very type of conflict articulated in the previous section. How do we move from being the type of powerful people who are unable to do justice to those who can? Help someone you hate, even if you are doing it just because the Torah says so. Once you do, very slowly, the fundamental dynamic between you will change. You will start to communicate; they will feel cared for, and the conflict between you will gradually shift. You will see each other not as enemies competing for power and resources, but as friends—equals, equally responsible for the wellbeing of the other.
The path from corrupting power to supportive, life-giving justice is not an easy one; there are many obstacles along the way. But, says Parshat Mishpatim, it’s possible. Start by acknowledging the challenges, then reimagine beyond them, and take baby steps. Do what the Torah says, even if your motives are impure, and eventually, you will change the world.
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Rabbi Shoshana Cohen is a senior faculty member and research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, where she serves as program rabbi and mentor for Israeli and American gap year/mechina students. She has served as as scholar in residence in communities around the US as part of Hartman’s Courageous Communities project. Shoshana is educational advisor to a several programs at the Institute, including the UJIA-UK partnership and leads programming for Rabbinical students spending the year in Israel. She is a scholar of rabbinic literature with a focus on midrash and gender studies and an eye towards social justice and received Orthodox semicha by Rabbi Daniel Landes in Jerusalem, where she has lived for over twenty years.Shoshana is a graduate of Matan, Midreshet Lindenbaum, and Hebrew University. Before coming to Hartman. she taught Talmud, midrash and feminism at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem for over a decade.